The Supreme Court released several major decisions in the final week of its 2025 term. Zachary Shemtob, the executive editor of SCOTUSblog, joins to break down how certain decisions could impact the U.S.

Washington

The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued several significant decisions at the close of its term. These included rulings on the president's executive order regarding birthright citizenship, debates over LGBTQ curriculum opt-outs in schools, and age verification requirements for adult websites. The Court also announced it will hear a major campaign finance case, Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, which could reshape how political parties coordinate spending with candidates.

Most of the high-profile cases were decided along predictable ideological lines, with Democratic-appointed justices in the minority and Republican-appointed justices in the majority. Notably, Justice Barrett authored the decision in Casa v. Trump concerning universal injunctions, a move that surprised some observers who expected the chief justice to write the opinion. The term's decisions are expected to have lasting effects on campaign finance regulations and civil rights issues.

How the Supreme Court's latest major rulings might affect the U.S.

The Supreme Court marked the official end of the term last week, and we're still digesting some of the major rulings. On Friday alone, we got decisions ranging from the president's executive order on birthright citizenship to debates over LGBTQ curriculums in school and age verification requirements for adult websites. I want to bring in Zachary Shemtab. He's the executive editor of SCOTUSblog. Zach, thanks for joining us this morning. The Supreme Court announced today that it will hear a case on campaign financing. What can you tell us about that? Yeah, so there were a series of orders today. The largest one, and I think this is probably the most important case that we know of for the 2025-26 term so far, it's called Federal Election Commission versus Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee. It's a challenge to whether political parties can be restricted from spending money on campaign advertising with input from political candidates. So this could potentially upend campaign finance regulations a great deal. And kind of an interesting note, J.D. Vance was actually a party here when he was a candidate. So you've got that twist, as well. But yes, this could have major ramifications down the road in terms of campaign finance and carving that out. The justices took us on quite a ride last week. What were some of your big takeaways about some of the decisions that came down the pike? So there was nothing particularly surprising. All of the major cases that they heard came out how one would expect. Casa v. Trump, in terms of the universal injunctions, was not unexpected. The most unexpected part of that decision was it was written by Justice Barrett. I think a lot of us were expecting, given the importance of the case and the prominence of it, that it would be written by the chief justice. But instead, he assigned it to Barrett, who we trust as a proceduralist and had confidence to write this decision. And she wrote a pretty—maybe intense is too strong a word, but a pretty comprehensive decision, which Justices Jackson and Sotomayor certainly shot back on. And then she, you know, delivered some, you know, rhetoric in return. So that was not a surprise, though, how that came out. Mahmoud v. Taylor, the LGBTQ parents opt-out case, also not very surprising. And so those cases also split along six, three ideological lines. So the Democratic-appointed justices were in the minority, and the Republican-appointed justices were in the majority. So ultimately— Very interesting. Yeah. I mean, it is and it isn't. We had earlier cases in the term where it was a little more unpredictable, where you had some of the more liberal justices voting with the conservatives or vice versa. But when it came down to what I would say the most important cases, it ended up being ideologically split. And I would say those cases are the Kassidy-Trump, the, you know, ACA—excuse me, Kassidy-Trump dealing with the universal injunction, the Mahmoud v. Taylor, and, even though it wasn't on Friday, Scrimeti, the trans case. Fascinating stuff. Zachary Shumtab, thanks so much for joining us this morning. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Glad to be here.

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Kyiv

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