The Supreme Court appears to be on the cusp of ending its 49-year-old legal precedent that protects abortion rights nationwide if the majority signs on to a draft opinion obtained and published by Politico on Monday.

The revelation of the draft opinion does not have an immediate effect on abortion access. If the apparent majority willing to overturn Roe v. Wade stays firm, the precedent would not be overturned until the formal release of the court's ruling, which is likely to come in June.

But the ruling previewed in the draft authored by Justice Samuel Alito would upend abortion access by giving states the ability to decide how aggressively to restrict access to the procedure. Here's what to know.

What is the draft opinion?

A draft opinion is just what it sounds like, an opinion that is still in the works and has not been finalized. Politico obtained and published what it described as a draft Supreme Court majority opinion striking down Roe v. Wade. It was written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito and circulated among the justices in February.

Notably, the opinion is a draft and the court's votes are not final until the formal opinions are officially released. Drafts are often amended and changed based on the input of the other justices. In some instances, justices have switched sides before an opinion is issued, such as when Chief Justice John Roberts flipped and saved Obamacare in 2012.

The opinion in the case in question, Dobbs v. Jackson, is a challenge to Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban. The state had asked the justices to use the case to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling -- and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling upholding Roe -- that together guarantee a right to an abortion before a fetus is viable.

What does the draft mean immediately for abortion rights?

Until a final opinion is released, Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land. Justices can, and have in the past, changed their votes after initial draft opinions are circulated.

But the revelation of where the court is likely headed will undoubtedly supercharge what have been contentious fights in state legislatures over how to prepare for a ruling that overturns Roe and put abortion at the forefront of the national political discourse as the country awaits the final ruling.

What does the draft signal about where the court is going on Roe?

The draft signals that there were at least five votes for overturning Roe when the justices privately convened after the case's oral arguments, which were held in December.

Under normal procedures, by the end of that week, the justices would have met in their private conference to take a preliminary vote on the issue.

They would have gone around the table in order of seniority discussing their views on the case. Roberts, as chief justice, would have gone first. After that initial tally, if the chief was in the majority, he would assign the majority opinion. Otherwise, the most senior justice would have that responsibility. After that, drafts go between justices' chambers. In the past, justices have changed their votes and sometimes a majority opinion ultimately becomes a dissent.

It appears, according to Politico's report, that five justices were willing to vote to overturn Roe. Roberts did not want to completely overturn Roe v. Wade, sources tell CNN. At the same time, he wants to uphold the Mississippi law. That would leave the four justices willing to join an Alito opinion overturning Roe outright to be Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

What will happen to abortion access if the court overrules Roe?

Abortion access would depend on where you live in the country. In the draft opinion, Alito writes that the Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision: "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's representatives."

That would mean state legislatures could choose for themselves how much to restrict abortion access. Several states are poised to implement extreme limits or outright bans on the procedure. Some states have on their books so-called trigger bans, which would put into effect prohibitions on abortion if and when the Supreme Court releases a formal opinion overturning Roe.

Activity around passing restrictive laws in red states picked up after the Dobbs case was taken up for review and after oral arguments suggested the conservative wing may have had five voters to overturn Roe.

For instance, Kentucky and other states passed 15-week bans, like the Mississippi law before the Supreme Court, while other state legislatures sought to bar abortion earlier in the pregnancy. Some of those laws, including Kentucky's, have already been blocked by federal courts that cited the existing Supreme Court abortion precedent that has not yet been overturned.

On the other side of the spectrum, Democratic-led states are considering proposals to shore up abortion rights. Connecticut's legislature recently approved legislation to make abortions easier to obtain in the state and that would protect their abortion provider from the anti-abortion laws of other states. Similar proposals are under consideration in New York, California and elsewhere.

Some purple states might take a middle ground approach, stopping short of banning abortion outright, but limiting at earlier points in the pregnancy than what was previously allowed under the line current precedent draws at viability, a point around 23 weeks into pregnancy.

The U.S. Senate will consider legislation that would attempt to block states from banning abortions, essentially keeping the status quo for abortion policy in the U.S. Legislation could go up for a vote next week.

