Ketanji Brown Jackson sworn in as SCOTUS issues major rulings on climate and immigration

President Joe Biden in a written statement praised Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic swearing in as the first Black female Justice of the Supreme Court, calling it a “profound step forward.”

“Her historic swearing in today represents a profound step forward for our nation, for all the young, Black girls who now see themselves reflected on our highest court, and for all of us as Americans,” Biden said in the written statement. 

Biden also thanked retiring Justice Stephen Breyer for “his many years of exemplary service.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the newest member of the Supreme Court on Thursday, becoming the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.

She replaces former Justice Stephen Breyer, who retired from the bench at noon ET.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court released decisions on two significant cases concerning the environment and immigration as it finished its term.

New justice

Jackson, 51, joins the court as its 116th member amid a time of heightened scrutiny of the court over recent decisions and the American public’s low confidence in the Supreme Court.

“With a full heart, I accept the solemn responsibility of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and administering justice without fear or favor, so help me God. I am truly grateful to be part of the promise of our great Nation,” Jackson said in a statement.

During her confirmation hearings earlier this year, she vowed to be fair and impartial as justice in deciding the law. “I am standing on the shoulders of my own role models,” she said during a White House event marking her historic confirmation.

Read more about her background here and watch the moment she was sworn in here.

EPA decision

The Supreme Court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants. It’s a major blow to the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

In addition, the court cut back agency authority in general invoking the so-called “major questions” doctrine – a ruling that will impact the federal government’s authority to regulate in other areas of climate policy, as well as regulation of the internet and worker safety.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, with the three liberal justices dissenting. Roberts said that “our precedent counsels skepticism toward EPA’s claim” that the law “empowers it to devise carbon emissions caps based on a generation shifting approach.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, sounded the alarm about global warming and said that the court’s decision “strips” the EPA of the “power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.’”

The White House, along with environmental experts, blasted the decision, while Republicans like West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice applauded it.

Immigration decision

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave President Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration.

The Supreme Court’s decision is a major victory for the Biden immigration agenda as the administration has suffered several losses in lower courts in its efforts to reverse Trump’s hardline immigration policies.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the relevant immigration statute “plainly confers a discretionary authority to return aliens to Mexico during the pendency of their immigration proceedings.”

“The use of the word ‘may” in” the law question, Roberts wrote, “makes clear that contiguous-territory return is a tool that the (DHS) Secretary ‘has the authority, but not the duty,’ to use.”

Roberts was joined by the liberal justices and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, with Kavanaugh also filing a concurring opinion. Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett wrote dissenting opinions, joined by the other dissenters.

Additionally, the Supreme Court on Thursday sent three abortion-related cases back down to lower courts to be reconsidered now that the court has overturned Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protections to obtain an abortion. The move reflects the dramatically changed legal landscape around abortion after the new Supreme Court ruling issued last week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.

Next term: Although summers are usually a time for the justices to flee Washington, the next term starts in three short months, and there are momentous cases on the docket.

On the very first day of the term, Jackson will take the seat reserved for the court’s junior-most justice and hear a case that could limit the federal government’s jurisdiction over wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act.

The next day, they will hear a redistricting case out of Alabama and explore the contours of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that bars voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race.

The Supreme Court also agreed today to hear a dispute over redistricting in North Carolina, a case that could have major implications for voting rights across the country and fundamentally change the landscape of election law.

CNN’s Ariane de Vogue, Tierney Sneed, Priscilla Alvarez, Ella Nilsen and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed reporting to this post.

Now is the time to be “doubling down on our [climate] solutions and accelerating the policies that enable them,” according to Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and professor at Texas Tech University.

In his first few months in office, President Biden laid out plans vowing to do just that, and more recently set a goal to reach “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035” as well as a “net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.”

But Hayhoe said Thursday’s Supreme Court decision makes this ambitious goal “immeasurably more difficult to achieve,” against the backdrop of surging gas prices as well as unprecedented weather events.

“Rulings like this are based on the misconception that we have to choose between the environment or the economy, people or the planet,” Hayhoe told CNN. “But the reality is, neither people nor the economy can float around in outer space without the resources this planet provides.”

“It doesn’t need us,” she said. “We need it.”

Climate scientists are speaking out following Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, highlighting the potential harmful impacts it may have.

Here’s what a few scientists have said in statements to CNN:

Michael E. Mann, climate scientist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University:

“Carbon emissions constitute a pollutant that threatens all of us through the unprecedented changes in Earth’s climate it is causing. That was the belief of former Republican president George W Bush and his Republican EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman. That interpretation was confirmed by the Supreme Court. The Bush/Trump-appointed right wing Supreme Court justices who currently control the Supreme Court have already been roundly criticized for promoting the very sort of judicial activism they once railed against. They have removed fundamental rights — to privacy, to safety, and now, to a livable planet.”

Kristina Dahl, principle climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

“Failing to regulate heat-trapping emissions will harm people and ecosystems worldwide. We’re already dangerously behind what the science shows is necessary, and the court’s majority has made solving the problem much more difficult. It could also set a dangerous precedent that limits the ability of federal agencies to incorporate the latest science into many regulations.”

Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles:

“Regulating greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector, and point-source emitters like power plants in particular, is arguably the “lowest hanging fruit” in mitigating climate change — emissions reductions from other sectors are more complicated. If we can’t make rapid progress on the easiest aspects of emissions reductions in the short term, that does not bode well for reaching any number of climate targets in the coming decades.”

In a media statement, Johanna Chao Kreilick, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote:

“EPA has no choice. It must make do with the authority it retains to quickly advance as robust a set of power plant standards as it can. However, climate action cannot stop there. Congress must expeditiously enact robust and equitable clean energy and climate legislation. As the mounting toll borne by communities across the country and around the world makes clear, climate change is here, today, and there’s no time left to waste.”

Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in Thursday as an associate justice to the United States Supreme Court, making history as the first Black woman on the highest court in the nation.

“With a full heart, I accept the solemn responsibility of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and administering justice without fear or favor, so help me God. I am truly grateful to be part of the promise of our great Nation,” Jackson said in a statement.

Born in Washington, DC, on Sept. 14, 1970, Jackson was raised in Miami, where she attended high school and participated in debate tournaments. Her love for debate led to her Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude in 1992 and cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1996. She was also supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review.

After college, the Harvard Law graduate not only clerked for now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer but also Judge Bruce M. Selya, a federal judge in Massachusetts, and US District Judge Patti Saris in Massachusetts. She also worked as an assistant special counsel for the United States Sentencing Commission from 2003-2005 before becoming an assistant federal public defender and later vice chair and commissioner of the commission. In 2013, she was confirmed a United States District Judge under then-President Barack Obama before being confirmed a judge for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2021.

