WASHINGTON, D.C., October 6, 2025 – Today, the Supreme Court officially begins its term — with one of the worst reputations in its history. The Court continues to receive some of its lowest polling on trust and favorability, and it has spent the summer somehow even further undermining its own credibility.
The Court has been using its shadow docket in an unprecedented way to evade its own precedents and hand legally indefensible power to the Trump administration. The conservative majority’s repeated willingness to let Trump fire people from independent agencies flies in the face of the Humphrey’s Executor precedent, and the justices didn’t even explain their decisions. Most recently, it allowed the administration to withhold $4 billion in foreign-aid funding, ignoring yet another precedent prohibiting the president from impounding funds appropriated by Congress.
In another recent ruling, the Court greenlit racial profiling by ICE agents, which Justice Brett Kavanaugh unimpressively and unconvincingly attempted to defend. As a result, “Kavanaugh stops” has become a new pejorative nickname for the all-too-frequent way that masked, unidentified immigration officials have been disappearing our neighbors, friends, and coworkers — many of whom are legal residents or even citizens — and terrorizing our communities.
Other individual justices have also done their own work to tarnish the Court’s already unpopular image. Justice Clarence Thomas recently admitted in an interview that he lacks any respect for precedent and is eager and willing to overturn it simply if he thinks it’s “stupid.” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, promoting her new book, has defended the conservative justices’ unwillingness to follow their own ethics code when explaining their recusals because she doesn’t think it is fair to the individuals with whom they’d have to acknowledge having conflict-of-interest connections.
It is against this backdrop that the Court is poised to consider several major cases related to our democracy, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and executive power this term.
Alliance for Justice President Rachel Rossi issued the following statement:
“We will be watching this Supreme Court term closely and speaking out loudly against rulings that further erode our democracy and our rights. The judiciary is the branch constitutionally empowered and, indeed, obligated to uphold the rule of law and check the power of the presidency, but the record of the Court’s conservative majority inspires little faith. How can average Americans — let alone lower court judges — understand how to protect our democracy with a Supreme Court that issues inconsistent rulings based on whatever Trump wants? But that is exactly why it is imperative we continue to hold the Court to higher standards, both in terms of its handling of our laws and its handling of the justices’ ethical responsibilities. We must demand better from our justices and remind them that it doesn’t matter that they are unelected; in this democracy, their power derives from the trust and respect of the American people. Let us hope they can earn back some of that respect this term, lest the legitimacy of the Court flounder even more as they sacrifice our Constitution and democracy on the altar of partisanship and ideology.”
Click here to read AFJ’s preview of the major cases coming before the Court this term.