Thursday is the last day for the current Supreme Court session, and we could see several major rulings handed down before the end of the day.
Perhaps the biggest surrounds two Arizona voting restrictions. One rejects ballots cast in the wrong precinct. The other limits who can deliver ballots on someone else’s behalf to family, caregivers, mail carriers and elections officials.
An appellate court struck down the restrictions as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act. A 6-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court means it’s likely the appellate court’s decision will be overturned.
If that does happen, it would make it a lot harder to use the Voting Rights Act to sue over new laws that make it harder to vote in the name of election security.
We could also hear a decision on what could be the biggest case on property rights in years.
It involves the city of Chicago using eminent domain to take private property so a chocolate company could use the property to expand.
This case would give the court the chance to overturn a 2005 case, where the court said the city of New London, Connecticut could use eminent domain to take private property and sell it to private developers as part of an attempt to revitalize the city.
Only two justices who decided on that case are still on the Supreme Court.
Justices may also rule on what could be a landmark First Amendment case. Shkelzen Berisha, the son of the former prime minister of Albania, says the book that would later turn into the movie “War Dogs” harmed him by falsely linking him to would-be arms dealers from Miami.
He sued for defamation, and wants the justices to revisit the high bar the court has set for public figures to win defamation lawsuits.
The Supreme Court has already made big decisions on topics like health care and college athlete compensation this session. They also plan to address abortion and guns in their next session.
