As we await the usual late-June flurry of decisions – some of them quite significant – I wanted to reflect on what I believe to be the most extraordinary June in the modern Supreme Court, which took place four years ago in 2022. In decisions between June 21 and June 30, the court overruled Roe v. Wade, greatly expanded the scope of gun rights, dramatically weakened the wall separating church and state, and imposed a significant new limit on the power of federal administrative agencies.
Rarely in American history did so much constitutional law change so quickly. Indeed, over 50 years of conservative efforts to remake the Supreme Court came to fruition in five decisions handed down over those nine days. This was the conclusion of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s first full term on the court and the decisions also powerfully demonstrated what it means to have six conservative justices.
Consider what happened during those nine momentous days.
Tuesday, June 21. Carson v. Makin. There are parts of Maine that are too rural to support public school systems. In these areas, school administrative units provide money for parents to send their children to private school. State law required that the funds be used for secular schools; they cannot be used for “sectarian” education. Maine said that its goal was to provide a free secular education for every child in the state, and that it did not want to use tax dollars to support religion. About 5,000 children were affected each year.
Two families brought a challenge arguing that prohibiting the use of funds in religious schools was contrary to the free exercise of religion. The court, 6-3, agreed, holding that it violated this provision for the government to provide funds for secular private schools, but not religious ones. The decision was based on two recent cases. In 2017’s Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, the court held that Missouri violated the free exercise of religion in providing aid for surfacing playgrounds to public schools and secular private schools, but not religious schools. And in 2020’s Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the court ruled that Montana violated the free exercise of religion in providing tax credits for contributions to secular schools, but not religious ones.
For decades, the issue before the Supreme Court was about what aid the government may provide to religious schools without it being an impermissible establishment of religion. In Carson, the court said that the free exercise clause means that the government must provide aid for religious schools whenever it subsidizes secular private education. Until these cases, never in American history had the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to require government aid to religious institutions.
Thursday, June 23. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. From 1791 until 2008, the Supreme Court never once declared unconstitutional any law – federal, state, or local – as violating the Second Amendment. In the handful of cases about that amendment, the court said that it was just about a right to have guns for militia service.
In June 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court for the first time declared a gun regulation unconstitutional and struck down a 32-year-old District of Columbia ordinance that prohibited ownership or possession of handguns. But for 14 years after this, the court did not decide a major case about the meaning of the Second Amendment.
That changed with New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which involved a New York law adopted in 1911 that prohibits having weapons in public without a permit. Under the law, if a person wanted a permit to carry a firearm outside the home or place of business for self-defense, the individual must show a safety need for it. In a 6-3 decision, the court declared this unconstitutional and for the first time said that there is a Second Amendment right to carry concealed weapons outside the home.
But the court went even further: in an unprecedented approach to any constitutional right, Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that gun regulations would be allowed only if they were historically permitted. Thomas declared: “Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.’”
For most other constitutional rights, the government can act if it has a compelling interest and no other way to achieve it. The government even can discriminate based on race if it meets this standard. But not for the Second Amendment, which Thomas described as an “unqualified command.” In fact, the court said that “the Second Amendment . . . surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms for self-defense.”
Bruen led to hundreds of challenges to every type of gun regulation. Courts continue to struggle with how to apply it, including two cases now pending before the Supreme Court: Wolford v. Lopez and United States v. Hemani.
Friday, June 24. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center. It was no surprise when the court handed down its decision in Dobbs overruling Roe v. Wade. On May 1, Politico published a leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion. The opinion released on June 24 was almost the same as the earlier version. The court declared: “We … hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
Unlike the other major cases from these nine days in June, Dobbs was not 6-3. Alito’s opinion overruling Roe was joined by Justices Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts concurred in the judgment. He would have upheld the Mississippi law prohibiting abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy but would not have reached the issue of whether to overrule Roe. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan wrote a joint vehement dissent.
