Supreme Court Hands Trump Major Wins on Immigration, Guns, and Roundup

Neutral summary

In a single day of decisions, the Supreme Court reshaped three major areas of American law, handing the Trump administration victories on immigration policy while also striking down a Hawaii gun law and largely ending thousands of cancer lawsuits against the maker of Roundup weedkiller. The immigration rulings, both 6-3 along ideological lines, are likely the most consequential. In Mullin v. Doe, the court ruled that the president holds unreviewable authority to terminate Temporary Protected Status, clearing the way for the deportation of more than 350,000 Haitian and Syrian nationals who have been living and working legally in the United States, some for decades. A separate ruling allows the administration to revive its so-called metering policy, permitting border agents to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. Soil, the physical threshold that triggers the right to apply for asylum under federal law. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority in the asylum case, compared a migrant stopped just short of the border to a running back tackled on the one-yard line. On guns, the court's 6-3 majority in Wolford v. Lopez struck down Hawaii's rule requiring gun owners to obtain written permission before carrying on private property open to the public, a decision that casts doubt on similar laws in other states. On Roundup, the court sided with Bayer, ruling that federal pesticide labeling law preempts state-court failure-to-warn claims, effectively neutralizing a wave of litigation that had already produced several multibillion-dollar jury verdicts against the company.