As a judge in DC —where some of the most politically charged cases are filed — Jackson issued notable rulings touching on Congress’ ability to investigate the White House. As a district court judge, she wrote a 2019 opinion siding with House lawmakers who sought the testimony of then-White House counsel Don McGahn. Last year, she was on the unanimous circuit panel that ordered disclosure of certain Trump White House documents to the House Jan. 6 committee.

A former federal public defender, Jackson sat on lower US courts for nearly a decade. As a judge, some other notable cases she has in her record are a 2018 case brought by federal employee unions where she blocked parts of executive orders issued by then-President Donald Trump, and a case where she ruled against Trump policies that expanded the categories of non-citizens who could be subject to expedited removal procedures without being able to appear before a judge.

Jackson penned more than 500 opinions in the eight years she spent on the district court.

During her Senate confirmation hearings, Republicans heavily scrutinized Jackson’s record, asserting she was too lenient in sentencing child pornography cases, in which Jackson and Democrats forcefully pushed back on the accusations. At one point during the hearings, Jackson became visibly emotional and wiped away tears as New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, talked about her path to the nomination and the obstacles she has had to overcome.

“My parents grew up in a time in this country in which Black children and White children were not allowed to go to school together,” Jackson told Booker after the senator asked what values her parents had impressed upon her. “They taught me hard work. They taught me perseverance. They taught me that anything is possible in this great country.”

After her confirmation to the high court, Jackson marked her historic nomination in a speech at the White House in which she celebrated the “hope and promise” of a nation.

“I am standing on the shoulders of my own role models, generations of Americans who never had anything close to this kind of opportunity, but who got up every day and went to work believing in the promise of America. Showing others through their determination and, yes, their perseverance that good, good things can be done in this great country,” Jackson said. Quoting the late poet Maya Angelou, she continued, “I do so now while bringing the gifts my ancestors gave. I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”

She has emphasized her family and faith, saying her life “had been blessed beyond measure.” She has been married to her husband Patrick, whom she met in college, for 25 years, and they have two children, Leila and Talia.

Read more about Jackson here.

Environmental law experts told CNN the Supreme Court invoking the “major questions” doctrine could be a major setback to future agency regulations, and raises a lot of questions about how it could be used in the future.

In its opinion, the court cut back agency authority by invoking the major questions doctrine — a ruling that will impact the federal government’s authority to regulate in other areas of climate policy, as well as regulation of the internet and worker safety. It says that the biggest issues should be decided by Congress itself, not agencies like the EPA.

“Prior to today, the court would look at [an agency] and say ‘this decision is within your lane and expertise, and we’re going to defer to your technical decision here,’” said Jay Duffy, an attorney and expert on power plant emissions at the environmental organization Clean Air Task Force. “Today, unless the actual rule you have chosen has been clearly authorized by the Congress, you don’t have the authority to do it.”

Duffy said that as agencies craft new rules, they will have to go back to Congress to get explicit authorization, assuming Congress deems it important.

“It’s surprisingly unprincipled,” Duffy said. “It’s a can of worms that has been opened and without much guidance as to how important is important. How major is major? I think it could create a lot of problems.”

Carrie Jenks, the executive director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental & Energy Law Program, shared Duffy’s concern about the uncertain definition of a “major question.”

“The court is saying ‘you can’t do big things without Congress speaking,’ so what is a big thing?” Jenks told CNN. “This doctrine is just starting to emerge from the court. This doctrine is starting to be more defined. I think they will continue to use major questions doctrine to oppose EPA rulemakings.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will still take steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants despite the Supreme Court ruling, a source familiar with the White House’s thinking told reporters.

One possible option includes so-called “inside-the-fence” regulations, which include outfitting fossil fuel power plants with carbon capture systems or putting scrubbers on coal smokestacks.

The source did not commit to a specific timeline for when the EPA might announce a proposed rule to regulate power plant emissions.

The EPA has publicly committed to finalizing a power plant rule by March 2024, though it could move faster.

But the source stressed that while the court’s decision took away the reach of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, it gave the agency room to maneuver and forge ahead with emission-cutting regulations.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan has previously said that the agency will work on a strategy to combat other environmental pollutants coming from power plants, including cutting sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and coal ash waste from coal-fired power plants.

Even though those regulations deal with environmental pollution from power plants, they also have the effect of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Lawmakers and organizations shared their reactions to new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson being sworn in as the first Black female justice.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren:

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker:

Black Lives Matter:

Black Voters Matter:

The biggest takeaway from Thursday’s Supreme Court opinion on the EPA is that the justices did exactly what GOP states and coal companies wanted them to, said Kirti Datla, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit focused on litigating climate issues.

“EPA still has leeway to do what the court didn’t [rule on] — to look at the statute and think about what it allows, and issue regulations that address this really huge source of emissions for this incredibly pressing problem,” Datla told CNN.

But Datla said more broadly that this case paves the way for Republican-led states and fossil fuel companies to challenge current and future EPA rules on planet-warming emissions.

“The court is clear that the Clean Power Plan went too far,” Datla said. “The court is much less clear on what EPA can do going forward. And everything in the opinion is going to be used as ammunition by groups that want to challenge what the Biden administration does next.”

The opinion also injects a huge amount of uncertainty over what the EPA can and can’t do, and what the Supreme Court will consider a so-called major question, said Carrie Jenks, the executive director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental & Energy Law Program.

In its opinion, the court cut back agency authority by invoking the Major Questions Doctrine — a ruling that will impact the federal government’s authority to regulate other areas of climate policy, as well as regulation of the internet and worker safety. It says that the biggest issues should be decided by Congress itself, not agencies like the EPA.

“The court is saying you can’t do big things without Congress speaking, so what is a big thing?” Jenks told CNN. “This doctrine is just starting to emerge from the court. This doctrine is starting to be more defined. I think they will continue to use Major Questions Doctrine to oppose EPA rulemakings.”

President Biden called the Supreme Court’s decision to curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants “another devastating decision that aims to take our country backwards.”

The court’s decision represents a major defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

In a statement, the President said the ruling hurts the country’s ability to combat climate change, adding that he directed his legal team to work with the Department of Justice to review the decision and find ways to “protect public health.”

“We cannot and will not ignore the danger to public health and existential threat the climate crisis poses. The science confirms what we all see with our own eyes – the wildfires, droughts, extreme heat, and intense storms are endangering our lives and livelihoods,” the statement said.

“I will take action. My Administration will continue using lawful executive authority, including the EPA’s legally-upheld authorities, to keep our air clean, protect public health, and tackle the climate crisis. We will work with states and cities to pass and uphold laws that protect their citizens. And we will keep pushing for additional Congressional action, so that Americans can fully seize the economic opportunities, cost-saving benefits, and security of a clean energy future,” Biden added in the statement.