The proposed legislation comes in the wake of a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would undo the legal precedent set in Roe versus Wade. The draft published by Politico earlier this week indicates the Supreme Court is poised to undo Roe versus Wade, opening the door for states to ban or curtail a person’s ability to seek an abortion.

While most Democrats have vowed to legislate abortion rights into law, such legislation likely does not have enough support despite Democrats holding advantages in both the Senate and House. Such a measure could require 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. Some Democrats have also expressed a reticence to eliminate the filibuster.

“They spent a decade, two decades trying to repeal Roe and now they won't own up to it,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said about Republicans. “They're like the dog that caught the bus. They know they're on the wrong side of history. They know they're on the wrong side of where the American people are. They know they'll pay consequences in the 2022 elections. And their spin masters are telling them to avoid the subject and they did.”

The leader of Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell, expressed his displeasure at the leak.

“Never before, never before in modern history has an internal draft been leaked to the public while the justices were still deciding a case. Never before. Whoever committed this lawless act knew exactly what it could bring about. The Justices already require security,” McConnell said.

Democrats appear poised to use the 2022 midterm election as a referendum on abortion rights.

“If the Court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose. And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November. At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice Senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law,” President Joe Biden said earlier this week.

WASHINGTON — The Senate has passed legislation to beef up security for Supreme Court justices.

Lawmakers are seeking to ensure that justices and their families are protected as the court deliberates abortion access and whether to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

The bipartisan bill passed by voice vote with no objections Monday.

While it doesn't provide additional funding, that could come later.

The measure aims to put the court on par with the executive and legislative branches, making certain the nine justices are provided security as some protesters have gathered outside their homes.

The legislation comes one week after Politico leaked a draft of a Supreme Court opinion that indicated Roe v. Wade would be overturned as soon as June.

The bill now moves to the House for its consideration before heading to President Joe Biden’s desk.

NEW YORK —

Top leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on the faithful to pray and fast Friday, in hopes the Supreme Court is on track to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. Yet even among Catholics who oppose abortion, there is some unease about the consequences of such a ruling.

A recently leaked Supreme Court draft opinion suggests that a majority of the nine justices are poised to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision – a move that would allow individual states to outlaw abortion.

Some anti-abortion Catholics say such an outcome would be the answer to their prayers. Others caution that Catholic leaders should distance themselves from the politically partisan wing of the anti-abortion movement and expand their concept of “pro-life” by supporting broad policies that set up safety nets for unwed mothers and low-income families.

Madison Chastain, a Catholic blogger and disability advocate, describes herself as anti-abortion, yet opposes overturning Roe and criminalizing abortions.

Factors that cause abortion, she wrote in the National Catholic Reporter, include lack of comprehensive sex education, inadequate health care, and workplace inequalities.

“Making abortion illegal before addressing these injustices is going to kill women, because women will continue to have abortions, secretively and unsafely,” she wrote.”

Sam Sawyer, a journalist and Jesuit priest, says he is a “dedicated pro-life advocate” who favors Roe’s reversal. Yet he responded to the leak with an essay listing reasons why abortion rights supporters are so alarmed by that prospect.

“The pro-life movement and its political alliances are perceived as a threat not just to abortion itself but also to democratic norms, to judicial commitments to civil rights, and to women’s health and economic security,“ Sawyer wrote in America, the Jesuit magazine for which he is a senior editor.

Republican politicians, backed by anti-abortion leaders, “have used the lives of the unborn as moral cover for ignoring other calls for justice,” Sawyer wrote. “The pro-life movement’s political allies have gutted social safety net programs that would make it easier for women to carry pregnancies to term.”

The call for a day of fasting and prayer came from Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, the president of the U.S. bishops conference, and Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

They requested prayers for the overturning of Roe and for “the conversion of the hearts and minds of those who advocate for abortion.”

The archbishops echoed the calls of other Catholic leaders who, after the Supreme Court leak, suggested that a reversal of Roe should be coupled with expanded outreach and support for pregnant women and new mothers.

Lori highlighted a USCCB program called Walking With Moms in Need, saying the church should redouble its efforts “to accompany women and couples who are facing unexpected or difficult pregnancies, and during the early years of parenthood.”

