What's on the Supreme Court docket this term?

The NPR Politics Podcast

The episode explores the high-stakes agenda of the upcoming Supreme Court term, focusing on several landmark cases. Correspondents detail le

Key takeaways

• The Trump administration's reinterpretation of a 1996 law could expand mandatory detention to long-term residents with no criminal records.
• Controversy surrounds the 'shadow docket,' where emergency rulings are issued with minimal briefing or public explanation.

Main topics

• Supreme Court Term Agenda
• Immigration and Mandatory Detention

Notable quotes

The Supreme Court is getting back to work.

Conclusion

The upcoming term serves as a critical test for the judiciary's role i

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:01) This election season, you can streamline your news intake with Up First. Our team of reporters and editors works overnight, so you can start every morning with three stories you need to know. In short episodes, 12-14 minutes long, to save you time and your sanity. Follow Up First on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:22) The Supreme Court is getting back to work. On its agenda, huge cases related to immigration, gun control and more. Today on the pod, we take a look at some of the cases that might be very consequential in the coming court term. Speaker 1 (0:38) It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Supreme Court. Speaker 3 (0:44) And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. Speaker 1 (0:48) All right, Carrie, I want to start with immigration because we actually had like some news today about at least one case that the court is going to be hearing related to immigration. Can you catch us up on that? What is the news? Speaker 2 (0:58) Sure. This is a big one. The Supreme Court is taking a case over the Trump administration's mandatory detention policy for migrants. It all relates to a 1996 law. Every prior president except Donald Trump has interpreted the law to mean that for people who have just crossed the border. There's mandatory detention. But Trump last year basically reinterpreted that law and he's applying it to mandatory detention for people who in some cases have been in the United States for a long time, maybe even decades with no criminal record. And as a result, those people have been flooding the courts with habeas petitions to try to get out. The long and the short of it is they want to be able to make their case to an immigration judge and get out and remain free while their cases take a long time to go through the immigration system. The Trump administration says that's disruptive and unworkable. Now the Supreme Court is going to decide. And the ACLU, which has been representing immigrants in this case, said ultimately this policy could affect millions of people. Speaker 3 (2:09) is allowed to go forward. Does this add to the numbers of people who will be deported? Speaker 2 (2:15) Here's the thing. In the vast majority of lower courts who have considered this question, they've sided with the immigrants. The exceptions are two conservative-dominated appeals courts in the Fifth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit. So if the Supreme Court gives the administration a green light here, Combined with some of the other steps the administration is taking to reverse temporary protected status and other very aggressive immigration steps, it could Speaker 6 (2:45) significantly increase the number of people in detention. There was Speaker 1 (2:49) also a big... case related to third country deportations. The court just ruled ahead of like what is expected to be a larger hearing later this year. Can you talk to us about that? This case came to the court via the emergency docket, Speaker 2 (3:02) what's sometimes called the shadow docket. But the Supreme Court has also granted petition to hear the substantive issues in this coming term that starts on Monday. And the issue here is that the Trump administration has been deporting migrants to third countries, countries to which they've had no prior tie. Some of those people say they haven't had the due process rights or the chance to tell a court or a judge about their fears of persecution and torture in these third countries. And the administration has said on the public record, it's our already sent something like 25,000 people to other countries. Often it's Mexico, sometimes it's countries in Latin America or Africa. Some of these migrants have said they've been beaten up and abused in these other countries to which they have no tie. And so it's a major issue and it's a major humanitarian issue as well. And in combination with some of the other strategies the administration has been using on immigration. This is a way to fast-track people out of the country. So the Speaker 6 (4:07) immigration system, as it's been designed by the Trump administration, operates a number of levers intended to detain more people and ultimately deport them very quickly. The Supreme Court's going to have the last word. Speaker 3 (4:19) Carrie, what can you define shadow docket? Speaker 6 (4:22) Shadow Speaker 2 (4:22) docket is interesting because even the terms are now contested. Speaker 6 (4:25) Some Speaker 2 (4:26) of the justices like to call this the emergency docket. Some like Speaker 6 (4:29) to call it the interim docket. Entire books have been written calling it the shadow docket. The reason it was initially called the shadow docket is that these cases didn't get the same kind of briefing or reasoning necessarily that a regular old case could on the regular old docket of the Supreme Court. And they come willy-nilly at all hours of the day and night in the summer. And over time, the last... Speaker 2 (4:55) 12 years or more, the shadow docket, the emergency docket cases have kind of subsumed the regular cases. Sometimes there are more of them than the regular cases. They've been enormously controversial because there isn't always a developed factual record. The justices don't always explain themselves and what they're doing, which has confused lower court judges. They don't know what they're supposed to do in response to the Supreme Court's decisions and instructions. Speaker 6 (5:19) And some of the justices