Some context: Around 25% of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions around the globe and in the US come from generating electricity, according to the EPA. And coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, powers about 20% of US electricity.

Emissions from power production rose last year for the first time since 2014, an increase that was mainly driven by coal use.

The surge in fossil fuel use is worrying not only for Biden’s climate goals — the President in his first months in office pledged to slash US emissions in half by 2030 — but also the planet.

CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic noted that while Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic confirmation, and subsequent swearing-in on Thursday, won’t change the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, she will bring a fresh perspective to the court.

“Just look at the difference in the ages. Stephen Breyer, who’s retiring at age 83, is 32 years older than her. She’s going to bring some fresh thoughts, some fresh blood, if not a different ideology than his,” Biskupic said on CNN in April during her confirmation.

“She also has this very distinctive experience as a former trial judge and a former federal public defender. So, a different attitude around the justice’s private table,” she added.

The legal analyst said she’s reminded in these instances of something Chief Justice John Roberts has said.

“A fresh justice brings an array of fresh thoughts about how the operations behind the scenes, about cases, and that just changes everyone to maybe alter his or her lens a little bit,” the analyst said.

Biskupic also referenced comments made by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when Thurgood Marshall was appointed as the first Black justice in 1967.

“That his special perspective and his ability to tell stories around the private conference table really got them thinking in different ways. He might not have changed votes, but he at least changed the discussion. So, I think all of those things… will essentially affect and bring us a new Supreme Court,” she added.

Although summers are usually a time for the justices to flee Washington, the next term starts in three short months, and there are momentous cases on the docket.

On the very first day of the term, Ketanji Brown Jackson will take the seat reserved for the court’s junior-most justice and hear a case that could limit the federal government’s jurisdiction over wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act.

The next day, they will hear a redistricting case out of Alabama and explore the contours of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that bars voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race.

Liberals will remember the words of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2013, when the court gutted a separate provision of the Voting Rights Act which led to the “Notorious RBG” nickname. Back then, Ginsburg wrote that throwing out the protection was akin to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Still unscheduled are two affirmative action cases challenging admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Presumably because of her time serving on Harvard’s board of overseers, Jackson said during her confirmation hearing that she would recuse herself from the Harvard dispute. She still can, however, rule on the North Carolina challenge.

The court will also deal with a case concerning a web designer who won’t work with same-sex couples out of an objection to same-sex marriage. It’s a follow-on to a dispute in 2018 when the court sided with a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The ultimate opinion in that case was carefully tailored to the dispute at hand and did not have broad nationwide implications. The new case could have a more sweeping result.

All this will play out as the court continues to try to determine who leaked a draft opinion of this term’s abortion case a month before its official release. The move triggered paranoia on the high court by shattering its norms and caused the justices to question who among them or their clerks attempted to undermine the court’s legitimacy.

Read more here.

Kimberly Mutcherson, a co-dean and professor at Rutgers Law School, said that while the ideology of the Supreme Court does not change with the addition of new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, having the first Black woman take a seat on the bench brings new perspective.

“I think it is often the case imagine that folks can’t imagine things from a different perspective, and so having somebody who sits in that space, who has the same credentials that they do, who sits on the same court that they do, and who can describe the world from a different lens I think is incredibly meaningful,” Mutcherson said.

She said it matters to have different voices in the room when decisions are being made with real implications for all Americans.

“It doesn’t necessarily change how they vote. It at least changes how they have to think about some issues,” she said.

Joan Biskupic, a CNN analyst and a Supreme Court biographer, agreed that Jackson’s place on the court will make a big difference “in the dynamic around the table.” She compared it to how Justice Sandra Day O’Connor talked about the perspective that Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, brought to the court.

She said Jackson brings several different layers of perspective to the table — her race, her age and her background as a federal public defender.

“She comes from almost the same sort of background that Steven Breyer does in terms of education, experience. They were both law clerks, they both have very prestigious degrees — but she has this important demographic difference, and she’s 51 years old. Stephen Breyer is 83, so she’s going to bring that also,” Biskupic said.

A unified Senate Democratic caucus and three Republican senators voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US Supreme Court in April.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, broke party lines and voted in favor of Jackson.

Collins announced her support of Jackson in a statement in March, saying she “possesses the experience, qualifications, and integrity to serve” on the bench.

Romney tweeted his intention to confirm Jackson: “While I do not expect to agree with every decision she may make on the Court, I believe that she more than meets the standard of excellence and integrity.”

Murkowski said in a statement that her support “rests on [her] rejection of the corrosive politicization of the review process for Supreme Court nominees.”

Last year, three Republican senators, including both Collins and Murkowski, voted to confirm Jackson to fill an appellate court seat. The third vote came from Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — a highly critical opponent of Jackson’s confirmation despite being a supporter prior to her hearings.

Following the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer today, Jackson made history as the first Black woman to be sworn in on the court in its 233-year history.

Outgoing Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer lauded new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as “empathetic, thoughtful, and collegial.”

In a statement, he said:

“I am glad today for Ketanji. Her hard work, integrity, and intelligence have earned her a place on this Court. I am glad for my fellow Justices. They gain a colleague who is empathetic, thoughtful, and collegial. I am glad for America. Ketanji will interpret the law wisely and fairly, helping that law to work better for the American people, whom it serves. Congratulations Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts explained that newly-sworn Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has to take a Constitutional Oath administered by Roberts and a Judicial Oath by outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer.

“The administration of the oath is required both by the Constitution and by the judiciary act. So we’ll be delivering two oaths. I’ll deliver the Constitutional Oath, and Justice Breyer will administer the statutory oath. There will be a formal investiture in the fall, but the oaths will allow Judge Jackson to undertake her duties,” he said Thursday.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in on the Supreme Court Thursday, becoming the first Black woman to take a seat on the high court. 

In a statement, she said:

“With a full heart, I accept the solemn responsibility of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and administering justice without fear or favor, so help me God. I am truly grateful to be part of the promise of our great Nation. I extend my sincerest thanks to all of my new colleagues for their warm and gracious welcome. I am also especially grateful for the time and attention given to me by the Chief Justice and by Justice Breyer. Justice Breyer has been a personal friend and mentor of mine for the past two decades, in addition to being part of today’s official act. In the wake of his exemplary service, with the support of my family and friends, and ever mindful of the duty to promote the Rule of Law, I am well-positioned to serve the American people.”

Six days after President Biden’s inauguration, White House counsel Dana Remus put in a call to Ketanji Brown Jackson to see if the judge might be interested in a new job: replacing Merrick Garland on a powerful federal appeals court.

