President Trump’s judicial nominees have impacted abortion limits, gun rights and administrative law, but legal experts say their written opinions have often guided Supreme Court oral arguments and rulings.
Conservative court watchers Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, and Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, noted the high caliber of the Trump circuit court appointees.
Mr. Levey pointed to disputes out of the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, such as the abortion pill battle, the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and immigration cases that have come before the justices this term.
“Trump will be remembered not just for conservative circuit court appointments but for the fact that a lot of them were really great intellectuals that wrote opinions that were noticed by the Supreme Court,” Mr. Levey said.
“The way they are setting things up for the Supreme Court is really important and significant, and that is one of the things that sets his judges apart,” said Ms. Severino. “That is important for helping the court understand the full range of arguments, especially the full range of originalism arguments.”
Mr. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, 54 circuit court judges and 174 district court judges. President Obama appointed two Supreme Court justices and 55 circuit court judges during two terms in office.
Mr. Trump’s nominees flipped three circuit courts from majority Democratic to majority Republican.
Jake Faleschini, legal director of state courts at the liberal Alliance for Justice, said the number of Trump appointees on the bench and their ideologies have led to rulings impacting every area of the law. In his view, the decisions have had a negative effect.
“There are decisions the Supreme Court and Trump judges have made that influence your walk down the street every day,” Mr. Faleschini said, “everything from abuse of government authority, age discrimination, criminal justice, the rights of corporations and the undermining of rights of consumers, the death penalty, education, and environment — freedom of speech, gun violence.”
“It is entirely and completely invasive,” he said.
Perhaps the most notable decision of Mr. Trump’s appointments was the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that gave women a national right to abortion. In a 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, the high court returned jurisdiction over the issue to the states.
Since then, more than a dozen states have moved to outlaw abortion.
Elliot Mincberg, senior fellow for the liberal People For the American Way, said even conservative justices had kept Roe intact while weighing abortion-related matters before Trump-appointed justices eliminated the roughly 50-year-old precedent.
“It took the Trump justices to really turn it around,” Mr. Mincberg said.
The Trump judicial nominees also made a major impact on the Second Amendment in 2022 with the ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association. The court’s conservative majority held that any gun control law had to be consistent with the nation’s history and tradition dating back to its founding. If a firearm restraint did not date back to the founding, then the law would likely be unconstitutional.
Mr. Faleschini said the Trump appointees practice originalism when it works for their goal. He said the justices “didn’t bother to do an analysis of the actual hardware that was in circulation in the late 1700s, so originalism as to what? So that methodology can always be manipulated to fit an outcome that you want.”
Mr. Levey said that Mr. Trump’s appointments have also reshaped administrative law. He pointed to the high court striking down President Biden’s move to forgive student debt for more than 40 million Americans and a case in which the conservative majority limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s reach over wetlands, citing the Clean Water Act.
“I would say administrative law has probably been where his Supreme Court appointments have had the biggest effect,” he said.
Mr. Faleschini said Trump judges have reshaped voting rights. He noted a recent move by two Trump appointees on a three-judge panel that struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which had added a second majority Black district. That dispute is being appealed to the Supreme Court.
“There is no more damage that the Trump judges or the Supreme Court can do to our Constitution than to undermine the right of the people to choose their representatives in free and fair elections,” Mr. Faleschini said.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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