Trump’s election could ensure a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for decades

WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump has already appointed three The Supreme Court justices. In his second term, he might have a chance to name two more and create a Supreme Court with a majority of Trump appointees that could serve for decades.

The decisive outcome saves the court from having to wade into electoral disputes. It also looks set to change the content of cases that come before the courts, including on abortion and immigration.

The two oldest judges – Clarence Thomas76 and Samuel Alito74 — could consider stepping down knowing that Trump, a Republican, would nominate replacements who could be three decades younger and ensure conservative dominance of the court through mid-century or longer.

Trump would have a long list of candidates to choose from among the more than 50 men and women he appointed to federal appeals courts, including some of Thomas’ and Alito’s former law clerks.

If both men were to retire, they likely would not do so at the same time to minimize disruption to the court. Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens retired a year apart during the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Thomas has said on more than one occasion that he has no intention of retiring.

But Ed Whelan, a conservative lawyer who once clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, wrote on the National Review’s Bench Memos blog that Thomas will realize the best way to polish his legacy is to have a like-minded justice replace him and retire before the midterm congressional elections.

If Thomas remains on the court until close to his 80th birthday, in June 2028, he will surpass William O. Douglas as the longest-serving justice. Douglas was on the field for more than 36 years.

There is no guarantee that Republicans will have their Senate majority then, and Thomas saw what happened when one of his colleagues didn’t back down when she might have, Whelan wrote. “But he would be foolish to risk repeating Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s mistake — only to keep dying in office and be replaced by someone with a completely different judicial philosophy,” Whelan wrote.

Ginsburg died in September 2020, less than two months before Joe Biden’s election as president. Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy, and majority Republicans hammered her nomination through the Senate before the election.

Barrett joined Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s two other Supreme Court appointees, with Thomas and Alito to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the national right to abortion.

Along with Chief Justice John Roberts, conservatives have also expanded gun rights, ended affirmative action in college admissions, reined in the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change and weakened federal regulators by overturning a 40-year-old decision that had long been a target of business and conservative interests.

The court’s landmark decision did not end its involvement with abortion: The justices also heard cases this year over emergency abortions in states with bans and access to medical abortion.

The new administration appears to be ditching Biden administration guidance that says doctors must provide emergency abortions if necessary to protect a woman’s life or health, even in states where abortion is otherwise prohibited. That would end a case from Idaho that the justices sent back to lower courts over the summer.

Access to the abortion drug mifepristone also faces a challenge renewed challenge in lower dishes. That suit could have an uphill battle in lower courts after The Supreme Court maintained access to the drug earlier this year, but abortion opponents have floated other ways a conservative administration could limit access to the drug. That includes enforcing a 19th-century “anti-vice” law called The Comstock Act that prohibits the distribution of drugs that can be used for abortion, although Trump himself has not stated a clear position on mifepristone.

Immigration cases are also bubbling up through the courts over the Obama era Deferred Action for Child Income. Trump tried to end DACA in his first term, but he was thwarted by the Supreme Court. Now, the conservative appeals court based in New Orleans is considering whether DACA is legal.

One of the first Trump-era battles to reach the Supreme Court concerned the ban on visitors from some Muslim-majority countries. The judges ended up approving the program after two revisions.

He spoke during the campaign to bring back the travel ban.