Many readers are understandably upset with the Roberts Court's dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and other decisions viewed as politically and socially regressive. But there is another side of Roberts and his Court--perhaps just a slice--that shouldn't be overlooked. Some of the decisions exhibit a different character.
There are more than a few other decisions--in which Roberts either wrote for the majority or was part of it--where Trump's major policies or pet preferences were blunted or rejected outright. Sometimes the Roberts majority did so summarily. As in, "give me a break!"
But whether the Roberts-led majority did so summarily or with full deliberation and opinion, recalling a sample of these decisions lends a less monochromatic picture of the Chief Justice and, particularly, his Court's perspective on Trump. Consider these:
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For example, that doctrine would prevent a state supreme court from ruling that the gerrymandering enacted by the state's legislature violated constitutional rights under the state's law. So, in this case, it would have prevented the North Carolina Supreme Court from ruling that the extremely partisan gerrymandering by North Carolina's Republican controlled state legislature violated the state constitution's guarantees of voting rights and equal protection. In short, the state legislature's gerrymandering would be final and the North Carolina Supreme Court could do nothing about it.
Trump and his allies' pet theory, which was advanced to help guarantee additional pro-Trump voting districts, was emphatically rejected by the Roberts majority. The Chief Justice, together with Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, voted with the three liberal Justices--Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. According to Roberts' opinion, despite the Supreme Court's hands-off approach to partisan gerrymandering by state legislatures, the state supreme courts are free to engage in the matter and prohibit such gerrymandering under their own state law.
The year before, a similar majority--again headed by Roberts, but before Justice Jackson replaced the retiring Stephen Breyer--had weighed in on another election-related matter against Trump and his allies.
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Last year, despite what seemed to some to be consistent Trump victories at the Court, Roberts-led majorities did stymie numerous efforts by the President, his administration, and his allies. Let's start with foreign affairs.
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In Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, in another unsigned order, the Chief Justice, joined by the three liberals plus Justice Barrett, summarily sustained a decision of a lower federal court that had directed the Trump administration to pay nearly $2 billion to a global non-profit health organization. In effect, a 5-4 majority mandated that the Trump administration disburse the funds for work already performed in the international AIDS prevention programs. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch were in dissent again, this time joined by Justice Kavanaugh.
Also in 2025, the same Roberts-led 5-4 majority rebuffed Trump's claim to immunity from New York State's criminal proceedings against him.
In Trump v. New York, the then re-elected but not yet re-inaugurated Trump sought to expand the presidential immunity that the Court had recognized the year before in Trump v. U.S. The Court should go further, Trump argued, and recognize immunity for a president-elect--particularly against state court proceedings here. But again, the Chief Justice, joined by the three liberals plus Justice Barrett, summarily rejected Trump's request and allowed the New York proceedings to continue regarding Trump's multiple state convictions for business fraud. Also again, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch, joined by Kavanaugh, dissented.
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[Footnote: I trust you don't take it seriously when those same dissenting Justices--in cases where they like what the states are doing--insist that the Court should defer to the states and allow the states to do what the states think is best. You don't, do you? They certainly don't advocate deference when they don't like what a state is doing.]
A few years earlier, Roberts had authored an opinion for the Court to reject another Trump argument against state criminal proceedings. This case involved Trump during his presidency.
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Not surprisingly, Justices Thomas and Alito supported Trump and dissented. Moreover, in a concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Gorsuch, argued that the Court should require a more demanding level of justification for a state subpoena against a president before it can be approved. The Roberts majority declined to do that.
[Footnote: Same as above. You don't really take seriously the dissenters' "we should defer to the states" argument in other cases, do you?]
And here's a more recent case of Trump versus a state from the end of last year. The decision was another major loss for the administration.
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A five-Justice majority--Roberts, the three liberals, and Barrett--joined in an unsigned order rejecting Trump's claim that he could deploy the Illinois national guard to respond to an "invasion or a rebellion or danger of rebellion" in Chicago. That is, against large gatherings in Chicago protesting against Trump's immigration policies and, specifically, the tactics of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents in the city.
The majority held that the Trump administration failed to show that activating the national guard was necessary. Together with Justice Kavanaugh who wrote a separate opinion, the majority upheld the lower court's order halting Trump's actions.