The bishops conference has designated the “threat of abortion” as its preeminent priority – a viewpoint that many lay Catholics don't share. According to Pew Research Center surveys, 56% of U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Professor O. Carter Snead, who teaches law and political science at the University of Notre Dame, said via email that most Catholics engaging in anti-abortion activism “are not hard political partisans but rather people seeking to care for moms and babies by whatever means are available.”

As an example, Snead cited Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture – which he directs – and one of its initiatives, called “Women and Children First: Imagining a Post-Roe World.” Through teaching, research and public engagement, the initiative seeks to strengthen support for “women, children (born and unborn), and families in need.”

However, achieving broad bipartisan collaboration on such initiatives may not come soon, Snead acknowledged.

“It is true, regrettably, that the only political party that has been willing to partner to provide legal protection for the unborn is the Republicans,” he said.

Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at The Catholic University of America, also doubted there could be a post-Roe surge of bipartisanship on abortion.

“So long as Democrats insist on abortion for all nine months of a pregnancy, and as long as Republicans recognize that abortion runs contrary to the 14th Amendment, this will remain a partisan issue,” he said via email.

“But the goal of the pro-life movement has never been partisan,” Pecknold added. “The goal is justice for pre-born persons who have a right to live, to be loved, to be raised in a family.”

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas – an outspoken critic of Catholic politicians who support abortion rights — said abortion opponents “must continue to provide support and care for the mothers who find themselves in difficult situations.”

“I pray that we may move to a place where mother and child are both held as sacred and society supports both lives in every way possible,” he said via email.

David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, questioned the significance of recent promises by Catholic bishops and other anti-abortion leaders to boost support for unwed mothers.

“Can this movement that is so tied to the Republican Party and the conservative movement suddenly pivot to mobilizing its people for socially liberal policies?” Gibson asked, referring to programs such as subsidized child care and paid maternity leaves.

Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, says the bishops bear partial responsibility for the entrenched polarization over abortion, which he expects to continue even if Roe is overturned.

“It’s unrealistically hopeful to think that the habits of division will be abandoned,” said Millies, suggesting that the bishops could have done more to reduce abortions over the years by pressing hard for stronger, better-funded social programs.

Rebecca Bratten Weiss, a writer and the digital editor of U.S. Catholic magazine, said she no longer labels herself “pro-life” — though she was active in that movement for many years and believes all life is worthy of protection.

“The people who are working to overturn Roe have made it quite clear they have zero interest in expanding safety nets,” she said. “They either haven't thought through the consequences, or they are OK with the consequences — a higher rate of infant mortality, more women seeking unsafe abortions, more families driven to desperate measures.”

Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest who writes for Religion News Service, suggested in a column that reversal of Roe should be an occasion for reassessment by the many bishops who embraced the Republican Party because of its anti-abortion stance.

“Catholic bishops will celebrate this victory for which they have worked for decades, but ironically it should lead to a divorce between the bishops and Republicans,” Reese wrote. “The GOP has nothing else to offer them. In fact, except for abortion, its proposals are the opposite of Catholic social teaching.”

Assuming Roe is overturned, Reese added, “the bishops can declare victory on abortion and turn their focus to social programs ... that help women have and raise children so they are not forced to have abortions. ”

Yet Reese doubts this will happen.

“My guess is they will continue to fight as long as there is no consensus in America on abortion,” he wrote. “This will mean sticking with the Republicans and sacrificing all their other priorities.”

The Supreme Court could potentially expand second amendment rights as it takes a look at a New York law.

Currently, New York law requires people seeking a concealed carry license to show a “proper cause.”

In 2008, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep arms at home for self-defense.

Now a new case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. Bruen, questions whether handguns can be carried in public for self-defense.

In order to conceal carry, New Yorkers must prove that they have a great need for the license and that they face a “unique danger” to their life.

Conservative justices are in favor of striking down the New York law, arguing that it goes too far and imposes a burden on the Second Amendment.

Some justices are open to considering to allowing New York to ban guns from crowded places.

Arguments were held in November, months before a gunman opened fire at a Buffalo grocery store and killed 10, and another opened fire at a Texas elementary school and killed 21.