The new administration was poised to prioritize judicial vacancies and planned to push through slates of nominees that would send a message about how the President viewed the courts. Stellar credentials were essential, but Biden also wanted candidates who would bring a fresh professional and demographic diversity to benches across the country dominated by White males. He sought nominees who had worked as public defenders and civil rights attorneys, for instance.

Jackson — then serving on a federal trial court in Washington, DC — fit the bill perfectly. She had a glittering resume that included Harvard degrees and federal clerkships, but her lived experience was rooted in public service.

Looming in the future was the possibility that Justice Stephen Breyer would retire from the Supreme Court, and the federal appeals court in Washington has been a stepping stone for high court nominees.

Biden had pledged to make history by naming a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Such a historic move would highlight a group of female potential nominees who have breached barriers to reach the top of the legal profession. Jackson, who is African American and a former Breyer clerk, would likely be a top contender for that seat. An appeals court post would serve to further season her and boost her profile.

Asked about race during her confirmation hearing last year for that post in the appeals court, Jackson responded carefully. She said that she didn’t think race played a role in the kind of judge that she had been or would be, but she thought her professional background, especially as a trial court judge, would bring value.

“I’ve experienced life in perhaps a different way than some of my colleagues because of who I am, and that might be valuable,” she said. “I hope it would be valuable if I was confirmed to the circuit court.” Last June, the Senate confirmed Jackson to that post by a 53-44 vote.

Now, Jackson, 51, will replace Breyer on the Supreme Court, who retired today at noon ET.

“The bench of Black women attorneys with stellar credentials is extremely deep,” said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. But, she noted, Jackson brings more than just a distinguished judicial record.

She has “an understanding of how the law affects people based on both her professional and lived experiences, and a powerful commitment to equal justice,” Wydra said.

She has served as an assistant federal public defender, a commissioner on the US Sentencing Commission, a lawyer in private practice and on two prestigious federal courts.

She is following in the footsteps of the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who took the seats of the justices they had worked for.

Jackson clerked for Breyer during the 1999 term after serving as a clerk in 1997-1998 to Judge Bruce M. Selya, a federal judge in Massachusetts.

At an event in 2017 sponsored by the liberal American Constitution Society, she called working for Breyer an opportunity of a lifetime “to bear witness to the workings of his brilliant legal mind.” She also joked about how the justice often biked to work and would show up in his majestic chamber wearing “full bicycle regalia.”

Jackson often speaks about areas of her expertise in the law, when she addresses audiences, but she also talks about diversity and work-life balance.

In a 2017 speech at the University of Georgia School of Law, she reflected on her journey as a mother and a judge, emphasizing how hard it is for mothers to serve in big law firms — something she said she had done at times to help support her family.

She noted that the hours are long and there is little control over the schedule, which is “constantly in conflict with the needs of your children and your family.” She also highlighted the traps of launching a career in the law and pointed to recent studies that show that lawyers of color — both male and female — constitute only 8% of law firm equity partners nationwide.

Read about her personal record here.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was just sworn in to Supreme Court, becoming the first Black woman to take a seat on the high court.

With her hand on a Bible held by her husband, Jackson took two oaths that are required of all new justices.

Chief Justice John Roberts administered the Constitutional Oath, asking her to swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Justice Stephen Breyer administered the Judicial Oath. Reading from a card, Breyer asked her to swear to “administer justice” and do “equal right to the poor and the rich.” 

At the end of the ceremony, Roberts said he was pleased to welcome “Justice Jackson” to the court and our “common calling “

Jackson joins the court as its 116th member during a time of heightened scrutiny of the court over recent decisions and the American public’s low confidence in the Supreme Court.

Amid the search for Breyer’s replacement after President Joe Biden promised to nominate a Black woman to the bench, Jackson was a top contender among judges and attorneys.

In April, she was confirmed 53-47 by the Senate to the high court after a series of scrutinous hearings, during which Republicans tried to paint her as soft on crime and Democrats praised her judicial record.

During the confirmation hearing, she vowed to be fair and partial as justice in deciding the law. 

“I have been a judge for nearly a decade now, and I take that responsibility and my duty to be independent very seriously. I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me, without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath,” she said in her opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A Supreme Court ruling Thursday could shape what we see going forward along the US-Mexico border.

In a 5-4 ruling, justices found that immigration law gives the Biden administration discretion to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced some migrants to wait in Mexico while their immigration cases were pending.

The case will now head back to the lower court for additional proceedings, but the Supreme Court’s ruling puts Biden one step closer to ending the program.

Here are some key questions about the policy and what could happen next:

What impact will the Supreme Court decision have?

A hold on Biden’s bid to end the program remains in place, but Thursday’s ruling suggested that lower court order should be lifted shortly.

That would allow the Biden administration to roll back the “Remain in Mexico” program, something officials first tried to do in 2021 before a federal court decision blocked their efforts months later. That means thousands of migrants who are currently waiting in Mexico as part of the program could be paroled into the United States to proceed with their immigration cases here.

Last year, prior to the lower court’s order, the Biden administration put a process in place to allow migrants subject to the policy to gradually enter the US until their immigration cases were decided. Before the unprecedented “Remain in Mexico” policy, migrants were released into the US or detained for the duration of their immigration court proceedings.

When was this policy put in place and why?

The Trump administration implemented the program, officially dubbed the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” or MPP, in January 2019. The program sent certain non-Mexican migrants who entered the US back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings played out.

Officials said it would stop migrants from taking advantage of the immigration system while keeping them safe.

But immigrant advocacy groups have argued that forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases make their way through US courts actually puts vulnerable people in even more dangerous situations.

What’s happened since then?

As of February 2021, advocacy group Human Rights First said it had documented more than 1,500 cases of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and other violent assaults impacting migrants who were forced to wait in Mexico as part of the program.

“Significant evidence indicates that individuals were subject to extreme violence and insecurity at the hands of transnational criminal organizations that profited from putting migrants in harms’ way while awaiting their court hearings in Mexico,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in an October memo detailing his decision to end the program.

How many people have been enrolled in the program?

Between January 2019 and June 2021, about 68,000 migrants were sent to wait in Mexico as part of the program.

Of that group, more than 32,000 were ordered removed, nearly 9,000 had their cases terminated, and just 723 were granted asylum or some other kind of immigration relief, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis of government statistics. Some migrants who were forced to wait may also have abandoned their cases and returned to their home countries, the institute said.

Keep reading here.

The Supreme Court’s decision to curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants is “devastating,” according to former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Carol Browner.

“It is not taking into account that how we make electricity today is very different than when Thomas Edison invented electricity. I think the case, like many of the cases of the last several weeks, calls into question the legitimacy of the majority of the court, their complete failure to ignore the realities of modern life,” she added.

She expressed skepticism that Congress can pass legislation to address climate change.

