On August 3, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris was formally chosen as the Democratic presidential nominee after President Biden chose to step aside from the race. The Republican nominee is Donald Trump. While Harris has yet to announce her running mate, Trump chose JD Vance, a first-term Senator from Ohio who has supported anti-abortion and anti-LGTBQ policies. 

There’s no escaping it. The Supreme Court has done a lot of damage this term. In Donald Trump’s tenure as President, he appointed enough conservative judges to secure what is called a “supermajority.” A conservative supermajority indicates that there are six politically conservative justices on a nine person Court. This supermajority has yielded decisions that are extremely damaging to marginalized people across the country. In this hot topic, we will unpack some, but not all, of the Court’s most impactful decisions.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, people across the country have been desperately trying to utilize the few other existing protections for safe abortions. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) is one such protective measure.  EMTALA is a 40 year old federal law requiring hospitals to provide stabilizing treatment for medical emergencies. EMTALA implicitly requires hospitals to provide emergency pregnancy care, including abortion when necessary, and subsequently conflicts with state laws banning abortion. The Supreme Court heard a case that centered this conflict. Rather than reaffirm that EMTALA includes federal protections for emergency abortion care, the Court remanded without giving a final decision. While EMTALA remains good law, this temporary stopgap leaves room for its protections to be struck down as soon as next year.

The Supreme Court handed down a similarly disappointing ruling in a case concerning mifepristone, a pill prescribed for self-managed abortions. The Supreme Court dismissed the case for a lack of standing, so mifepristone remains on the market and accessible, without any new restrictions. However, the Justices’ opinions outlined very clearly which parties would have standing to bring a mifepristone case. The Supreme Court delayed on deciding the merits of these two momentous abortion cases during an election year. However, like EMTALA, mifepristone could be challenged again very soon.

In the realm of economic justice, the Court did considerable damage to the rights of unhoused people in a case titled Grants Pass. This case deemed it legal for local governments to arrest, ticket, and fine people for sleeping outdoors on public property, even if that same government has failed to provide sufficient affordable housing or shelters. This ruling comes out despite the fact that research has shown that enforcement of anti-homeless legislation increases the mortality rates of unhoused people.

In addition to attacks on reproductive and economic justice, the Supreme Court has also done damage to the administrative state. The administrative state is made up of agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Labor, the Food and Drug Administration, and many, many more. Many of these agencies impact the daily lives of people living with HIV. Perhaps most notably,  HHS is the agency which administers Ryan White. All agencies, including HHS, have the power to make rules. Agency rule-making is why we have things like simplified access to mifepristone and non-discrimination regulations under the Affordable Care Act.

The Supreme Court case Loper-Bright has undermined the rule-making power of agencies. For decades, when rules were challenged, courts have deferred to agencies’ reasonable interpretation of the law. This is because agencies are uniquely able to fill those technical or scientific gaps that come up in the law. Loper Bright turned this staple of administrative law on its head. Now,  courts do not have to defer to agency interpretation, but can instead decide their own interpretations of ambiguous law. This is dangerous not only because judges frequently do not have the subject-matter expertise to accurately interpret agency rules, but also because a Judge can find unfavorable interpretations of any rule they are not politically aligned with.

The administrative state, meaning all of the agencies that make these rules, is an important part of our democracy. Undermining its authority will only mean slow-acting, long-term harm to the protections it offers to marginalized groups.

• There are multiple important state-level policy updates which protect the rights, health, and safety of LGBTQ+ people.

  • California has passed legislation banning policies that require  teachers to out trans students. This law also requires the California Department of Education to develop resources supporting LGBTQ+ families.

  • Michigan has passed legislation banning the “gay and trans panic” defense, which allows for the partial or complete excuse of violent crimes on the grounds that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s actions. Only nineteen states and Washington, D.C. prohibit this defense.

  • Federal Florida Judge Robert Hinkle has denied the state’s request to reverse a decision that blocked Florida’s restrictive gender-affirming care ban, known as SB 254.

• There are also state-level policy updates which undermine the rights, health, and safety of LGBTQ+ people.

  • Over the past year, the Florida health department has refused to amend gender markers on birth certificates for adults and youth of trans experience.

  • This month, Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire signed three anti-trans bills into law in one day. The bills negatively impact gender affirming care for youth, gendered sports teams for youth, and the introduction of information on sexual orientation and gender identity into school curricula.

• The House Appropriations Committee has advanced legislation which would slash the funding for HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) by $7.5 billion, or 6.4% below the fiscal 2024 level. The HHS budget funds programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Ryan White.

• The Biden administration released a new program letter that provides guidance regarding how Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) funds may be used to provide expungement services for people with HIV who have had legal system involvement.

• A recent report from The Commonwealth Fund has identified Mississippi as the worst state in the country for women’s healthcare. This ranking is partially due to its high maternal mortality rate, high rate of cervical and breast cancer deaths, and complete ban on abortion.

• The Biden administration has announced a new rule that, if finalized, would protect workers from extreme heat both indoors and outdoors. The rule likely won’t be implemented until 2026, pending the results of November’s election, but pregnant workers already have some of these protections under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. These protections are vitally important, considering the dangerous intersection of the climate crisis and restrictions of reproductive autonomy.

• US Senate Democrats introduced four more bills to protect reproductive rights, all of which were blocked by Republicans. The bills were related to abortion, contraception, and assisted reproductive technologies, such as IVF (in vitro fertilization).

• The Arkansas Secretary of State has rejected a ballot measure which would add a limited right to  abortion to the state constitution. The rejection, which alleges that proponents of the measure failed to meet the requirements, invalidates the tremendous effort to gather over 100,000 signatures from Arkansas voters.

• Last year, the Biden administration launched the SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education plan to mitigate student debt. However, the plan is facing many legal challenges. As of now, student loan payments are paused as a federal appeals court considers the case. 

• Student loan payments will be paused for 8 million borrowers after appeals court temporarily halts Biden’s repayment plan

• In Texas, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients who have suffered food loss due to Hurricane Beryl are now eligible for replacement benefits, with an extended deadline to apply. Beneficiaries have until August 8th to apply, find instructions at the bottom of this page.

• A federal Judge has ordered several changes to the Louisiana prison labor system which are aimed to preserve human health and safety. This is an interim measure in a larger lawsuit to close “Farm Line,” a laboring system Plaintiffs describe as “akin to nineteenth-century slavery.”

• The Tennessee government is set to start scrubbing its sex offender registry of people living with HIV who were convicted under the state’s “aggravated prostitution” law. Per the ACLU lawsuit last year, many of those impacted will be Black women and women of trans experience.

• In Massachusetts, state legislators are considering a bill which would place a five-year pause on building new prisons and jails. The bill seeks to repair the damage inflicted by mass incarceration.