Dobbs has had enormous political ramifications. Many states have prohibited most or almost all abortions, while others have strengthened their protections of abortion rights. One thing that it has not done is end litigation with regard to abortion – there are a myriad of legal issues that are pending in the courts.
Monday, June 27. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. Few decisions of the Warren court were more controversial than those in the early 1960s prohibiting prayer in public schools. Yet from 1962 until June 27, 2022, without exception, every Supreme Court decision about prayers in public schools had found them to be an impermissible establishment of religion. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court not only allowed prayer at a public school event, but found that preventing it was an unconstitutional violation of a teacher’s freedom of speech and free exercise of religion.
Joseph Kennedy was the football coach at a public school in Bremerton, Washington. After games, Kennedy, a devout Christian, would kneel at the 50-yard line and engage in a prayer for about 30 seconds. Several games into his first season as coach, players began to join him and this grew to include a majority of the team. Sometimes opposing players were invited to join as well. A parent complained to the principal that his son “felt coerced to participate” in Kennedy’s religious activity, even though he was an atheist, because “he felt he wouldn’t get to play as much if he didn't participate.”
Over time, Kennedy began giving short motivational speeches at midfield after the games. Students, coaches, and other attendees from both teams were invited to participate. During the speeches, the participants kneeled around Kennedy. He then raised a helmet from each team and delivered a message containing religious content including prayers. The school district ordered that Kennedy cease his religious activities. He initially complied and then openly defied the order and was suspended.
Kennedy sued and argued that the school district had violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and free exercise of religion. The federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled against him, stressing the school district’s interest in complying with the ban on prayer in public schools. But the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled in Kennedy’s favor, concluding that denying him the ability to pray violated his freedom of speech and free exercise of religion.
For decades, the court had said that prayer in schools violates the provision of the First Amendment that forbids the establishment of religion. The court addressed this by saying that a 1971 decision, Lemon v. Kurtzman, which articulated the test for when the government violates the establishment clause, had been overruled. In a majority opinion by Gorsuch, the court articulated a new approach: “‘[T]he line’ that courts and governments ‘must draw between the permissible and the impermissible’ has to ‘accor[d] with history and faithfully reflec[t] the understanding of the Founding Fathers.’”
For decades, the issue was when does prayer in public schools violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment and the answer was: always. Now the question is when does limiting prayer violate freedom of speech and free exercise of religion. We have gone from schools being forbidden from allowing prayer at their events to schools being required to permit it in certain circumstances.
Thursday, June 30. West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. This case involved the authority of the EPA to regulate power plants to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Coal-fired power plants are a major source of the pollution that is responsible for climate change.
The Obama administration adopted an aggressive approach, known as the Clean Power Plan, to limit these pollutants from coal-fired power plants across the country. The Trump administration rescinded the Clean Power Plan and adopted its own Affordable Clean Energy rule, which was far more permissive in allowing pollution from these electric utilities. The lower court ruled that the Trump administration acted improperly.
West Virginia and several coal companies sought Supreme Court review. The Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to not take the case and once taken to dismiss it. The EPA made clear that it did not intend to revive the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan or to implement the Affordable Clean Energy rule.
The court nonetheless ruled, 6-3, that the EPA lacks the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plants. Roberts said that this was a “major question” of economic and political significance, but that Congress had not been sufficiently specific in granting authority to the EPA to do this. This is the first recent case to expressly invoke what is known as the “major questions doctrine.” Kagan dissented, joined by Sotomayor and Breyer, and said that there was no basis for this doctrine and that the EPA had the authority to take this important action to address the urgent problem of climate change.
There continues to be a deal of litigation over what is a major question of economic and political significance and what is enough congressional direction to allow the agency action. This doctrine also played a key role in this term’s tariffs case.
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There is no doubt that the last weeks of June and perhaps early days of July 2026 will bring several blockbuster decisions. But for dramatically changing the law in many areas, few nine-day periods can match 2022.