Supreme Court October Term 2017: A Review of Selected Major Rulings

"On October 2, 2017, the Supreme Court began one of the most notable terms in recent memory. The latest term of the Court was the first full term for Justice Neil Gorsuch, who succeeded Justice Antonin Scalia following his death in February 2016. The October Term 2017 was also the last term for Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired in July 2018. With nine Justices on the Court for the first time at the beginning of a term since October 2015, this past term witnessed the High Court issuing fewer unanimous opinions and more rulings that were closely divided relative to previous terms.

The increased divisions on the High Court during the October Term 2017 may have been a product of the nature of the cases on the Court’s docket, with the Supreme Court hearing a number of high-profile matters implicating issues of considerable interest for Congress and the public at large. For instance, during its last term, the Court considered a challenge to President Trump’s so-called travel ban, several redistricting disputes concerning partisan gerrymandering, and a dispute that pitted a state government’s interests in enforcing certain civil rights laws against the interests of those who object to same-sex marriage on religious grounds. Some of the Court’s most highly anticipated rulings resulted in opinions where the Justices avoided resolving core issues of dispute, such as the Court’s rulings on partisan gerrymandering, in which the legal challenges were largely dismissed on procedural grounds, or the Court’s opinion in the case of a baker’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, which was decided on narrow grounds peculiar to the case before the Court. Nonetheless, the October Term 2017 resulted in several farreaching opinions. Perhaps most notably, the last term for the Court saw the overturning of several long-standing precedents, including (1) two 20th Century cases interpreting Congress’s Commerce Clause power to limit the states’ ability to require certain out-of-state retailers to collect and remit sales taxes; (2) a 1977 ruling requiring nonconsenting members of public employee unions to pay certain fees as a condition of employment; and (3) a longcriticized 1944 case that sanctioned the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II..."
Supreme Court rulings