Supreme Court's Most Controversial Rulings This Year

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of consequential rulings in 2022 that have led to controversy and criticism, sometimes coming from members of the Court itself.

The Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, but that doesn't mean self-identified conservatives have been pleased with every ruling issued by the justices over the past 12 months.

This year covered two judicial terms—the end of the 2021/22 term and the beginning of the 2022/23 term. Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the Court on June 30 after several of its most high-profile rulings had been issued. She succeeded Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who retired.

Here are the Court's most controversial rulings this year.

Abortion

In perhaps the most significant decision of 2022, the Court ruled 6-3 to overturn the long-standing constitutional right to abortion established in the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade and reaffirmed in 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling.

The Court experienced an unprecedented breach of privacy when a draft opinion written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito was leaked before the decision was formally announced. When the final opinion came, the conservative justices were subjected to considerable criticism from those who support abortion rights.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said of the ruling: "The Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved the GOP's dark and extreme goal of ripping away women's right to make their own reproductive health decisions."

In their dissenting opinion, the three liberal associate justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said that they dissented "with sorrow" and that the majority had discarded the balance between "respecting a woman as an autonomous being" and protecting the life of a fetus.

The Right to Bear Arms

Another closely watched case centered on gun rights, and the Court's 6-3 decision in June was seen as a victory for Second Amendment advocates.

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the Court ruled that a New York state law requiring someone to show proper cause before obtaining a permit to carry a concealed firearm violated the 14th Amendment. The law had been in place for about a century.

The next month, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed into law a bill restricting the concealed carry of firearms in locations such as government buildings and schools. Her website called the Court's decision "reckless."

Prayer on the Football Field

The Court's majority ruled in favor of a football coach's right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team's games, another opinion issued in June.

The decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District was seen as a victory for religious freedom, but Sotomayor strongly dissented from the majority's view and questioned the facts as they were presented in the majority opinion by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.

"To the degree the court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy's prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts," Sotomayor wrote in an unusual factual dispute between justices.

Public Funding and Religious Schools

In another controversial case that's been seen as a victory for religious rights, the Court ruled 6-3 in Carson v. Makin that a Maine law that excluded religious schools from a state tuition reimbursement program was a violation of the free exercise of religion.

In the Court's ruling, the state's refusal to make the program's public funding available to students who attended schools that engaged in religious instruction was found to be unconstitutional.

Together, the Bremerton and Carson decisions drew criticism.

Andrew Lewis, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati, wrote in The Washington Post that the conservative justices seemed to "favor religious liberty over the separation of church and state."

Trump's Tax Returns

Though the most substantive rulings this year came in the 2021/2022 term, the Court has made some important decisions during the first few months of the current term.

One of the Court's most controversial decisions cleared the way for the Democrat-controlled House to obtain former President Donald Trump's tax returns. No dissent was noted in the ruling.

Trump had asked the Court to prevent the House Ways and Means Committee from accessing his tax records, but the Court refused. In response, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: "The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, & has become nothing more than a political body, with our Country paying the price."

The House Ways and Means Committee is planning to make those tax returns public on Friday.

In January, the Court ruled 8-1 that Trump could not exert executive privilege to block the release of White House records to the House's January 6 committee.

Immigration

With just days to go before the new year, the Court issued another controversial decision when it ruled 5-4 Tuesday to allow the Title 42 immigration policy to remain in place, pending the Court's review of a case being brought by Republican officials in 19 states.

Title 42 is a policy enacted by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic and allows for the speedy expulsion of undocumented immigrants. The policy was set to expire last week.

Following Chief Justice John Roberts' decision to grant a stay to Title 42's expiration, the Court's majority ruled Tuesday to keep the policy in place for now.

This was controversial because the Biden administration had asked the justices to end the policy. Now the administration will not be able to prevent expulsions under Title 42 until the matter is resolved.

The strongest criticism of the decision came from Gorsuch, who called the decision "unwise" in a short dissent published Tuesday.

"Courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort," Gorsuch wrote.