A new investigation carried out in May was announced as judges prepare to hand down their biggest sentence of the term.
Voting rights activists gather in Alabama to protest redistricting
Religious leaders and activists gathered in Selma, Alabama, to protest the weakening of voting rights following a Supreme Court ruling.
WASHINGTON – As the justices prepare to hand down their biggest decision of the season, a new poll shows most adults think the Supreme Court usually sides with President Donald Trump.
In a Marquette Law School poll conducted in May, about six in 10 adults said the courts rule in Trump’s favor “almost always” or “most of the time.”
This is despite the fact that in February, a court struck down the sweeping tariffs that were the centerpiece of President Trump’s economic policy.
But the majority of justices have often allowed President Trump to advance controversial policies during litigation, even when those policies are difficult to overturn.
These interim decisions allowed the administration to suspend billions of dollars in federal spending, fire thousands of civil servants, lift deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants, and ban transgender people from military service, among other changes.
By contrast, the court’s tariff decision marks the first major ruling on President Trump’s controversial expansive view of executive powers.
It is unlikely to be the last.
The court is expected to decide in the coming weeks, as early as June 4, whether President Trump can change the birthright citizenship rule, remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board, and exercise control over other agencies that Congress created to make them independent.
President Trump has predicted that a judge will rule against an executive order that ordered federal agencies to deny citizenship to infants born in the United States if neither parent is a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Only about a third of adults surveyed in the Marquette Law School poll said they believe courts should uphold President Trump’s executive orders. Nearly 7 in 10 said the court should rule the order unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment makes everyone born in the United States a citizen.
According to the survey, a majority also does not want President Trump to be able to fire members of the Federal Reserve Board and would like to see checks on the president’s ability to fire leaders of other independent agencies.
But based on the justices’ comments when those cases are argued, a 6-3 conservative majority on the court is expected to side with Trump on the issue of presidential control over some independent agencies. But a majority is unlikely to approve of Mr. Trump’s removal of Mr. Cook from the Fed, and unlikely to support his birthright citizenship executive order.
The public is divided on the two biggest decisions the court has already handed down that don’t directly implicate Trump.
That includes an April decision to water down key provisions of the landmark civil rights law.
Forty-nine percent of adults surveyed supported the court’s ruling that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not require states to create majority-nonwhite congressional districts, while 51% disapproved.
In March, a court struck down Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” for young people, ruling that it violated the free speech rights of Christian counselors.
Among adults surveyed, 52% supported the decision and 48% opposed it.
There was even greater disagreement over another LGBTQ+ issue that courts are still deciding: whether states can ban transgender women and girls from competing on women’s sports teams.
More than six in 10 adults said courts should uphold such a ban. However, 37% disagreed.
The survey of 1,001 adults nationwide was conducted from May 20th to 26th. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