A decision from the Supreme Court is expected in the coming weeks.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that suspects cannot sue a police officer for damages if they are not warned about their right to remain silent before being questioned.

In a 6-3 vote, the Justices sided with a sheriff’s deputy that a Los Angeles hospital worker sued for failing to read a Miranda warning after being accused of sexually assaulting a patient, the Associated Press reported.

The court ruled that although Miranda rights protect constitutional rights, the warning itself is not a right that could be brought about in a civil lawsuit, CNN reported.

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito stated that “a violation of Miranda is not itself a violation of the Fifth Amendment,” nor do “we see no justification for expanding Miranda to confer a right to sue"  under Section 1983.

Those for it, including Justice Elena Kagan, wrote that the decision “prevents individuals from obtaining any redress when police violate their rights under Miranda.”

Warning: The above video is live and may be graphic in nature. Viewer discretion is advised.

The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years in a decision by its conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. Friday's outcome is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.

The decision, unthinkable just a few years ago, was the culmination of decades of efforts by abortion opponents, made possible by an emboldened right side of the court that has been fortified by three appointees of former President Donald Trump.

The ruling came more than a month after the stunning leak of a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating the court was prepared to take this momentous step.

It puts the court at odds with a majority of Americans who favored preserving Roe, according to opinion polls.

Alito, in the final opinion issued Friday, wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion, were wrong the day they were decided and must be overturned.

Authority to regulate abortion rests with the political branches, not the courts, Alito wrote.

Joining Alito were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The latter three justices are Trump appointees. Thomas first voted to overrule Roe 30 years ago.

Chief Justice John Roberts would have stopped short of ending the abortion right, noting that he would have upheld the Mississippi law at the heart of the case, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and said no more.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — the diminished liberal wing of the court — were in dissent.

The ruling is expected to disproportionately affect minority women who already face limited access to health care, according to statistics analyzed by The Associated Press.

Thirteen states, mainly in the South and Midwest, already have laws on the books that ban abortion in the event Roe is overturned. Another half-dozen states have near-total bans or prohibitions after 6 weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

In roughly a half-dozen other states, the fight will be over dormant abortion bans that were enacted before Roe was decided in 1973 or new proposals to sharply limit when abortions can be performed, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

More than 90% of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, and more than half are now done with pills, not surgery, according to data compiled by Guttmacher.

The decision came against a backdrop of public opinion surveys that find a majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe and handing the question of whether to permit abortion entirely to the states. Polls conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and others also have consistently shown about 1 in 10 Americans want abortion to be illegal in all cases. A majority are in favor of abortion being legal in all or most circumstances, but polls indicate many also support restrictions especially later in pregnancy.

The Biden administration and other defenders of abortion rights have warned that a decision overturning Roe also would threaten other high court decisions in favor of gay rights and even potentially, contraception.

But Alito wrote in his draft opinion that his analysis addresses abortion only, not other rights that also stem from a right to privacy that the high court has found implicit, though not directly stated, in the Constitution. Abortion is different, Alito wrote, because of the unique moral question it poses.

Whatever the intentions of the person who leaked Alito's draft opinion, the conservatives held firm in overturning Roe and Casey.

In his draft, Alito dismissed the arguments in favor of retaining the two decisions, including that multiple generations of American women have partly relied on the right to abortion to gain economic and political power.

Changing the composition of the court has been central to the anti-abortion side's strategy. Mississippi and its allies made increasingly aggressive arguments as the case developed, and two high-court defenders of abortion rights retired or died. The state initially argued that its law could be upheld without overruling the court's abortion precedents.

Then-Gov. Phil Bryant signed the 15-week measure into law in March 2018, when Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were still members of a five-justice majority that was mainly protective of abortion rights.

By early summer, Kennedy had retired and was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh a few months later. The Mississippi law was blocked in lower federal courts.

But the state always was headed to the nation's highest court. It did not even ask for a hearing before a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ultimately held the law invalid in December 2019.

By early September 2020, the Supreme Court was ready to consider the state's appeal.

