Voters decide elections, but the Supreme Court is poised to play an outsize role in next year’s contest for president as it appears likely to consider former President Donald Trump‘s legal appeals and a key abortion case.
But whether the nine justices help or hinder President Joe Biden as he seeks reelection in 2024 remains to be seen as the court increasingly becomes a motivating factor for Democrats after long having the same effect for Republicans.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s shock decision to disqualify Trump from appearing on the state’s presidential primary ballot based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the Constitution’s insurrection clause, has shoved the U.S. Supreme Court back into the political spotlight as the former president promises to appeal the 4-3 ruling to stop other states from doing the same.
But the highest court in the land could have other Trump cases on its docket, too, including a petition from special counsel Jack Smith for it to expeditiously review Trump’s presidential immunity before the scheduled March 4 start date of his Jan. 6 trial.
Trump’s supporters and primary opponents have rallied around him after the Colorado court’s decision, with the former president already fundraising off of his latest legal development. That is to Biden’s disadvantage as Trump animates his base while the president struggles to gin up the same excitement.
But the Supreme Court will also reexamine the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a commonly used medication abortion drug, after the justices repealed surgical abortion access precedent last summer through Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That decision has been credited with helping Democrats outperform expectations for last year’s midterm elections and last month’s off-year contests in Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia despite a weak economy.
The party hopes history repeats itself next year, to Biden’s advantage.
Catholic University of America professor of political science Matthew Green contended the Trump cases could undermine the former president’s candidacy practically and politically, particularly among independent, general election voters.
“The primary is another matter,” Green told the Washington Examiner. “He’s cultivated this image of being an outsider, a populist, he’s anti-establishment. And so, absolutely, these kinds of cases, as they wind their way through the courts, feed the narrative that he and his campaign sends out there that Trump is being attacked by the powers that be.”
Paul Henderson, a legal analyst and former chief of administration to Vice President Kamala Harris when she was San Francisco‘s district attorney, agreed, adding, “I think the role [the cases] play is going to be pivotal for Trump more than it is for Biden.”
But Dan Schnur, communications director of the late Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain‘s 2000 presidential campaign, countered that it is unlikely, for instance, that the Supreme Court will uphold the Colorado decision to disqualify Trump from the ballot, meaning the justices’ “most significant role” next year could be their next abortion ruling.
“For many years, conservative voters have been much more motivated to turn out based on the Supreme Court’s role, but just the opposite occurred in 2022 after the Dobbs decision,” Schnur, now a University of Southern California professor, said. “Depending on their mifepristone ruling, that could be the case again next year.”
For Green, Democrats’ attitudes toward the Supreme Court have become more negative since the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, with former President Barack Obama criticizing the justices during his 2010 State of the Union address days after that ruling. That evaluation overlooks Bush v. Gore, the last case through which the Supreme Court had a decisive role in an election.
Biden has become more public concerning his frustrations with the Supreme Court after the justices prevented his federal student loan debt forgiveness program from being implemented last year, a policy failure that has politically damaged him with more liberal Democrats before next year’s election. Simultaneously, the president has been mindful of his scrutiny of the Trump cases out of fear mindless comments will exacerbate Trump’s complaints that the federal government has been weaponized against him.
“I went to the Supreme Court to eliminate student debt out there,” Biden said Wednesday during an economics, or “Bidenomics,” speech in the battleground state of Wisconsin. “Guess what? The Supreme Court ruled against me, but I still got 136 million people’s debt relieved,” he continued, although he has only canceled about $132 billion in student loans for 3.6 million borrowers.
Aboard Air Force One en route to Milwaukee, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer questions related to Biden’s positions on whether Trump is an insurrectionist or whether the Supreme Court should quickly take up the Colorado case.
“What I can say is the president’s not involved, we’re not involved in it,” Jean-Pierre said. “Just not going to get involved in any court decision that’s made. Supreme Court, any court decision is a legal process. We’re going to leave it alone, not comment. 2024, not comment, Hatch Act. We try to do our best to follow the law and just not going to comment on this.”
But 90 minutes later, after Biden arrived at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport, he told reporters on the tarmac it is “self-evident” that Trump is an insurrectionist, saying, “You saw it all.”
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“Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision,” Biden said. “But he certainly supported an insurrection. No question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on about everything anyway.”
The Colorado court has stayed its decision until Jan. 4, the day before the state’s deadline for candidates to apply to be on its ballot, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case.
