Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is made up of nine justices who were each appointed by a sitting president and usually serve life terms. They take cases unsettled between lower state courts in order to provide a ruling on important decisions for the entire country, having immense political and social impacts on people and legislation for decades to come.

Women’s Sports Were Built by Letting Girls In

PUBLISHED 7/9/2026 by

When the Supreme Court upheld West Virginia’s ban on transgender girls participating in girls’ school sports in West Virginia v. B.P.J., it said the ruling was about protecting the safety and fairness of women’s and girls’ sports. I hear that claim against everything I actually lived.

Thirty years ago, in United States v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that generalizations about “the way women are” cannot justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description. That principle didn’t just build my generation of athletes. It built a generation of women: the litigators and judges, the surgeons, the CEOs and entrepreneurs, the senators and governors, the police officers and firefighters and fighter pilots, the women who were the first of everything. Every one of those doors was held shut by the same argument Virginia made: Most women wouldn’t want this, most women couldn’t do it.

Women of my generation didn’t fight to be seen as individuals—as athletes, as leaders, as whatever they had it in them to be—only to watch that principle eroded now, in their name and over their objection.

More than half a century ago, this country decided that girls who had been told they didn’t belong on the field belonged there after all. I got to live the proof of that promise. The work now is to keep that promise for every kid who wants to play.

A Single Abortion Clinic Closing Rarely Makes Headlines. What Happens When None Are Left?

PUBLISHED 7/8/2026 by

Picture a map of the United States. It’s 2022, and in southern states like Texas and Tennessee, there are clusters of black dots that represent independent clinic closures. These are abortion care black holes: communities where it’s no longer possible to get an abortion at a nearby clinic.

Fast forward to present. It’s 2026, four years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and black dots have multiplied in states across the country. It no longer matters if the state is red or blue, governed by conservatives or progressives. None are immune to the increasing weight of political pressure, financial strain and operational difficulty that are forcing independent clinics to close or stop providing abortion care.

Each of these black dots is a community suffering a healthcare crisis, and they are proliferating across the United States at a rapid rate.

Independent clinics are often the only places to get clinical abortion care, unbiased information and support for pregnancy options. They are where people go to feel safe and respected, whether they are getting an abortion, continuing a pregnancy or getting gender-affirming care. In small towns and rural spaces, these clinics are often the only safe place for many people, especially those who are LGBTQIA+. If clinics close, there is often nowhere else to go.

And once abortion clinics close, it’s not as simple as reopening when they can, if they can. Even if a specific restriction is lifted, severe financial constraints, continued political hostility, threats of violence and legal uncertainty still stand.

‘Hands Off Ohio!’: FBI Raid of Voting Rights Group Raises Alarms Over Voter Intimidation

PUBLISHED 7/7/2026 by

On the morning of June 11, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC), a grassroots pro-democracy organization focused on registration, civic engagement and community organizing for marginalized communities.  

According to reports, agents seized documents and computer files and questioned staff members for several hours. Investigators also contacted employees and community leaders at their homes, workplaces and schools. While some agents reportedly carried subpoenas and asked questions related to voter fraud, officials have not publicly explained the specific focus of the investigation.  

The mission of the OOC is to build power among everyday Ohioans through racial, social and economic justice organizing. In the aftermath of the raid, many local leaders and voting rights advocates expressed concern that the investigation could discourage voter registration and civic participation ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Who Gets to Be a Citizen Today?

PUBLISHED 6/30/2026 by

In a highly anticipated decision, the Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, reaffirming that children born in the United States are citizens under the 14th Amendment, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The ruling preserves one of the Constitution’s clearest guarantees, and averts what would have been one of the most sweeping assaults on American citizenship since Reconstruction.

The ruling was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson; Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch dissented in full, and Brett Kavanaugh in part.

The Court reached the correct result. But no constitutional democracy should take comfort in the fact that four justices were prepared to strip citizenship from children born on American soil, embracing Trump’s effort to narrow the Citizenship Clause and erase a constitutional promise that has defined U.S. democracy for more than 150 years. Their willingness to do so exposes just how vulnerable even our most fundamental constitutional commitments have become.

The Supreme Court Decided Who Gets to Be a Girl. We Disagree. 

PUBLISHED 6/30/2026 by

On Tuesday, June 30, in a complete distortion of federal laws requiring equal opportunities in education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to further the Trump administration’s political agenda to persecute, ostracize and erase transgender students. This decision allowing states to ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports, is not about Title IX or equal opportunities for girls. In fact, it is the exact opposite.

To enforce these bans, someone has to decide which girls look female enough to compete. Schools and athletic associations must actively investigate students who don’t fit a sufficiently feminine profile.

We have watched this machinery run before. It is the same machinery that told women they were too aggressive for the boardroom, too strong for the field, too mannish for the ballot box. It has always been used to shrink what women and girls are allowed to be.