“One of the reasons you have an EPA is that they can do the tough job of looking at the law, looking at the science and understanding how to get rid of pollution. If they don’t do that, we’re going to be left to go back to Congress. And to be honest, particularly the Senate, has not shown an interest in addressing the realities of climate change. This is a pressing, immediate problem that we need to address,” Browner said.

“This does hamstring EPA’s ability to address the emissions from power plants, and that is deeply disturbing because we already see a transition happening in the industry. And what we should be doing is encouraging more renewables, not walking away from the reality of how we can make less polluting energy,” she added.

There are other ways to curb climate change, and the administration will have to carefully study the opinion, Browner said, but “this has certainly made it much, much more difficult without a doubt.”

“I know the agency will do everything they can to continue to address climate change. It is the most pressing environmental public health issue that we’ve ever faced,” she said.  

The Supreme Court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, a major defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions to slow the pace of global warming.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, with the three liberal justices dissenting.

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA is “a public health disaster” that will hurt Americans’ health, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a press release Thursday.

The court’s decision released Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate emissions from existing power plants.

“A failure to regulate power plant emissions will lead to increases in asthma, lung cancer, and other diseases associated with poor air quality, and in many places, those impacts are likely to fall hardest in already heavily polluted neighborhoods,” Becerra said.

Environmental attorneys are digesting the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority and determining how the agency could act on climate change going forward.

“This may be about as bad as it could be in terms of limiting EPA’s regulatory authorities,” said Richard Revesz, an environmental law expert at NYU’s School of Law. “This case by its nature provides significant constraints EPA’s authority to regulate the power sector — but not other sectors of the economy” like transportation or industrial emissions.

As for what’s next, Revesz said the EPA will be considering what action it can take within the confines of the ruling.

“For example, it might consider carbon capture and sequestration and see whether the costs are ones that are reasonable,” Revesz told CNN.

Carbon capture and sequestration is where the carbon is scrubbed out of power plant emissions before it enters the atmosphere. It’s an expensive technology, and scientists have warned that it’s not a silver bullet.

The Clean Power Plan was an Obama-era law that set a goal for each state to limit carbon emissions, while letting those states determine how to meet those goals.

As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion for the conservative majority, capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal may be “sensible,” but “it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme” under the Clean Air Act.

A White House spokesperson calls the Supreme Court decision on West Virginia v. EPA “another devastating decision from the Court that aims to take our country backwards.”

Read the full statement from the White House official:

“This is another devastating decision from the Court that aims to take our country backwards. While the Court’s decision risks damaging our ability to keep our air clean and combat climate change, President Biden will not relent in using the authorities that he has under law to protect public health and tackle the climate change crisis. Our lawyers will study the ruling carefully and we will find ways to move forward under federal law.  At the same time, Congress must also act to accelerate America’s path to a clean, healthy, secure energy future.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave President Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration.

Since the beginning of his administration, Biden has tried to wind down the policy, which sends certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings played out.

The ruling was 5-4, and states that immigration law gives the federal government the discretion to end the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.

Here’s what you need to know about the Supreme Court’s decision and the immigration policy it is allowing Biden end:

Read more here.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sent three abortion-related cases back down to lower courts to be reconsidered under the justices’ new ruling ending federal protections for the procedure.

The move was not a surprise and reflects the dramatically changed legal landscape around abortion after the new Supreme Court ruling, issued last week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. It is expected that the states that had asked the Supreme Court to review court orders blocking their restrictive abortion laws will soon be allowed to carry out those measures.

The court, having decided the term’s big Second Amendment case invalidating a New York law that restricted where people could carry a concealed weapon in public, also sent several cases they had been sitting on back to the lower courts for further deliberations.  

The lower court will look at Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in the New York case that changed the way judges should analyze gun laws, to reconsider the disputes they had previously decided.  

Two of the abortion cases being sent to lower courts concerned measures that states had passed prohibiting abortions sought solely because the fetus had been diagnosed with certain genetic abnormalities. After last week’s Dobbs’ ruling, one of the states, Arkansas, enacted an outright ban on abortion. 

In Arizona, the other state seeking to revive a ban on abortions sought because of genetic abnormalities, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich has vowed to revive a 1901 law criminalizing abortion, and some clinics have stopped offering the procedure. 

In the meantime, the Supreme Court said Friday that, in Arizona’s genetic abnormalities case, a court order halting the law had been lifted. 

The third abortion case sent back to lower courts concerned an Indiana parental notification law. Like Arizona, abortion remains legal in Indiana, though the state’s Republican leaders are planning to reconvene the legislature later this summer to consider additional anti-abortion measures. 

Due to lower court rulings citing the now-defunct Supreme Court precedents favoring abortion rights, Indiana has not been able to implement a 2017 law, which requires that minors who have successfully secured permission from a judge to obtain an abortion notify their parents before the abortion is performed. 

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plant, the agency released a statement reacting to the opinion.

“We are reviewing the Supreme Court’s decision. EPA is committed to using the full scope of its existing authorities to protect public health and significantly reduce environmental pollution, which is in alignment with the growing clean energy economy,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement.

The courts decision represents a major defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave President Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration. 

The case now goes back down to a lower court for additional proceedings around Biden’s latest attempt to end the program. A hold on Biden’s bid to end the program remains in place, but Thursday’s ruling suggested that that order should be lifted shortly.  

The Supreme Court said 5-4 that immigration law gives the federal government the discretion to end the program, which sends certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico – instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States – while their immigration proceedings played out. 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that “Congress conferred contiguous-territory return authority in expressly discretionary terms.” 

The Supreme Court’s decision is a major victory for the Biden immigration agenda as the administration has suffered several losses in lower courts in its efforts to reverse Trump’s hardline immigration policies.  

Several of the red states that challenged the termination of Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have also brought lawsuits challenging other attempts by Biden to pivot away from his predecessor’s aggressive approach and those cases are still working their way through lower courts. 

Roberts was joined by the liberal justices and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, with Kavanaugh also filing a concurring opinion. Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett wrote dissenting opinions joined by the other dissenters. 

With its ruling, the court said that lower courts must now consider whether the government complied with administrative law with the more recent attempt that the Biden administration made – with a memo rolled out in October – to end the Trump-era policy. 

Biden’s bid to terminate the program had been challenged in court by a coalition of red states led by Texas that argued that ending it ran afoul of immigration law. They also argued that administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act — which requires that agencies take certain procedural steps when implementing policy — in how it went about unwinding the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.    

The lower courts, which refused to consider the October memo, will now examine whether that latest attempt to end the program complied with the Administrative Procedure Act. 

Roberts wrote that the government’s authority to release some migrants on parole, rather than detain them or send them back to Mexico is not “unbounded,” while noting immigration law’s requirement that parole be used “on a case-by-case basis.” 

