The Supreme Court's most surprising decisions this term, from voting rights to Native American adoptions

Kate Murphy
·Producer
Updated ·4 min read
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The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP)

The Supreme Court officially wrapped up its term this week with a flurry of rulings ahead of the high court’s summer recess.

While some of the decisions handed down in closely watched cases against affirmative action, LGBTQ+ protections and President Biden’s student debt relief plan came as no surprise given the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, the final weeks of rulings included a few unexpected outcomes.

Yahoo News spoke with Paul Collins, professor of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, about some of the most surprising — or surprisingly liberal — decisions of the term.

Voting rights: Allen v. Milligan

Evan Milligan
Evan Milligan, plaintiff in Merrill v. Milligan, an Alabama redistricting case, outside the Supreme Court on June 8. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

  • The case: Plaintiffs argued that Alabama’s state congressional map, which was drawn from 2020 census data, had just one majority-Black district when it could have had two, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars discriminatory voting practices based on race. The challengers alleged that GOP state lawmakers deliberately designed the map, which was used during the 2022 midterm elections, to dilute the power of Black voters, who make up 27% of the state’s population.

  • The decision: In a 5-4 decision on June 8, the Supreme Court left Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act intact and said Alabama’s congressional district map should be redrawn before the 2024 election. A court order says the state Legislature must enact a new map by July 21, 2023.

  • Why the decision was a surprise: Collins said this case was the most surprising ruling of the term for him. “Historically, Chief Justice Roberts (who wrote the opinion) has not been a big fan of the Voting Rights Act, so it was somewhat surprising to see him write this opinion and to also determine that the Voting Rights Act had in fact been violated by the state of Alabama,” Collins told Yahoo News.

Election regulations: Moore v. Harper

Demonstrators rally for voting rights
Demonstrators rally for voting rights outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 7, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

  • The lawsuit: North Carolina’s GOP-led state Legislature argued that the state Supreme Court, with a Democratic majority at the time, overstepped its authority when it invalidated the state’s 2022 congressional map. The case brought by North Carolina lawmakers asked the justices to adopt an obscure legal theory known as “independent state legislature theory,” which says that state legislatures have near-total control over federal elections.

  • The decision: On June 27, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling that rejected the fringe theory, ruling that the North Carolina Supreme Court didn’t violate the Constitution when it rejected the state’s 2022 congressional map.

  • Why the decision was somewhat surprising: The conservative majority court essentially handed a win to liberal advocates on election law in this decision, but Collins said it was not entirely surprising. “Even in the conservative legal movement, [the independent state legislature theory] is not taken that seriously by folks in the mainstream of that movement. So if the court embraced the independent state legislature theory, it really would’ve been a very strong signal that states are more or less free to violate the voting rights of Americans without judicial overview,” Collins explained.

Native American child adoptions: Haaland v. Brackeen

Women embrace after the Supreme Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act
Women embrace after the Supreme Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act, June 15. (Minh Connors/Washington Post via Getty Images)

  • The lawsuit: A number of consolidated cases from white foster parents and the state of Texas argued that the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, a law that prioritizes keeping Native American adopted children within Native families, was unconstitutional, infringed on state sovereignty, and discriminated on the basis of race.

  • The decision: In a 7-2 decision on June 15, the Supreme Court upheld the act, saying Congress had the authority to enact it. But the high court never reached a decision on claims that the law discriminates against non-Native families based on race, concluding that the challengers lacked standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place.

  • Why the decision was somewhat surprising: Four conservative justices joined the three liberal justices in rejecting an argument from GOP-led states and white foster families who argued that the 1978 law discriminates based on race. “While the coalition [of justices] might be a little surprising [...] when we think about the conservative legal movement, it has some very key tenants that it wants to enact in law, and undoing tribal sovereignty is not really on that agenda,” Collins explained.