Court Decisions on Democracy
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Sixteen days into January, and there are already too many threats to democracy across the country to cover. In this first newsletter, we focus on key legal cases we’re following this year that raise new questions about how far the federal government will go to subvert constitutional rights.
Usually, we examine how states tee up threats to democracy and how the federal government then employs those strategies. There is a direct line, for example, between anti-immigrant, radically conspiratorial police groups spending years trying to insulate local officers from any accountability in court, even in murder cases, and a federal ICE agent shooting an unarmed mother in the face in Minneapolis. Or between states like Texas, Florida, and Mississippi attempting to wrest local control from democratically elected city leaders and the federal litigation to restrict the counting of mail-in ballots.
Today we analyze some of the cases coming through the Supreme Court that threaten our fundamental rights. Even amidst all the shocking news this week – like the President suggesting we don’t need midterms and declaring war on an American city – we need to keep an eye on these cases. In particular, we’re focusing on Voting Rights and Elections, the Criminal Legal System, and Mass Deportation, as we highlight attacks on democracy and the need to protect what matters most in our country.
Voting Rights and Elections
Potential erosion of access to the ballot and increasing the ability of billionaires to influence elections
As the 2026 midterm elections loom, we are awaiting a series of decisions that could shape our participation in the democratic process – this November and beyond. These cases could disproportionately disenfranchise minority, disabled, and senior voters. All the while, the wealthiest Americans may gain unfettered influence over politics for their personal and financial gain, despite most Americans being concerned about their influence.
- Last year, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could allow states to gerrymander congressional districts in ways that dilute the voting power of minority voters, and National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, which would allow wealthy donors even more access to influence election spending and therefore election outcomes.
- The Court is also expected to hear arguments this year in Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case that would eliminate the grace period for counting ballots that are postmarked by election day but received after election day.
- Decisions in these cases are expected this year and could impact midterm federal elections, as the makeup of Congress hangs in the balance.
Criminal Justice
Further erosions of constitutional protections for the accused, and a terrifying path toward executing the disabled
In criminal trials, a unanimous jury verdict ensures that diverse voices are heard and considered equally before a person is deprived of their liberty. An upcoming case threatens to walk back that protection and make it easier for the government to send people to their deaths, while another seeks to increase the barbarism of our legal system.
- In Florida, the state supreme court recently upheld the use of non-unanimous juries to hand down death sentences. This ignores the legacy of non-unanimous juries as a Jim Crow tactic to eliminate the voices of people of color who could no longer legally be excluded from panels (in theory, at least). While there will be federal court challenges to the Florida law, it remains in effect.
- And in Louisiana, a state haunted by a legacy of wrongful convictions, new laws limit the ability of innocent people to obtain post-conviction relief in court, place further limits on litigation in capital cases, and allow for horrific executions by gas suffocation. This comes at the same time that the state Attorney General has pushed to execute people whose court cases were still pending and sought to reinstate the death penalty for children. Meanwhile, yet another man was recently exonerated from Louisiana’s death row.
Immigration
Challenging the thus-far unchecked power of federal immigration enforcement agencies
- Despite the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that children born in the United States are United States citizens, the Court will hear Barbara v. Trump this year to determine whether an executive order ending birthright citizenship is constitutional.
- The Court will also hear arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, which is expected to determine whether the government’s practice of turning away asylum seekers at the border is permissible.
- And, in recent cases, Minnesota and Illinois are fighting back against unconstitutional ICE invasions of their communities in court.
- While some states are moving to protect their residents, places like Texas have leaned into the federal government’s cruelty, attempting to deputize state and local law enforcement as pseudo-ICE/CBP agents, which is pending litigation. And Florida, Nebraska, and others have helped support the reckless and unprecedented expansion of increasingly-deadly ICE detention in their states.
- These cases are some of the first real tests of this administration’s immigration policy and are set against the backdrop of masked federal agents raiding cities, causing injuries, chaos, and even death, DHS deporting immigrants who entered the United States lawfully, including refugees, and Trump vowing to even denaturalize American citizens.
- In just the last week, ICE agents murdered Renee Good, sent six kids to the hospital including a 6-month-old baby after flashbanging their car, were going door-to-door in Minneapolis neighborhoods demanding that people inform agents which neighbors are Asian-American, and refused to release three Native Americans from immigration detention in an apparent attempt to extort a tribe into an ICE agreement.
- We cannot separate these federal immigration policies from the deeply racist rhetoric coming out of the administration. DHS has publicly stated its goal is to deport 100 million people. That figure has long circulated on neo-Nazi Twitter/X as the fantastical goal of “remigration,” or removing every person born in another country, citizen or not, and then everyone whose parents were born elsewhere.
- Just this week ICE put a neo-Nazi prosecutor back in the courtroom, almost a year after The Texas Observer exposed him for praising Hitler, musing about immigrants dying in tree shredders, and calling America a “White nation.” And DHS used a neo-Nazi anthem for recruitment.
- As the administration attempts to bulldoze the Constitution and the Supreme Court actually entertains its arguments, there is no longer a quiet part to say out loud.
Heroes: Thwarting Power Grabs
- As bleak as these updates are, just before the new year, a dangerous power grab in Texas aimed at creating a flimsy pretext to remove duly elected prosecutors in larger cities was thwarted in court.
- Attorney General Ken Paxton, longtime proponent of the Ten Commandments in schools, while observing 2-4 of them, attempted to use bureaucratic agency rulemaking to essentially co-opt the entire operations of District Attorneys in larger cities throughout the state.
- Conveniently, the new proposed rules would have been impossible to comply with, only applied to jurisdictions governed by Democrats, and would have given the state grounds to remove locally elected top prosecutors.
- But a Texas appellate court upheld an injunction barring the absurd power grab from taking effect.
- Additionally, California Governor Gavin Newsom refused to extradite a doctor who was accused of violating a Louisiana law banning the use of abortion medication after the doctor allegedly provided reproductive healthcare services to a patient in the state. California joins New York in standing strong against Louisiana’s attempt to impose its own deadly and draconian restrictions on reproductive healthcare on other states.