Student debt relief, LGBTQ+ rights and affirmative action decisions could come today
Challenges to Joe Biden’s student debt relief program, and decisions over voting and LGBTQ+ rights, and college admissions procedures, could be among supreme court rulings expected to drop this morning.
The panel has announced that today and Friday will both be “decision days” as their current session rolls towards a close by the end of this month. We’ve seen a few blockbusters already this term, including last week’s surprise ruling protecting Native Americans’ rights over the adoption of children.
According to veteran supreme court watcher Amy Howell, there are 18 cases still outstanding, and we’re expecting to start hearing about some of them at 10am ET.
Two of them, Biden v Nebraska, and Department of Education v Brown, relate to the president’s plans for relief from student loans. In the first, six Republican-led states are challenging the Biden administration’s right to write off student debt.
303 Creative v Elenis is a case covering a company’s right to refuse to design wedding websites for same-sex couples; and Moore v Harper is a case from North Carolina covering a state’s authority to regulate federal elections without interference from the courts.
While the cases are certainly consequential, there’s at least equal interest in the latest ethics scandal sweeping the supreme court, with conservative justice Samuel Alito at the center of a storm over accepting free gifts from a billionaire that he later failed to disclose.
That, and ongoing controversies over justice Clarence Thomas’s conduct, have worked to erode public confidence in the supreme court.
We’ll bring you today’s decisions as they drop. While we wait, here’s Guardian columnist Margaret Sullivan’s take on the Alito scandal:
Key events
Good morning politics blog readers, welcome to a busy Thursday. Justices at the supreme court are on the final lap of their current decisions season, with fewer than two dozen rulings yet to drop in the session ending this month.
We don’t yet know which cases will be among today’s batch, which are expected to start filtering through at 10am ET. But among the “blockbusters” still outstanding are challenges to Joe Biden’s student loan relief program, and rulings on LGBTQ+ rights and the role of race in college admissions procedures.
Adding spice to all this: the ongoing ethics scandal involving justice Samuel Alito, and his taking of undeclared gifts from a billionaire.
We’ll bring you news from the supreme court as we get it.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
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Indian’s prime minister Narendra Modi has a big day in Washington DC, meeting Biden at the White House this morning and addressing a joint session of congress this afternoon. The day also has big significance for the president as he woos a potential ally in resisting both Russia’s war in Ukraine China’s rising global influence. We’ll hear from both leaders at a lunchtime press conference.
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There’s fallout from a sloppy day in the House, in which Republicans voted to censure California Democrat Adam Schiff for leading investigations into Donald Trump; and rightwingers Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene were at each other’s throats over efforts to impeach Biden.
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Trump’s lawyers have received the first batch of evidence against him from the justice department after his indictment for illegally retaining classified documents. It comes as the Guardian reveals new details of the timeline of federal prosecutors’ investigations of the former president.
We’ll have all that, and more, coming up. Please stick with us.