“And under the APA, DHS’s exercise of discretion within that statutory framework must be reasonable and reasonably explained,” Roberts said.  

His opinion also said that the lower court erred in blocking Biden’s termination of the program, citing Thursday a court ruling from earlier this term that said lower court could not grant class-wide orders that barred immigration officials from carrying out certain policies. 

At the heart of Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling was a question over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate planet-warming emissions from power plants, which are a huge contributor to the climate crisis.

Around 25% of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions around the globe and in the US come from generating electricity, according to the EPA. And coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, powers about 20% of US electricity.

Emissions from power production rose last year for the first time since 2014, an increase that was mainly driven by coal use.

The surge in fossil fuel use is worrying not only for Biden’s climate goals – the President in his first months in office pledged to slash US emissions in half by 2030 – but also the planet.

Scientists have become increasingly urgent in their warnings: to make headway on the climate crisis, emissions not only need to be reduced going forward, but the world needs to develop ways to also remove the greenhouse gas that’s been pumped into the atmosphere in decades past.

In a landmark report last year, scientists reported that the planet is warming faster than they had previously imagined it would. As it does, they said, extreme weather will become more deadly; water crises will develop and worsen; food insecurity will grow and disease will spread.

To avoid the worst consequences, the world must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (it’s already passed 1.1 degrees), and the only way to do that is to keep the vast majority of the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel stores in the ground.

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a dispute over redistricting in North Carolina, in a case that could have major implications for voting rights and fundamentally change the landscape of election law.  

Central to the case is the so called “Independent State Legislature” theory — a legal doctrine pushed by former President Donald Trump and his supporters during frantic efforts to call into question 2020 election results. At issue is the power of state courts to reject rules adopted by a state legislature in a dispute over federal elections.  

Critics say, if it is blessed by the Supreme Court, the theory could lead to rogue legislators unchecked by state courts.  

The doctrine relies on the elections clause of the Constitution that vests “state legislatures” with control over the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding elections.  

Under the theory being pushed by some conservatives, the word “legislature” excludes a role for state courts. 

Traditionally, according to Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California’s Irvine School of Law, legislatures have set ground rules for conducting an election, but those rules are also subject to state processes that include a role for election administrators and state courts to interpret the meaning of state election rules.

“If the Supreme Court adopts this theory, voters would have their rights further eroded by a neutering of state courts’ ability to be more protective of voters than federal courts,” he said. 

Some background: The appeal at issue was brought to the high court by Republicans in North Carolina who are challenging congressional maps drawn by state judges that favor democrats.  

The dispute began after North Carolina gained a seat in the House of Representatives, and the North Carolina General Assembly twice adopted new congressional districting maps. On both occasions, however, the state’s Supreme Court rejected the maps and finally ordered that the 2022 election go forward with maps drawn by judges. The court held that the General Assembly’s maps amounted to partisan gerrymanders and violated provisions of the state constitution.  

Lawyers for republican state House Speaker Timothy Moore and state Senate President Pro Tempore Philip Berger asked the Supreme Court to step in to block the lower court ruling on an emergency basis back in March.    

Back then, the court declined to step in over the dissent of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Alito, writing for his colleagues, said that the case presented an “exceptionally important and recurring question of constitutional law.”

“If the language of the Electors Clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections,” Alito wrote. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with his conservative colleagues that the court should eventually take up the issue of the role of state courts. But he joined the majority in the case at hand, allowing the maps to be used for upcoming election procedures.  

“This Court has repeatedly ruled that federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election laws in the period close to an election,” Kavanaugh wrote. 

After that defeat on the emergency application, David Thompson of Cooper & Kirk, a lawyer representing the North Carolina Republicans, came back to the court asking the justices to take up the appeal and decide the issue in time to impact future elections.

In court papers, he acknowledged that the 2022 congressional elections in North Carolina will take place under the current maps but said that the court should “intervene now to resolve this critically important and recurring question and ensure that congressional elections in 2024 and thereafter are conducted in a manner consistent with our Constitution’s express design.”   

He argued that the elections clause “creates the power to regulate the times, places and manner of federal elections and then vests that power in the ‘legislature’ of each State.”

“It does not leave the States free to limit the legislature’s constitutionally vested power, or place it elsewhere in the State’s governmental machinery, as a matter of state law,” he said. 

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling on curbing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to fight climate change calls into question the future of federal-level climate action in the US, and puts even more pressure on Congress to act to reduce planet-warming emissions.

But broad action from Congress is unlikely. Democrats in Congress have been embroiled in difficult negotiations on a climate and clean energy bill with their main holdout, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for months, with no clear end in sight.

It’s unclear whether those negotiations on a package of clean energy tax credits and other emissions-cutting programs will yield a result.

And without both major investments on clean energy and strong regulations cutting emissions by the EPA, Biden has very little hope of meeting his climate goal, independent analysis has showed.

In a statement Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday’s Supreme Court decision makes it “all the more imperative that Democrats soon pass meaningful legislation to address the climate crisis.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, sounded the alarm about global warming after the Supreme Court issued a ruling curbing the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.  

“Today, the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,’” she wrote. 

She criticized the majority’s holding that Congress did not authorize the agency to act. “That is just what Congress did when it broadly authorized” the agency to select the best system of emission reduction for power plants, she said. 

“The Clean Power Plan falls within EPA’s wheelhouse, and it fits perfectly,” she said. 

“The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision-maker on climate policy,” Kagan said. 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that “our precedent counsels skepticism toward EPA’s claim” that the law “empowers it to devise carbon emissions caps based on a generation shifting approach.” 

Roberts said that capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal may be a “sensible” solution to the “crisis of the day.”  

“But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme” under the law in question, he wrote. “A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.” 

Writing separately, Justice Neil Gorsuch emphasized the court’s move to limit agency power, which he considers unaccountable to the public. 

“While we all agree that administrative agencies have important roles to play in a modern nation, surely none of us wishes to abandon our Republic’s promise that the people and their representatives should have a meaningful say in the laws that govern them,” Gorsuch wrote.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice celebrated Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that curbed the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.

“I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision today in West Virginia v. EPA,” Justice said in a statement. “This ruling in favor of West Virginia will stop unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. from being able to unilaterally decarbonize our economy just because they feel like it.”

“Instead, members of Congress who have been duly elected to represent the will of the people across all of America will be allowed to have a rightful say when it comes to balancing our desire for a clean environment with our need for energy and the security it provides us,” he added.

Justice noted that his state is one of a few in the nation “where all agency regulations must be approved by a vote of the state legislature before they take effect,” and is happy to see the federal government following a similar model.