The court scheduled the case for consideration at the justices' private conference on Sept. 29. But in the intervening weeks, Ginsburg died and Barrett was quickly nominated and confirmed without a single Democratic vote.

The stage now was set, although it took the court another half year to agree to hear the case.

By the time Mississippi filed its main written argument with the court in the summer, the thrust of its argument had changed and it was now calling for the wholesale overruling of Roe and Casey.

The first sign that the court might be receptive to wiping away the constitutional right to abortion came in late summer, when the justices divided 5-4 in allowing Texas to enforce a ban on the procedure at roughly six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. That dispute turned on the unique structure of the law, including its enforcement by private citizens rather than by state officials, and how it can be challenged in court.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in a searing dissent for the three liberal justices that their conservative colleagues refused to block "a flagrantly unconstitutional law" that "flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents." Roberts was also among the dissenters.

Then in December, after hearing additional arguments over whether to block the Texas law known as S.B. 8, the court again declined to do so, also by a 5-4 vote. "The clear purpose and actual effect of S. B. 8 has been to nullify this Court's rulings," Roberts wrote, in a partial dissent.

In their Senate hearings, Trump's three high-court picks carefully skirted questions about how they would vote in any cases, including about abortion.

But even as Democrats and abortion rights supporters predicted Kavanaugh and Gorsuch would vote to upend abortion rights if confirmed, the two left at least one Republican senator with a different impression. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine predicted Gorsuch and Kavanaugh wouldn't support overturning the abortion cases, based on private conversations she had with them when they were nominees to the Supreme Court.

Barrett was perhaps the most vocal opponent of abortion in her time as a law professor, before becoming a federal judge in 2017. She was a member of anti-abortion groups at Notre Dame University, where she taught law, and she signed a newspaper ad opposing "abortion on demand" and defending "the right to life from fertilization to natural death." She promised to set aside her personal views when judging cases.

Trump, meanwhile, had predicted as a candidate that whoever he named to the court would "automatically" vote to overrule Roe.

Cecilia Otero an Oklahoma resident, is asking herself a lot of questions these days.

"Plan B, do I need to go and buy like, you know, a few to have on hand just in case? There's also the Plan C pill, and I'm just like, living in Oklahoma. I'm just like, well, how do I access that? And I don't know, like, my options feel very dwindled," Otero said.

At just shy of 32, she's made the call that she doesn’t want to have children. But in her home state of Oklahoma, she knows that should she get pregnant — she'd have some tough decisions to make.

"I feel like I don't have that right to choose anymore," Otero said.

And — she really doesn’t. Just about two months ago, Republican Governor Kevin Stitt signed a total abortion ban into law, enforced by civil lawsuits similar to the 2021 law upheld in Texas. It was just the latest in a string of anti-abortion bills in the state, but it’s the one that took care to a screeching halt.

Tamya Cox-Toure is the Executive Director at ACLU Oklahoma.

"Because of the fear of being sued with a $10,000 balance sheet, providers took the necessary steps in Oklahoma and stopped care on Friday when it went into effect," Cox-Toure said.

Abortion care facilities have been sitting vacant for more than a month — and even abortion care funds have been put on pause while lawyers figure out the legalities of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.

"We have no idea what assist means. So people who may donate to our abortion fund, could they be in violation of these laws? People who help someone go to a state where abortion is legal, are they now in violation?" Cox-Toure said.

Oklahoma’s Attorney General John O’Connor on Friday that he believes the law is clear.

"I would say if you put up a billboard or if you advertise that that you're going to provide abortions in Oklahoma or in another state, that you're soliciting an abortion. So law enforcement is now activated with respect to any efforts to aid, abet, or solicit abortions," O’Connor said.

There are currently a handful of challenges in front of the state supreme court — dating back to 2017. But for now, their eyes are on Kansas — the only nearby state that permits abortion. But voters will weigh in there on a ballot initiative in August that could end that safe haven.

"We would be very much the, you know, abortion access desert because of where we are," Cox-Toure said.

Should it be successful — there may be an effort for a ballot initiative here, too. After all — a recent poll showed more than half of Oklahomans did not want to see a total ban.

