In a year marred by ethics scandals, 4 Supreme Court rulings let marginalized Americans down

The U.S. Supreme Court spent much of 2023 embroiled in scandal as a slew of reports exposed the ethical lapses of two of its most senior justices. But as the high court faced harsh criticism and sharper scrutiny, it delivered a spate of controversial rulings that let many Americans down.

A series of ProPublica reports revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted decades-worth of luxury trips funded by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow and other billionaires, while Crow had purchased Thomas' mother's home in 2014 and paid the tuition of the justice's great-nephew in the mid-2000s. The outlet also found that Justice Samuel Alito had in 2008 accepted a lavish fishing trip paid for by right-wing billionaire Paul Singer. Both justices failed to disclose these gifts in their relevant annual financial disclosures, and Alito did not recuse himself from cases when Singer's hedge fund came before the court. 

The exposés sparked widespread calls for an ethics code to be imposed on the high court, a move the justices seemed to reject until adopting one last month. But their new code of conduct, legal experts and watchdogs say, flops in neglecting to provide a mechanism for enforcement. 

The controversy has loomed over many of the court's 2023 decisions as the justices sided with largely conservative opinions in several hallmark cases, some of which have left the nation's most marginalized with less access and fewer federal protections than they had the year prior. These are some of the Supreme Court's most disappointing rulings of 2023:

Arizona v. Navajo Nation

After filing its initial complaint against the U.S. Department of the Interior and other federal agencies 20 years ago, the Navajo Nation was again set back in its efforts to secure water access in June after the Supreme Court denied its request to force the federal government to help the tribe quantify, determine and access its water rights.

The court rejected the request in a 5-4 vote — with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining the liberal justices in dissenting — ruling that the 1868 treaty that established the Navajo Reservation in the Colorado River Basin as the tribe's "permanent home" did not require the U.S. to make efforts toward securing the tribe's water. 

"The 1868 treaty ‘set apart’ a reservation for the 'use and occupation of the Navajo tribe,'" Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. "But it contained no ‘rights-creating or duty-imposing’ language that imposed a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe.”

According to ProPublica, the Navajo Nation filed the suit in 2003 in hopes of pushing the federal government to move more quickly in helping to settle its water rights as guaranteed by treaties and court cases. A third of families on the reservation, an area that includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, lack access to clean water and must transport it from wells, purchase bottled water or use contaminated water to meet their needs, according to DigDeep, a nonprofit that filed an amicus brief in support of the Navajo Nation.

The tribe was on the verge of a settlement with Arizona in 2010 but the deal died in Congress after being deemed too expensive. Another attempt two years later was rejected by the tribal council after Arizona officials insisted on a provision for a coal mine, while another fizzled in 2020 after state lawmakers suggested imposing a condition pertaining to casino license renewal. 

"Today, the Court rejects a request the Navajo Nation never made," Gorsuch wrote in the dissent, asserting that the nation simply asked the United States to identify the water rights it holds for them. 

“The Navajo have tried it all. They have written federal officials. They have moved this Court to clarify the United States’ responsibilities when representing them. They have sought to intervene directly in water-related litigation,” Gorsuch added. “At each turn, they have received the same answer: ‘Try again.’”

Leaders of Native American rights groups lambasted the ruling and vowed to continue fighting to secure their water rights. 

"Water is necessary for all life, and when our ancestors negotiated agreements with the United States to secure our lands and our protection, water was understood and still is understood to be inseparable from the land and from our peoples," said Fawn Sharp, the president of the National Congress of American Indians in a statement at the time.

"Today, the Supreme Court has once again assisted in the United States' centuries-long attempts to try to get out of the promises they have made to Tribal Nations by stating that treaties only secure access to water, but do not require the United States to take any steps to protect or provide that water to our people."

Students For Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina

On June 29, the Supreme Court declared race-based affirmative action in college admissions unlawful and in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause, effectively barring colleges from considering the race of a prospective student during the admissions process.

The court ruled 6-3 in favor of Students For Fair Admissions, a conservative-funded membership group challenging race-based affirmative action, which claimed that UNC's policy discriminated against white and Asian applicants. The same-day ruling of a parallel case against Harvard University brought by the same group — claiming Harvard's policy discriminated against Asian applicants — saw the justices vote 6-2, with liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Harvard alum with other ties to the university, recusing herself.  

In the majority opinion, which Thomas, Alito and the other conservative justices joined, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Harvard and UNC's race-based consideration practices "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points."

