The “volume and viciousness” of President Donald Trump’s legal and policy actions against marginalized communities has far outpaced the cruelty displayed during his first term, said Cecillia Wang, national legal director of American Civil Liberties Union.
“The Trump administration came in prepared, acting as if there are no holds barred, no regard for due process, for equal protection, for the rule of law,” Wang said during a virtual town hall hosted by Democracy Forward, a national legal organization behind multiple lawsuits filed against Trump’s efforts to dismantle civil rights, democracy and government agencies and programs.
Cecilia Wang
The Constitution is “taking heavy collateral damage” from Trump’s ongoing attempts to end birthright citizenship, deport millions of refugees, end LGBTQ protections and criminalize diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, Wang said.
“The Trump administration is attacking mainstream institutions that are part of the fabric of our free country — corporate law firms, major media companies, universities, courts and federal judges as well as elected officials. And we have seen appalling instances of over-policing and censorship,” she explained.
Taking stock of the administration’s legal game plan and finding hope in the opposition arrayed against it were the aims of Democracy Forward’s July 8 webinar, “Democracy, the Supreme Court, and the Path Forward for People.”
Panelists included Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, “Law Dork” Substack publisher and author Chris Geidner and Democracy Forward Legal Director Brian Netter. The discussion was moderated by Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman, who said the discussion was designed to contribute to the solidarity needed to push back against the president, politicians and movements attempting to undermine constitutional freedoms.
“We are all feeling in these times the need to build community and to be together with each other. And the thing about building a community is that it’s important not just for our own selves as people, it is important for the very existence of our democracy.”
The overwhelming pace and scale of the administration’s anti-democracy and anti-civil rights crusade was evident in the Supreme Court’s recently completed 2024-2025 term, she said.
The Trump administration has sought emergency docket relief from the Supreme Court 40 times in six months.
Especially concerning to her were the proliferation of cases the court accepted to its emergency docket, a typically limited recourse resulting in quick orders issued without the oral arguments and debate associated with typical rulings.
The administration sought relief from that avenue more than 40 times in its first six months, compared to eight such requests made during the preceding 16 years.
A prime example was the July 14 decision clearing the way for the Trump administration’s massive layoffs at the U.S. Justice Department. The unsigned court decision paused a lower court’s ruling requiring the reinstatement of 1,400 employees fired earlier this year, SCOTUSblog reported.
Skye Perryman
Trump’s other wins through the emergency docket include Supreme Court stays of lower-court orders pausing his plans to reorganize the federal government, deport immigrants to third countries without due process and revoke the temporary status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the country legally.
“It is really a docket where we are seeing the Supreme Court be quite active and where the Trump-Vance administration is trying to turn as it is losing in courts across the country because of its unlawful and harmful activity,” Perryman said.
The high court has issued more balanced rulings in cases heard through its merits docket, the more traditional avenue where decisions follow oral arguments and months of deliberation.
The justices limited the power of district judges from issuing “universal injunctions” against Trump policies, ruled parents can excuse children from LGBTQ lessons in public schools, and voted to uphold a Tennessee law prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
But the Supreme Court also overturned key rulings by the U.S. Fifth District Court of Appeals in cases originating from conservative legal strategies and judge shopping, Perryman noted.
In those cases, the justices upheld HIV and other preventative care provisions mandated in the Affordable Care Act, strengthened the government’s ability to regulate loopholes in gun laws, and widened citizens’ Fourth Amendment protections during traffic stops and arrests.
Perryman said she is encouraged that most lower-court rulings are going against the administration. “What we are seeing in our work in courts across the country is judges appointed by Republican presidents, judges that have been appointed by Democratic presidents, judges that have been appointed by President Trump himself are stepping in to protect the American people, to preserve our constitution and to really use the rule of law for justice.”
Brian Netter
It is concerning to see the Supreme Court “jumping into the fray unnecessarily” and attempting to be a “court of error correction,” Netter said. “We see the court jumping in earlier and earlier, sometimes frequently hopping over lower courts and issuing seemingly dispositive rulings in cases sometimes weeks after they’ve been filed.”
That approach is inconsistent with the traditional practices grounded in a desire to insulate the court from politics, he added. “Surely if the justices are weighing in on policies within a month of when they have come out, before all the facts have been developed, before all the legal arguments have been developed and frequently without hearing oral argument at all, it necessarily turns the court into a body that’s going to be more influenced by the political views of the day.”
Chris Geidner
That influence can be discerned when looking at what the Supreme Court addressed in one ruling and ignored in another, Geidner said.
For example, in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the court affirmed Tennessee’s ban on transgender care for youth without addressing parental rights in relation to children’s medical care. But in Mahmoud v. Taylor the majority said withholding children from public school teachings on LGBTQ issue is a matter of parental rights.
“It sent a strong message that there is one set of parental rights claims we’re going to take very seriously and upend First Amendment precedent to protect them. And then when it comes to applying past precedent to protect parents of LGBTQ people who want basic protections, we’re not even going to take that case up,” Geidner said.
Americans are losing confidence in the Supreme Court as it takes on more emergency cases and issues contradictory rulings, Perryman added. “The Supreme Court’s approval ratings have been at historic lows for several years now. People look to the Supreme Court to protect the rights of people to protect our democratic institutions. And when the Supreme Court doesn’t do that reliably, we do have a legitimacy crisis”