Newsy is the nation’s only free 24/7 national news network. You can find Newsy using your TV’s digital antenna or stream for free. See all the ways you can watch Newsy here.

Overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating affirmative action in higher education had been leading goals of the conservative legal movement for decades.

In a span of 370 days, a Supreme Court reshaped by three justices nominated by President Donald Trump made both a reality.

Last June, the court ended nationwide protections for abortion rights. This past week, the court’s conservative majority decided that race-conscious admissions programs at the oldest private and public colleges in the country, Harvard and the University of North Carolina, were unlawful.

Precedents that had stood since the 1970s were overturned, explicitly in the case of abortion and effectively in the affirmative action context.

“That is what is notable about this court. It’s making huge changes in highly salient areas in a very short period of time,” said Tara Leigh Grove, a law professor at the University of Texas.

As ethical questions swirled around the court and public trust in the institution had already dipped to a 50-year low, there were other consequential decisions in which the six conservatives prevailed.

They rejected the Biden administration's $400 billion student loan forgiveness program and held that a Christian graphic artist can refuse on free speech grounds to design websites for same-sex couples, despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and other characteristics.

The court, by a 5-4 vote, also sharply limited the federal government's authority to police water pollution into certain wetlands, although all nine justices rejected the administration's position.

Affirmative action was arguably the biggest constitutional decision of the year, and it showcased fiercely opposing opinions from the court's two Black justices, Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

They offered sharply contrasting takes on affirmative action. Thomas was in the majority to end it. Jackson, in her first year on the court, was in dissent.

The past year also had a number of notable surprises.

Differing coalitions of conservative and liberal justices ruled in favor of Black voters in an Alabama redistricting case and refused to embrace broad arguments in a North Carolina redistricting case that could have left state legislatures unchecked and dramatically altered elections for Congress and president.

The court also ruled for the Biden administration in a fight over deportation priorities and left in place the Indian Child Welfare Act, the federal law aimed at keeping Native American children with Native families.

Those cases reflected the control that Chief Justice John Roberts asserted, or perhaps reasserted, over the court following a year in which the other five conservatives moved more quickly than he wanted in some areas, including abortion.

Roberts wrote a disproportionate share of the term's biggest cases: conservative outcomes on affirmative action and the student loan plan, and liberal victories in Alabama and North Carolina.

The Alabama case may have been the most surprising because Roberts had consistently sought to narrow the landmark Voting Rights Act since his days as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration. As chief justice, he wrote the decision 10 years ago that gutted a key provision of the law.

But in the Alabama case and elsewhere, Roberts was part of majorities that rejected the most aggressive legal arguments put forth by Republican elected officials and conservative legal advocates.

The mixed bag of decisions almost seemed designed to counter arguments about the court's legitimacy, raised by Democratic and liberal critics — and some justices — in response to last year's abortion ruling, among others. The narrative was amplified by published reports of undisclosed, paid jet travel and fancy trips for Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito from billionaire Republican donors.

“I don’t think the court consciously takes opinion into account,” Grove said. “But I think if there’s anyone who might consciously think about these issues, it’s the institutionalist, the chief justice. He’s been extremely concerned about the attacks on the Supreme Court.”

On the term's final day, Roberts urged the public to not mistake disagreement among the justices for disparagement of the court. “Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country,” he wrote in the student loans case in response to a stinging dissent by Justice Elena Kagan.

Roberts has resisted instituting a code of ethics for the court and has questioned whether Congress has the authority to impose one. Still, he has said, without providing specifics, that the justices would do more to show they adhere to high ethical standards.

Some conservative law professors rejected the idea that the court bowed to outside pressures, consciously or otherwise.

“There were a lot of external atmospherics that really could have affected court business, but didn't,” said Jennifer Mascott, a George Mason University law professor.

Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, pointed to roughly equal numbers of major decisions that could be characterized as politically liberal or conservative.

Levey said conservatives “were not disappointed by this term.” Democrats and their allies “warned the nation about an ideologically extreme Supreme Court but wound up cheering as many major decisions as they decried,” Levey wrote in an email.

But some liberal critics were not mollified.

