The Supreme Court’s 2022-2023 term ended last week after beginning on the first Monday in October with a variety of decisions and we at Ex Libris Juris have done our best to summarize a few below.
303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. ___ (2023)
This case was brought to the Supreme Court by Lorie Smith who is the owner of 303 Creative LLC, a graphic design firm in Colorado. “She wants to post a message on her website explaining her religious objections to same-sex weddings” even though she hadn’t yet been asked to create a website for a same-sex couple. “The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (“CADA”) prohibits businesses that are open to the public from discriminating on the basis of numerous characteristics, including sexual orientation.” You can read more about CADA here. Therefore, the question that was presented to the Justices was: “Does application of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment?”
The Supreme Court held that “the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs for same-sex marriages, speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.” The opinion was written by Justice Gorsuch while the dissent was written by Justice Sotomayor and joined by Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson.
Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. ___ (2023)
This case was brought to the Supreme Court by Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. which is a “nonprofit membership group of more than 20,000 people who believe that racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.” They sued Harvard College, “alleging that the [admissions] process violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against Asian American applicants in favor of white applicants.” While Harvard does admit they do consider race during the admissions process they “argue that its process adheres to the requirements for race-based admissions outlined in the Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger.” (The Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), opinion can be read here.) The questions presented to the Court were: “May institutions of higher education use race as a factor in admissions?” And: “If so, does Harvard College’s race-conscious admissions process violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?”
The Supreme Court held that “the race-based admissions programs of two colleges violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The opinion was written by Justice Roberts. Justice Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh all wrote concurring opinions. Dissenting opinions were written by both Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson.
Biden v. Nebraska, 600 U.S. ___ (2023)
This case was brought to the Supreme Court to address President Biden’s plan to forgive up to $10,000 of federal student loans per borrower via executive action. Two questions were brought to the Justices to answer. The first being: “Does Nebraska and other states have judicial standing to challenge the student-debt relief program?” The second is: “Does the student-debt relief program exceed the statutory authority of the US Secretary of Education, or does it violate the Administrative Procedure Act?” The court held that “the Secretary of Education does not have authority to establish a student loan forgiveness program that will cancel roughly $430 billion in debt principal and affect nearly all borrowers.” The opinion was written by Justice Roberts. Justice Barrett wrote a concurring opinion while the dissenting opinion was written by Justice Kagan and joined by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Jackson.
This is just a brief summary of three of the recent decisions released by the Supreme Court from the 2022-2023 term. If you would like to review all of the decisions they made during this term, you can find them listed here.