The Supreme Court's decision sparked outcry among civil rights groups and Democratic leaders, with many arguing that the ruling denies Black and brown youth equal opportunity in their pursuit of higher education. Leaders of Asian Americans Advancing Justice noted that the change would also put many of the Asian American students SFFA purported to advocate for at a disadvantage, particularly "Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, and Southeast Asian communities who continue to face significant barriers to higher education."

In addition to discarding decades of legal precedent and social progress, "The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent.  

While the decision mostly impacts the admissions processes of highly competitive universities, experience suggests that those schools will struggle to maintain diverse student bodies that reflect the demographics of the states they serve without race-conscious admissions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Data showed that colleges in nine states that had already banned race-conscious admissions before the Supreme Court decision ultimately admitted fewer Black, Hispanic and Native American students to their universities after implementing the change despite efforts to boost numbers through alternative means. 

In a scathing dissenting opinion in the UNC case, Jackson rebuked the ruling as "truly a tragedy for us all."

303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

Just a day after its affirmative action ruling, the Supreme Court stripped access and protection from the LGBTQ community and other protected groups by making it legal for business owners to reject customers seeking custom services or goods that convey messages the owner disagrees with.

In an ideological split, the justices ruled 6-3 in favor of 303 Creative LLC owner Lorie Smith, a Colorado designer who sought an exemption from the state's Anti-Discrimination Act in order to legally deny same-sex couples wedding website services she had yet to offer, citing religious protections.

Notably, Smith — represented in the case by Alliance Defending Freedom, an ultraconservative legal organization some watchdogs have designated an extremist, anti-LGBTQ group — had never received a verified request to design a custom wedding website for a same-sex couple. 

Gorsuch authored the majority opinion, establishing that Smith's hypothetical wedding website constitutes "protected First Amendment speech" and finding that Colorado's law "seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance."

As LGBTQ rights groups decried the ruling, other critics also admonished the court for taking on what they saw as an unnecessary rehash of the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court ruled in favor of a baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. In that case, the court had dodged the discrimination concern altogether. 

“Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Elena Kagan and Jackson.

This year's ruling, though not granting a blanket ability to discriminate against LGBTQ people, left anti-discrimination protections and other civil rights laws at risk of reinterpretation by other courts, legal experts told 19th News.

“It would potentially carve out a new and really dangerous loophole in civil rights protections, not just for LGBTQ people, but it could potentially create a precedent that would weaken civil rights protections for all people on any basis,” Olivia Hunt, policy director for the National Center For Transgender Equality, told the outlet. 

Since the decision, Smith has released a slate of brief statements addressing the public, clients and the media on the 303 Creative website. As of Thursday, she has yet to offer custom wedding website services, though a banner on the company site indicates the service is "coming soon."

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Biden v. Nebraska

The Supreme Court dealt millions of Americans a disheartening blow when it struck down President Joe Biden's multibillion-dollar student debt relief plan on June 29, axing widely anticipated debt cancellation for more than 40 million Americans.

The court ruled that the Biden administration did not have the authority to enact the program because of its wide scope — aiming to release 43 million student loan borrowers from a total of $430 billion of debt. The justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines in favor of the six suing states. 

In the majority opinion, Roberts wrote that the debt relief plan departed too far from the "extremely modest and narrow scope" of previous applications of the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities Act, which allows the secretary of education to "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision" pertaining to student financial aid under Title IV of the Education Act as they deem it necessary in times of war or national emergency.

Biden's plan, enacted in 2022 in response to the financial hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, strove to forgive up to $10,000 for borrowers with eligible loans who make less than $125,000 and cancel up to $20,000 of debt for qualified Pell Grant recipients. 

The ruling, Roberts added, aligns with the court's longtime precedent requiring Congress' input on a matter before secretaries can "unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy."

Advocacy organizations railed against the decision, with the Student Borrower Protection Center, a nonprofit organization seeking to eliminate the burden of student loan debt, accusing the court of corruption and ripping "away critical relief from 40 million borrowers and their families" in a statement at the time.

Biden, in June remarks at the White House, said the court's decision "was a mistake, was wrong," and vowed to continue fighting "to deliver borrowers what they need."

The president soon began rolling out a new program for student loan repayment shortly after the high court's decision that aims to lower monthly payments for borrowers, among other measures, according to Politico. He announced Tuesday that his administration has canceled over $130 billion in student loan debt for more than 3 million Americans this year.