Brian Fallon, director of the court reform group Demand Justice, called the past year “another disastrous Supreme Court term” and mocked experts who “squint to find so-called silver linings in the Court’s decisions to suggest all is not lost, or they will emphasize one or two so-called moderate decisions from the term to suggest the Court is not as extreme as we think and can still be persuaded from time to time.”

Biden himself said on MSNBC on Thursday that the current court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.” He cited as examples the overturning of abortion protections and other decisions that had been precedent for decades.

Still, Biden said, he thought some on the high court “are beginning to realize their legitimacy is being questioned in ways it hasn’t been questioned in the past.”

The justices are now embarking on a long summer break. They return to the bench on the first Monday in October for a term that so far appears to lack the blockbuster cases that made the past two terms so momentous.

The court will examine the legal fallout from last year's major expansion of gun rights, in a case over a domestic violence gun ban that was struck down by a lower court.

A new legal battle over abortion also could make its way to the court in coming months. In April, the court preserved access to mifepristone, a drug used in the most common method of abortion, while a lawsuit over it makes its way through federal court.

The conservative majority also will have opportunities to further constrain federal regulatory agencies, including a case that asks them to overturn the so-called Chevron decision that defers to regulators when they seek to give effect to big-picture, sometimes vague, laws written by Congress. The 1984 decision has been cited by judges more than 15,000 times.

Just seven years ago, months before Trump's surprising presidential victory, then-Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflected on the term that had just ended and made two predictions. One was way off base and the other was strikingly accurate.

In July 2016, the court had just ended a term in which the justices upheld a University of Texas affirmative action plan and struck down state restrictions on abortion clinics.

Her first prediction was that those issues would not soon return to the high court. Her second was that if Trump became president, “everything is up for grabs.”

Ginsburg's death in 2020 allowed Trump to put Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the court and cement conservative control.

Commenting on the student loan decision, liberal legal scholar Melissa Murray wrote on Twitter that Biden's plan “was absolutely undone by the Court that his predecessor built.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The group photo of the Supreme Court's nine members is a long-standing ritual. But it has never looked quite like the one taken on Friday.

The new image includes Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female justice, who joined the court in June. With her addition, the court marks a number of firsts. It's the first time white men don't hold a majority on the court and the first time four women have served together. It's also the first time the court has had two Black justices.

Jackson participated in her first arguments this week because the justices began their summer break when she joined the court.

Friday's formal photo captured by news photographers is sometimes called the group's “class photo.” In it, the justices are positioned in front of a red curtain, similar to their courtroom's red drapes. Five of the justices are seated in their black robes with Chief Justice John Roberts in the center. The four remaining justices stand behind them. The justices sit in order of seniority with the longest-serving justice, Justice Clarence Thomas, sitting on Roberts’ right. Jackson is standing at the far right.

Because no cameras are allowed in the courtroom when the justices hear arguments, the class photo is one of the few times the group is photographed together. The justices also were photographed together at Jackson's ceremonial investiture last week. A new class photo generally won't be taken until another justice joins the court.

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.

The court's conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation's oldest private and public colleges, respectively.

The decision, like last year’s momentous abortion ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, marked the realization of a long-sought conservative legal goal, this time finding that race-conscious admissions plans violate the Constitution and a law that applies to colleges that receive federal funding, as almost all do.

Those schools will be forced to reshape their admissions practices, especially top schools that are more likely to consider the race of applicants.

Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

Read the court’s opinion here.

From the White House, President Joe Biden said he “strongly, strongly” disagreed with the court’s ruling and urged colleges to seek other routes to diversity rather than let the ruling “be the last word.”

Besides the conservative-liberal split, the fight over affirmative action showed the deep gulf between the three justices of color, each of whom wrote separately and vividly about race in America and where the decision might lead.

Justice Clarence Thomas — the nation's second Black justice, who had long called for an end to affirmative action — wrote separately that the decision “sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”

Both Thomas and Sotomayor, the two justices who have acknowledged affirmative action played a role in their admissions to college and law school, took the unusual step of reading summaries of their opinions aloud in the courtroom.

In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — the court’s first Black female justice — called the decision “truly a tragedy for us all.”