“This ruling will have a positive impact on our country for generations to come and I’m proud that West Virginia was the state leading the way in this landmark case,” he said.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey called the ruling “a great win” for the state.

“We are pleased this case returned the power to decide one of the major environmental issues of the day to the right place to decide it: the U.S. Congress, comprised of those elected by the people to serve the people,” Morrisey said in a statement. “This is about maintaining the separation of powers, not climate change. Today, the Court made the correct decision to rein in the EPA, an unelected bureaucracy. And we’re not done. My office will continue to fight for the rights of West Virginians when those in Washington try to go too far in asserting broad powers without the people’s support.”

“EPA’s actions would intrude on the states’ traditional authority to regulate their own power grids. Yet no federal law includes such a clear statement allowing that kind of intrusion,” his statement continued.

The Supreme Court on Thursday curbed the EPA’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, a defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

In addition, the court cut back the agency’s authority in general, invoking the so-called “major questions” doctrine – a ruling that could impact the authority of all federal agencies to regulate in other areas of policy, as well as regulation of the internet and worker safety.

“Under our precedents, this is a major questions case,” said Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion. “There is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions to the Agency.”

The decision will send shock waves across other agencies, threatening agency action that comes without clear congressional authorization.

“This ruling could be cataclysmic for modern administrative law,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “For a century, the federal government has functioned on the assumption that Congress can broadly delegate regulatory power to executive branch agencies. Today’s ruling opens the door to endless challenges to those delegations – on everything from climate change to food safety standards – on the ground that Congress wasn’t specific enough in giving the agency the power to regulate such ‘major’ issues.”

“It would be one thing if Congress could be expected to respond to this ruling by updating all of those delegations to make them more specific, but we – and the Court – know that it won’t, which will almost surely lead to significant deregulation across a wide swath of federal authority,” Vladeck added.

The Supreme Court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants.

The ruling was 6-3. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, with the three liberal justices dissenting. 

Roberts said that “our precedent counsels skepticism toward EPA’s claim” that the law “empowers it to devise carbon emissions caps based on a generation shifting approach.”

Roberts wrote that capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal may be a “sensible” solution.

“But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme” under the law in question.

“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” he wrote.

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave President Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy that originated under the Trump administration. 

Since the beginning of his administration, Biden has tried to wind down the policy, which sends certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings played out.

Biden’s bid to terminate the program had been challenged in court by a coalition of red states led by Texas that argued that ending it ran afoul of immigration law. They also argued that administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act — which requires that agencies take certain procedural steps when implementing policy — in how it went about unwinding the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.

The program, which was first implemented in 2019 under then-President Donald Trump, has been criticized by immigrant-rights advocates, who argue that it’s inhumane and that it exposes asylum seekers with credible claims to dangerous and squalid conditions in Mexico.

Before the Trump administration put the “Remain in Mexico” program in place, no other administration had embraced such an approach toward non-Mexican asylum-seekers that required them to stay in Mexico over the course of their immigration court proceedings in the United States. Biden campaigned on ending the policy and has said it “goes against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants.”

Biden has grappled with a growing number of border crossings over the course of his administration amid mass migration in the Western hemisphere. Since October, border authorities have encountered migrants more than a million times along the US-Mexico border, though many have been turned away under a separate pandemic-emergency rule. The Department of Homeland Security, though, has maintained that the “Remain in Mexico” policy comes at a steep human cost and is not an effective use of resources.

Read more about the ruling here.

The Supreme Court curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to broadly regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, a major defeat for the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

In addition, the court cut back the agency’s authority in general invoking the so-called “major questions” doctrine — a ruling that will impact the federal government’s authority to regulate in other areas of climate policy, as well as regulation of the internet and worker safety. 

The ruling was 6-3. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the conservative majority, with the three liberal justices dissenting.

The decision is one of the most consequential cases for climate change and clean air in decades.

Although the Supreme Court issued the two most important opinions of the term last week, upending near 50-year-old precedent on abortion and expanding gun rights for the first time in a decade, this blockbuster term is not over.

Still to be decided are two cases, here’s a look at what remains:

Immigration: Remain in Mexico

The justices are considering whether the Biden administration can terminate a Trump-era border policy known as “Remain in Mexico.” Lower courts have so far blocked Biden from ending the policy.

Under the unprecedented program launched in 2019, the Department of Homeland Security can send certain-non Mexican citizens who entered the United States back to Mexico — instead of detaining them or releasing them into the United States — while their immigration proceedings play out.

Critics call the policy inhumane and say it exposes asylum seekers with credible claims to dangerous and squalid conditions. The case raises questions not only regarding immigration law, but also a president’s control over policy and his diplomatic relationships with neighboring countries.

Climate Change: EPA authority to regulate emissions from power plants

The justices will decide a case concerning the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, in a dispute that could harm the Biden administration’s attempts to slash emissions. It comes at a moment when scientists are sounding alarms about the accelerating pace of global warming.

The court’s decision to step in and hear the case concerned environmentalists because there is no rule currently in place. A lower court wiped away a Trump-era rule in 2021 and the Biden administration’s EPA is currently working on a new rule.

But the fact that there were enough votes to take up the issue now, struck some as an aggressive grant, signaling the court wants to limit the scope of the EPA’s authority even before a new rule is on the books.

Justice Stephen Breyer notified the White House on Wednesday that his retirement will be effective Thursday, June 30, at noon ET.

In a letter to President Joe Biden, Breyer said it had been his “great honor” to participate as a judge in the “effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will take the oaths on Thursday to begin her service as the 116th member of the court. Breyer said Wednesday that Jackson is prepared to “take the prescribed oaths.”

On his last full day as a sitting justice, Breyer attended a private conference session with his colleagues Wednesday. The justices reviewed a list of pending petitions, some tied to cases in which they had recently ruled, some related to new issues.

Following tradition, Breyer will keep an office at the court, though he will move into smaller chambers

The fact that the court will issue final opinions and orders on the same day reflects a more expedited timeline than past terms. It suggests that the justices — who have been subject to death threats since the release of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade are eager for the momentous and divisive term to end as soon as possible.

There are two big cases awaiting resolution concerning the environment and immigration.

Jackson, Breyer’s replacement, was confirmed by the Senate in April by a vote of 53-47, with three Republicans joining Democrats to vote in favor. Though her addition to the bench doesn’t change the ideological balance of the court, Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve on the highest court in the nation.

President Biden indicated Thursday that he supports an exception to the 60-vote threshold needed to advance legislation in the Senate to codify abortion and privacy rights following the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade.

“I believe we have to codify Roe v Wade into law. And the way to do that is to make sure that Congress votes to do that. And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be, we provide an exception for this. The exception – the required exception of the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court decision,” Biden told reporters at a press conference in Madrid, Spain, Thursday.

