Why This Year is Different for the US Supreme Court

In June 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States will share its rulings with the public, and there are speculations that many of the cases will provide landmark precedents for the next few years. The court will be reviewing the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health (2022), which concerns a Mississippi state law that limits the time frame a woman can receive an abortion to fifteen weeks into her pregnancy. The court is also set to review the case of Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District (2022), in which a football coach in Washington State would lead his team in prayer during and after games. The school district asked the coach to stop conducting the prayer out of fear of liability, and the coach sued under the 1st amendment’s free exercise of religion clause. Taken separately, these cases seem unrelated, but if the court rules in favor of allowing the team prayer, and upholds the Mississippi abortion law, the United States could be on the path away from protecting rights to privacy in favor of religious expression or free speech.

When discussing Supreme Court cases, it is crucial to understand how important it is for the court to maintain its previous rulings. This concept is called Stare Decisis, which is a Latin term meaning “let the decision stand.” Essentially, the court wants to make sure that it honors its past rulings to avoid giving the impression that the judges rule based on their political beliefs. 

With this in mind, the court has already ruled on both of these subjects in the past. In the case of Roe vs. Wade (1973), the court established a woman’s right to have an abortion, and in a later case called Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (1986), it was established that a woman could only seek an abortion before a fetus was considered viable, and that the state could not place an undue burden in the path of the woman seeking that abortion. Concerning school-led prayers, the case of Engel vs. Vitale (1961) followed a case where a public school in New York led a non-required and non-denominational prayer in public schools, and the Supreme Court ruled against it under the 1st amendment’s prohibition on an establishment of a state-led religion. These cases establish strong precedent in favor of maintaining access to abortion for longer than fifteen weeks, and against allowing prayer for a school sports team. 

The concern for Dobbs and Kennedy is not the previously established precedent, but the question of whether the court will overturn its past rulings. Although the court prefers not to overrule itself, the current set of Justices serving on the court is likely to do just that. The court is made up of nine Justices, and as it stands, six of them have indicated they are in favor of overturning Roe. They have the opportunity to do so in the upcoming Dobbs decision. Those same six justices are also heavily in favor of protecting freedom of religion and could potentially rule in favor of allowing team prayer in a school sport. 

If the court makes these two decisions as given above, it could be a sign that the court will no longer protect the right to privacy and instead protect religious expression. This puts abortion rights in the United States at serious risk. The Supreme Court must rule in favor of protecting the right to privacy and protecting female bodily autonomy. The court must not fall into its old pattern of protecting religious rights to suppress the rights of women to do what they wish with their bodies.

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