The final stretch of the 2025-26 Supreme Court term looked different from the end of recent ones. Over the past several years, many of the court’s most anticipated decisions have ended with the familiar 6-3 ideological alignment: the six Republican-appointed justices in the majority and the three Democratic-appointed justices in dissent. Major cases involving abortion, affirmative action, agency deference, nationwide injunctions, and medical treatment for transgender minors helped define that pattern.
By several measures, this term was more ideologically divided than the last one. Last term, 15.2% of the court’s decisions were decided by a 6-3 vote, and 9% of all decisions were 6-3 ideological splits. This term, those figures rose significantly, to 28.8% and 22.7%, respectively. The liberal justices also dissented together more often, moving from 15% of cases last term to 24.2% this term.
Yet the final week somewhat complicated the broader polarization story. In the second-to-last week of the term, seven of nine decisions split 6-3 along ideological lines. In the final week, only four of seven did. Perhaps more interestingly, in the three final-week decisions that did not follow the ideological 6-3 pattern, all three liberal justices were in the majority.
The clearest example was Trump v. Barbara, the birthright-citizenship case. The outcome was broadly anticipated, but the alignment was not. Counted by the judgment, Barbara was a 6-3 decision, but not an ideological 6-3. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion of the court, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson; Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment and dissented in part; and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. That made one of the term’s most anticipated cases a decision in which the liberal justices were not dissenters at the margins, but part of the prevailing side.
Other late-term outcomes were more predictable. In West Virginia v. B.P.J. and the related Little v. Hecox litigation, the court addressed whether states could ban transgender females from girls’ and women’s school sports teams. The result fit the expected ideological pattern and resembled the court’s alignment in the previous term’s major transgender-related decision.
So did Trump v. Slaughter. There, the court confronted the president’s ability to remove a head of the Federal Trade Commission and the continued status of the 1935 precedent of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States insulating administrative agencies. The case was set up directly around whether those statutory removal protections violated separation of powers and whether Humphrey’s Executor should be overruled. That was the term’s major overruling, and it was also one of its least surprising. The court had already narrowed Humphrey’s Executor in prior removal-power cases, and Slaughter made explicit what had been increasingly apparent.
The more surprising theme involved high-profile losses for the Trump administration or for policies the administration supported. The administration lost in Learning Resources v. Trump – the tariffs case, in Barbara, and in Trump v. Cook, where the court rejected the president’s effort to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook by a 5-4 vote. In Cook, Roberts wrote for a majority that included Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson; Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett dissented. Along similar lines, Watson v. Republican National Committee, on whether states could count ballots postmarked on but received after election day, while not a direct administration-party case, involved a policy position the U.S. solicitor general advocated at oral argument and the Trump administration heavily supported. The court rejected that position in a majority composed of Roberts, Barrett, and the three liberal justices.
The justice-level data reinforces this picture of a court still organized around a conservative center, but not operating in a purely ideological pattern in every major case. Roberts and Kavanaugh were in the majority most often this term, each at 95%. Barrett followed at 92%. Those numbers were similar last term, when Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were in the majority 95%, 92%, and 89% of the time, respectively.
Jackson remained the justice least often in the majority. She was in the majority 67% of the time overall this term and 41% of the time in non-unanimous cases. Last term, she was also lowest among the justices, at 72% overall and 51% in non-unanimous cases. That continuity is notable since even with several prominent final-week liberal-majority outcomes, the term as a whole still left Jackson more often outside the controlling coalition than any other justice.
The court’s opinion output was remarkably similar across the two terms. Last term produced 165 total opinions: 67 majority opinions, 50 concurrences, and 48 dissents. This term produced 164: 66 majority opinions, 54 concurrences, and 44 dissents. Unanimity also changed modestly. Last term, 42.4% of decisions were unanimous, compared with a post-2005 average of 44.5%. This term, unanimity rose slightly to 44%.
The agreement data show both stability and a subtle shift. Last term, the highest overall agreement pair was Thomas and Alito at 97%, while Sotomayor and Jackson agreed 94% of the time overall and 95% in closely divided cases. Sotomayor and Jackson agreed in all closely divided cases, though their overall agreement rate was slightly lower, at 94%. This term produced a four-way tie for the highest overall agreement rate: Roberts-Kavanaugh, Thomas-Alito, Sotomayor-Kagan, and Sotomayor-Jackson all agreed 94% of the time. In closely divided cases, Sotomayor and Jackson were the only pair to agree 100% of the time.
The writing patterns were also familiar. Last term, Thomas authored the most total opinions, with 29, while Roberts authored the fewest, with six, all of them majority opinions. Thomas also wrote the most concurrences, with 13, and Jackson wrote the most dissents, with 10. This term followed a similar pattern. Thomas again authored the most total opinions, with 28, and the most concurrences, with 15. Jackson again led the court in dissents, with 10. Roberts again wrote the fewest total opinions, authoring six majority opinions and no separate opinions.
Where the terms diverged more sharply was in the length and character of the most substantial separate writings. Last term’s longest individual opinion was Thomas’ dissent in Glossip v. Oklahoma, at about 14,200 words. This term’s longest individual opinion was again by Thomas, but much longer: his Barbara dissent ran approximately 29,400 words. Last term’s five longest opinions included three majority opinions and two dissents. This term’s five longest opinions consisted of four dissents and one concurrence. And while CASA was last term’s longest combined decision at about 35,200 words, Barbara, the longest total decision this term far surpassed CASA’s count with 60,400 words.
Timing also shifted. Last term, Gorsuch had the longest average time between oral argument and majority opinion at 127.5 days. The fastest decisions were all argued per curiam dispositions. The longest lag between argument and decision was Skrmetti, at 197 days. This term, Barrett narrowly edged Gorsuch for the longest average time between oral argument and majority opinion, at 130.71 days compared with Gorsuch’s 130.57. Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections (a religious liberty/spending clause case) took the longest from argument to decision, at 226 days, while Hikma v. Amarin (on infringement of a brand-name drug’s patented uses) was the quickest signed decision, issued 37 days after argument. Unlike last term, when the five quickest decisions were per curiam, this term’s five quickest argued-case decisions were all signed opinions.
The term therefore resists a simple label. By 6-3 voting, ideological splits, and bloc liberal dissents, it was more polarized than the last. But the court’s final week was less predictable than the headline docket suggested. The conservative majority remained dominant, and Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett continued to define the court’s center. Still, in several of the term’s most visible disputes, the three liberal justices were part of the majority.