Not surprisingly, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented. They argued, among other things, that the president might have inherent constitutional authority to deploy a state's national guard under circumstances such as in this case. The Court, according to them, should have deferred to the judgment of the president--especially in his emergency application.
[Footnote: Same as above. "Defer-to-the-states" principle apparently applies only when the Justices advocating it like what the states are doing.]
In another immigration-related decision earlier last year, A.A.R.P. v. Trump, the Roberts-led majority put rebuffed Trump's deportation policy that elevated brutal efficiency over the barest of fair treatment.
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The Roberts-led 7-2 majority, in an unsigned per curiam opinion, ruled that the non-citizens were entitled, as a matter of constitutional due process, to some meaningful opportunity to challenge their removal. According to that majority, the bare notice that was being provided to the Venezuelans, lacking any useful information and only delivered the day before deportation--a description the Trump administration did not deny--“surely does not pass muster.”
In an opinion by Alito, he and Thomas dissented. Amidst technical, legal arguments, they evinced--[What can I say?]--as little sympathy for the hardship of the immigrants as the Trump administration. The majority was clearly wrong, Alito argued, because the Court didn't have jurisdiction to rule on this emergency application under the procedural posture of the case. Moreover, he labelled the petition for emergency due process relief an "extraordinary demand."
Whatever the dissenters doubts about the procedural merits of the case, there is no doubt that here, as in other cases thus far identified, Chief Justice Roberts and his majorities were again displaying, at best, impatience with Trump and his policies.
Two more cases. In both of these, the "defer-to-the-states" dissenters did side with the interests of the respective states. But in these cases, the states involved had policies hostile to abortion--a hostility the dissenters favored. So you would certainly expect the dissenters to vote the way they did.
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In the 2024 case of Oklahoma v. Department of Health and Human Service, the Roberts-led majority supported a pro-abortion position of the Biden administration. The majority rejected the strict hostility towards reproductive choice that has been a hallmark of Trump's presidencies and of his state allies.
In a bare unsigned order, the six-Justice majority--Roberts, the three liberals, Barrett and Kavanaugh--sided with the federal government's decision to deny to Oklahoma several million in funding because that state prohibited abortion referrals and even family-planning counseling. Oklahoma's strict anti-abortion policy contravened the federal Public Health Service Act. In a similarly bare unsigned order, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch voted to give Trump-friendly Oklahoma the funds.
As many readers surely know, the Court just issued another abortion-friendly order this month. Once again, the Roberts-led majority sided with reproductive rights and ruled against another Trump-friendly, abortion-hostile state.
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But in an unsigned order of a 7-2 majority, the Supreme Court blocked that ruling. The Chief Justice, the three liberals, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and, this time, with Gorsuch as well, sided with the mifepristone manufacturers and, of course with the women in Louisiana who order it. In ordering the shipments to continue, the majority were apparently not so sure that Louisiana would ultimately prevail.
As one would certainly expect, Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. In his separate opinion, Thomas argued that the 19th century Comstock Act, which prohibits all interstate distribution of contraception and abortion materials, should still be enforced. In his opinion, Alito argued that the interstate mailings of mifepristone effectively undermine the Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson which overruled Roe v. Wade. But the Roberts-led majority seemingly had no interest in expanding the effect of the Trump-instigated Dobbs decision--let alone reviving the Comstock Act.
That's all for now. Did I cherry pick decisions to make my point? Guilty. Did I identify a very limited number of Roberts-led decisions that happened to have a common thread? Yes, guilty.
But the point is that the Roberts Court has not been uniformly supportive of Trump. No, not at all. It might seem that way to some who abhor some of the pro-Trump decisions. To be sure, at times it does seem as though the Court has been issuing one pro-Trump decision after another. Especially after some that might seem shockingly contradictory to established constitutional principles.
But a candid, dispassionate review of the Court's decisions shows that the Court has not been unidirectional when it comes to Trump, his administration, and his policies. And regarding the particular purpose here, Chief Justice Roberts and his majorities have actually handed Trump some very important defeats, and they have increasingly shown an impatience and even utter contempt for this president and his policies.