Pressed moments later to clarify that he was opening to changing filibuster rules for those issues, Biden said, “Right to privacy, not just abortion rights, but yes, abortion rights.”

Codifying Roe v. Wade requires 60 votes in the Senate, which it does not currently have, unless the filibuster rules are changed to require a simple majority. Key moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have expressed opposition to changing filibuster rules. Manchin, however, is open to codifying Roe v. Wade legislatively. 

Biden also said he would be meeting with governors Friday to receive their feedback and would have “announcements to make then.”

“The first and foremost thing we should do is make it clear how outrageous this decision was and how much it impacts not just on a woman’s right to choose, which is a critical, critical piece, but on privacy generally, on privacy generally. And so I’m going to be talking to the governors as to what actions they think I should be taking, as well. But the most important thing to be clear about: we have to change, I believe we have to codify Roe v Wade in the law,” he said.

More context: There has been no indication those two senators, Manchin and Sinema, have or will change their positions.

But Biden’s call does dovetail with the White House efforts to ramp up the urgency in advance of the midterm elections – and it comes as national Democrats have increasingly raised concerns that the Biden administration is not doing enough to address – and fight – the Supreme Court decision.

Despite flagging poll numbers and poor prospects in holding onto the Democratic majority in the House, the White House sees a path to gaining Senate seats to increase their narrow majority.

Holding their current seats and adding at least two new Democratic senators could, in theory, create the pathway to securing the votes for a Senate rules change.

President Biden disputed characterizations that America is going backward amid a new low approval rating, inflation, and other domestic issues. Asked how he reconciles those problems to the world leaders he’s met with this week during the NATO summit, Biden pushed back, but conceded the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade was “destabilizing” and called the court’s actions “outrageous behavior.”

“They do not think that. You haven’t found one person, one world leader to say America’s going backwards. America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been. We have the strongest economy in the world. Our inflation rates are lower than other nations in the world. The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court the United States in overruling, not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy,” he said at a news conference Thursday in Madrid.

Biden continued to lambast the court’s decision.

“We’ve been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights. And it is a mistake, in my view, for the Supreme Court to do what it did,” he said, later calling on Congress to codify the landmark women’s reproductive rights ruling.  

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is set to join the Supreme Court on Thursday, making history as the first female African-American justice and beginning what could be a decades-long tenure.

But as she starts her job, the court is in turmoil.

The country is reeling from the aftereffects of the most consequential term in decades, where the majority upended a half century of law on abortion by reversing Roe v. Wade and expanded gun rights for the first time in more than a decade.  

The justices work to maintain civility in public, but this term’s opinions revealed an underbelly of rage. Not only were the justices attacking the reasoning of their opponents in the case at hand, but they renewed grievances aired in previous opinions. 

Things will not calm down anytime soon. New challenges related to women’s reproductive health, the Second Amendment and even same-sex marriage are likely to swirl in state and federal courts across the country. Related disputes will make their way back to the high court in some form, greeting the nine justices who are irretrievably divided on many social issues.

After her confirmation, in a stirring speech in the South Lawn in April, Jackson noted that in her family “it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.” 

“It is an honor of a lifetime,” she said, “to have this chance to join the court, to promote the rule of law at the highest level, and to do my part to carry out shared project of democracy and equal justice under law forward, into the future.” 

Those who know Jackson say her time serving on the lower courts has prepared her for the high court and a divided multi-member body. They believe her fractious confirmation hearings where Republicans accused her of being soft on child porn crimes opened her eyes to the depth of division in the country at a fraught moment in history.  

“She has reached the apex of her profession, but she is walking into a role in which it is not clear that she will have much influence, joining co-workers who clearly have deteriorating relationships,” said one friend who asked for anonymity.    

Read more here.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in as an associate justice Thursday following the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. The Supreme Court is expected to hold onto its right-wing tilt, even with the addition of a liberal justice.

Here are some things to remember about her confirmation process:

Justice Stephen Breyer, who was appointed to the court in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton, announced his retirement plans in January. The highly anticipated decision was met with a collective sigh of relief by Democrats, who feared the possibility of losing the seat to a future Republican president should the 83-year-old jurist ignore an intense pressure campaign from the left, which urged him to leave the court while Biden had a clear path to replace him.

A consistent liberal vote on the Supreme Court with an unflappable belief in the US system of government and a pragmatic view of the law, Breyer has sought to focus the law on how it could work for the average citizen. He was no firebrand and was quick to say that the Supreme Court couldn’t solve all of society’s problems. He often stressed that the court shouldn’t be seen as part of the political branches but recognized that certain opinions could be unpopular.

In his later years on the court, he was best known for a dissent he wrote in 2015 in a case concerning execution by lethal injection. He took the opportunity to write separately and suggest to the court that it take up the constitutionality of the death penalty.

In the opinion, Breyer wrote that after spending many years on the court reviewing countless death penalty cases, he had come to question whether innocent people had been executed. He also feared that the penalty was being applied arbitrarily across the country. He noted that, in some cases, death row inmates could spend years — sometimes in solitary confinement — waiting for their executions.

Ketanji Brown Jackson is entering the US Supreme Court at the end of a historic session — which included the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She will be sworn in today, following the retirement of Justice Steven Breyer.

During her confirmation hearings a few months ago, Jackson gave new details about the way she approaches her job and the “methodology” she uses for deciding a case.

“I am acutely aware that as a judge in our system I have limited power and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane,” she said.

The three-step process she described involved clearing her mind of any preconceived notions about the case, receiving the various inputs — the written briefs, the factual record, the hearings — she’ll need to decide a case, and embarking on an interpretation of the law that hews to “the constraints” on her role as a judge.

She said she was trying to “to figure out what the words mean as they were intended by the people who wrote them.”

This description of her methodology was not enough to satisfy Republican questions about her judicial philosophy.

But what does this term mean? It refers to the type of framework a judge uses to analyze a case of constitutional interpretation. An originalist approach, which is favored by conservatives, seeks to interpret the Constitution by how the framers would have understood the words at the time they were drafted.

Some progressives have sought to chart what has been called a “Living Constitution” approach, which seeks to interpret the general principles in the Constitution in a way that is applicable to contemporary circumstances.

Even as she answered Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse’s questions about the dueling approaches, Jackson declined to explicitly align herself with one or the other, noting that constitutional interpretation did not come up every often in the cases she was deciding as a lower court judge.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in today at noon at the Supreme Court.

She will receive the required two oaths.

First, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the Constitutional Oath, and then Justice Stephen Breyer will administer the second, Judicial Oath, in a ceremony in the West Conference Room before a small gathering of Jackson’s family.

The ceremony will be livestreamed on the court’s website. A more formal ceremony will take place at a later date.