Even Trump’s Supreme Court Sometimes Reins In Its Madness

The Supreme Court has prohibited state legislatures from unilaterally imposing unconstitutional restrictions on voting rights. That is reassuring. Yet we should not let ourselves be lulled into a false sense of security.

Should state-level Republicans have the power to curtail voting rights as they see fit? Even if new election laws clearly violate state constitutions? On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that denied them this power. There are limits to the madness — even in the U.S. and within the very body whose shift to the right is one of the most enduring political legacies of former President Donald Trump. That is at least the reassuring message emerging from Tuesday’s decision.

A few other decisions taken by the court in the last few months support this outlook. These include the court’s blocking of a politically motivated lower court ruling that significantly limited access to the abortion pill mifepristone and a surprising recent ruling that upheld a provision of a federal law designed to protect the voting rights of minorities.

However, it speaks volumes that the high court must even consider whether radical elected representatives have the authority to bar people from voting as they see fit, especially given that it was not perfectly clear from the outset what the court’s decision would be. That is because it is impossible to be sure where the limits to the madness truly lie. This will be particularly true if Trump returns to office in 2024, potentially giving him the chance to continue reshaping the court.