In the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court continued to weaken the Constitution in its quest to aggrandize itself and the presidency while diminishing Congress.

As the Roberts Court has done in recent terms, these new decisions rely on constitutional and statutory reasoning that fails to advance Americans’ individual freedoms. Instead, individual freedoms and the ability of the people’s representatives to protect them are rolled back in favor of powerful special interests. These rollbacks are based on supposed originalist or textualist readings that overturn how the Constitution and our laws have been understood — and have functioned — for decades.

The Supreme Court continued expanding its theory of the unitary executive in Trump v. Slaughter. In Slaughter, the court overturned Humphrey’s Executor, a unanimous, 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to protect Senate-confirmed appointees to multimember regulatory agencies from being fired at the whim of the president. These protections, which have been in place for 140 years, were designed to allow agencies to function as Congress directs, free from political interference and safe from being whipsawed whenever an administration changes.

Though the court provided a temporary carve-out for the Federal Reserve in Trump v. Cook, it is permitting related litigation to move forward. This could still eventually allow the president to fire the Board Governors on pretextual grounds. Combined with Trump v. U.S., which granted the president immunity from crimes committed while in office, Slaughter expands executive powers beyond even those held by English monarchs at the time of the American Revolution.

By a 6-3 vote in Trump v. Barbara, the court upheld the Constitution’s enshrinement of birthright citizenship. This right is explicitly spelled out in the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

However, that vote count is misleading. Four dissenting justices held that the Constitution does not mean what it clearly states, arguing instead that Congress can render the right of birthright citizenship void by statute. Just one vote in the other direction in the future could allow a president or Congress to wholly upend the Constitution’s plain meaning.

Not content with expanding presidential powers, the court also undermined Americans’ voting rights. In Louisiana v. Callais, Chief Justice John Roberts completed his career-long goal of gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Just three years after upholding Section 2 in Allen v. Milligan to prohibit racially motivated gerrymandering, the court did an about-face. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that majority-minority congressional districts violate the Constitution unless they are created in such an extraordinarily narrow way as to make challenging voting discrimination incredibly difficult.

This shift enabled states to supercharge mid-decade redistricting ahead of this year’s midterm elections, capitalizing on the court’s 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision that immunized political gerrymandering. More than ever, politicians can entrench their own power bases by picking their constituents — and ensuring their own victories — rather than battling for Americans’ votes based on the strength of their ideas in competitive districts.

In another election-related case, the Supreme Court overturned a 25-year-old restriction prohibiting political parties and individual campaigns from coordinating their spending to avoid the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, the court struck down that precedent.

As noted by Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, this effectively allows powerful special interests to bypass the $7,000 individual campaign contribution limits. Wealthy donors can now funnel upward of $550,000 to a preferred candidate, with the majority ruling such actions do not constitute even the appearance of corruption.

This decision is as much an affront to Congress’s ability to regulate campaign finance laws as it is to common sense, especially given that 72 percent of Americans— including 77% of Trump voters — feel there is already too much money in American politics.

The court further undermined accountability across multiple facets of American life. It limited citizens’ right to sue state officials for violating their constitutional rights in Landor v. Louisiana. It upended thousands of consumer lawsuits against Monsanto alleging a failure to disclose that Roundup weed-killer could cause cancer. Finally, it struck a blow against the ability of transgender youth to compete in sports.

Once again, this Supreme Court has proven its adherence to advancing the rights of the powerful over those of the American people. In doing so, it continues to weaken the fundamental rule of law embedded in our Constitution.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Devon Ombres is the senior director for Courts and Legal Reform Policy at the Center for American Progress. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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