Women’s rights and trans rights are not competing causes. They never were. They share a common enemy: the rigid gender hierarchy that has always used “protection” as a cover story for control.

None of us are free until the category of “woman” is big enough to hold all of us.

Supreme Court ‘Mullin v. Al Otro Lado’ Decision Hinges Asylum Law on a Single Word

PUBLISHED 6/27/2026 by

Just days after World Refugee Day, the Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a significant victory on immigration, allowing it to revive a policy that turns away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border before they have an opportunity to present their claims.

In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion rests on an isolated reading of the word “in”—an approach the dissenters say ignores decades of asylum law and the realities facing people fleeing persecution.

With Latest Immigration Decisions, the Supreme Court’s Conservative Majority Rewrites Immigration Law, One Word at a Time

PUBLISHED 6/26/2026 by

Just days after World Refugee Day, the Supreme Court issued two immigration decisions that dramatically narrow protections for asylum seekers and Temporary Protected Status holders: Mullin v. Al Otro Lado and Mullin v. Doe.

Although the cases address different legal questions, they share a troubling approach: The conservative majority isolates individual words from their statutory context to expand presidential authority while limiting humanitarian protections Congress intended to provide.

In one decision, the Court allows the Trump administration to revive a policy that turns away asylum seekers at the border before they can present their claims. In the other, it shields the administration’s termination of TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians from meaningful judicial review.

Powerful dissents from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan argue that the majority ignored both the broader legal framework and the real-world consequences of its rulings.

These opinions are about far more than technical questions of statutory interpretation. By reading immigration law out of context, the Court is reshaping who can seek protection in the United States—and how much power the executive branch has to decide their fate.

Trump’s Executive Order to Restrict Vote by Mail Is a Five-Alarm Fire

PUBLISHED 6/23/2026 by

Republican voters regularly use mail-in voting. Nearly one in five registered Republicans vote by mail. One in four Democrats does too.

Data on who votes by mail suggests that many Americans trust and rely on it.

Trump himself uses mail voting. He has defended casting his own ballots by mail, saying he did it “because I’m president” and “I had a lot of different things” to do.

Trump has repeatedly tried to restrict Americans’ ability to vote by mail. His latest effort, following several failed attempts, began with an executive order he signed on March 31: “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” The order seeks to shift authority over federal elections from the states—which the Constitution grants primary responsibility for administering elections—to the federal government.

There are, of course, lawsuits challenging this executive order. The challenges to this executive order may well determine how and when you vote this November. So I asked my Brennan Center colleague Wendy Weiser, one of the lawyers in the League of Women Voters case, to share her perspective.

What Will the Supreme Court’s Most Consequential Decisions Mean for Democracy? On July 1, Georgetown Law’s ‘2026 Term in Review’ Tackles the Question

PUBLISHED 6/23/2026 by

On Wednesday, July 1, Georgetown Law and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law will host the 2026 Supreme Court Term in Review, a timely discussion examining one of the most consequential Supreme Court terms in recent memory.

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, participants will consider how the Court’s decisions are reshaping the balance of power among the branches of government and testing the resilience of American democracy.

Held at Georgetown University’s Capitol Campus, the event will bring together leading legal scholars, journalists and advocates to analyze the Court’s major decisions and their implications for democracy, civil rights and the rule of law.

Moderated by Georgetown Law professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin—co-faculty director of the O’Neill Institute, executive producer of Ms. Studios and host of the Ms. podcast On the Issues—the program will explore cases involving birthright citizenship, voting rights, reproductive healthcare access, LGBTQ+ rights, criminal justice, free speech, tariffs and the limits of executive authority.

The Majority Has Spoken on Abortion. Now We’re Sharing the Lives Reproductive Freedom Made Possible.

PUBLISHED 6/21/2026 by

Four years after Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade, the evidence is overwhelming: Reproductive freedom is not a fringe issue. It is a majority value.

You, or someone you love, has benefited from contraception, sex education, maternal care, assisted reproduction, miscarriage care or abortion. This isn’t a privilege we ask permission for. It’s a right millions of us exercise every day—legal or not, restricted or not, named or not.

On the fourth anniversary of Dobbs, Ms. is joining reproductive justice movement partners Center for Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Freedom for All to launch The Majority, a storytelling campaign centered on a simple question: What did access to reproductive choices give you the freedom to build?

One woman credits birth control with helping her manage PMOS (formerly PCOS) and pursue the education and career she dreamed of. A mother was able to raise the children she already had because she was not forced into a pregnancy she did not choose. Another mother received emergency reproductive healthcare and lived long enough to see her daughter grow up. A sister got to grow up alongside her younger brother because their mother had access to reproductive healthcare when she needed it. Young women were able to build lives on their own timeline—not one dictated by circumstance, politics or chance.

The campaign’s call to action is simple: Add your voice to the record and share the life you built. Then, once you’ve shared, use #TheLifeIBuilt to tell your story. Follow #TheMajority to hear from others doing the same.