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Supreme Court to release final opinions of term Tuesday

Rulings expected on Trump's birthright citizenship order, transgender sports bans

An intern for a TV news outlet runs with a decision to their cameras as the Supreme Court hands down decisions on Monday.
An intern for a TV news outlet runs with a decision to their cameras as the Supreme Court hands down decisions on Monday. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

The Supreme Court announced it will wrap up decisions for the term Tuesday, which is expected to include a ruling on a case over President Donald Trump’s push to unilaterally alter birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Monday announced the last day for opinions, which is likely to include rulings on party coordination on campaign spending and two cases on state bans on transgender girls participating in scholastic sports.

The birthright citizenship case is one of the court’s most consequential of the term. It is the latest in a series of high-profile confrontations between the court and Trump’s sweeping efforts without congressional action to assert more authority over American governance and life.

The justices will decide a challenge to the president’s executive order to disallow citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrant parents or those with temporary legal status, a major change to more than a century of legal precedent.

States and others challenging the executive order have said in court filings that it could strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of children each year. Experts said the ruling could confine Congress’ power to define who is considered part of the nation.

The justices issued decisions Monday in four cases, which included the legality of state laws that allowed for the counting of late-arriving mail ballots and Trump’s ability to fire federal officials at independent agencies and the Federal Reserve.

The justices also decided law enforcement officials would need to get warrants to secure so-called “geofence” searches, where wireless companies provide law enforcement with the location information of every cell phone user in an area of a crime.

Justice Elena Kagan, in a 6-3 majority opinion, wrote that cell phone users do not lose their expectations of privacy just because they decide to use a cell phone.

“An individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information — even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company,” Kagan wrote.

Separate from Tuesday’s opinion releases, the justices are also expected to release end-of-term announcements as well as a final order list for the term.

In those, the justices may address still-pending cases, such as the emergency application from the Trump administration to remove Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter while her fight over her attempted firing works through the courts, as well as set cases for argument next term.

The court does not always resolve all the cases in the same year they are first argued. Last term, instead of resolving a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional districts, the justices instead decided to “reargue” that case this term.

Earlier this year, the justices ruled in that case, restricting the use of the Voting Rights Act to create minority-majority congressional districts.

Except for emergency cases, which have become more prevalent in the second Trump administration, the justices are next expected to return in September for their “long conference,” where they will accept many of the cases for argument in the fall.

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