Jackson, who sat out the Harvard case because she had been a member of an advisory governing board, wrote, “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

The vote was 6-3 in the North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard case. Justice Elena Kagan was the other dissenter.

Biden, who quickly stepped before cameras at the White House, said of the nation's colleges: “They should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds and experience that reflect all of America,” He said colleges should evaluate “adversity overcome” by candidates.

In fact, an applicant for admission still can write about, and colleges can consider, “how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise,” Roberts wrote.

But the institutions “may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today,” he wrote.

Presidents of many colleges quickly issued statements affirming their commitment to diversity regardless of the court’s decision. Many said they were still assessing the impact but would follow federal law.

“Harvard will continue to be a vibrant community whose members come from all walks of life, all over the world,” school President Lawrence Bacow said in a statement.

President Reginald DesRoches of Rice University in Houston said he was “greatly disappointed” by the decision but “more resolute than ever” to pursue diversity. “The law may change, but Rice’s commitment to diversity will not,” he said in a campus message.

Former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama offered starkly different takes on the high court ruling. The decision marked “a great day for America. People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our Country, are finally being rewarded," Trump, the current Republican presidential frontrunner, wrote on his social media network.

Obama said in a statement that affirmative action “allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged. Now it’s up to all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserve — and help students everywhere benefit from new perspectives.”

The Supreme Court had twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016.

But that was before the three appointees of former President Donald Trump joined the court. At arguments in late October, all six conservative justices expressed doubts about the practice, which had been upheld under Supreme Court decisions reaching back to 1978.

Lower courts also had upheld the programs at both UNC and Harvard, rejecting claims that the schools discriminated against white and Asian American applicants.

The college admissions disputes are among several high-profile cases focused on race in America, and were weighed by the conservative-dominated, but most diverse court ever. Among the nine justices are four women, two Black people and a Latina.

The justices earlier in June decided a voting rights case in favor of Black voters in Alabama and rejected a race-based challenge to a Native American child protection law.

The affirmative action cases were brought by conservative activist Edward Blum, who also was behind an earlier affirmative action challenge against the University of Texas as well as the case that led the court in 2013 to end use of a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

Blum formed Students for Fair Admissions, which filed the lawsuits against both schools in 2014.

The group argued that the Constitution forbids the use of race in college admissions and called for overturning earlier Supreme Court decisions that said otherwise.

Roberts' opinion effectively did so, both Thomas and the dissenters wrote.

The only institutions of higher education explicitly left out of the ruling are the nation's military academies, Roberts wrote, suggesting that national security interests could affect the legal analysis.

Blum’s group had contended that colleges and universities can use other, race-neutral ways to assemble a diverse student body, including by focusing on socioeconomic status and eliminating the preference for children of alumni and major donors.

The schools said that they use race in a limited way, but that eliminating it as a factor altogether would make it much harder to achieve a student body that looks like America.

At the eight Ivy League universities, the number of nonwhite students increased from 27% in 2010 to 35% in 2021, according to federal data. Those men and women include Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander and biracial students.

Nine states already prohibit any consideration of race in admissions to their public colleges and universities. The end of affirmative action in higher education in California, Michigan, Washington state and elsewhere led to a steep drop in minority enrollment in those states’ leading public universities.

The other states are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Oklahoma.

In 2020, California voters easily rejected a ballot measure to bring back affirmative action.

A poll last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed 63% of U.S. adults say the court should allow colleges to consider race as part of the admissions process, yet few believe students’ race should ultimately play a major role in decisions. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that half of Americans disapprove of considerations of applicants’ race, while a third approve.

The chief justice and Jackson received their undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard. Two other justices, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch, went to law school there, and Kagan was the first woman to serve as the law school’s dean.

Every U.S. college and university the justices attended, save one, urged the court to preserve race-conscious admissions.

Those schools — Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Notre Dame and Holy Cross — joined briefs in defense of Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions plans.

Only Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s undergraduate alma mater, Rhodes College, in Memphis, Tennessee, was not involved in the cases.

Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in trying to cancel or reduce student loans for millions of Americans.The 6-3 decision, with conservative justices in the majority, effectively killed the $400 billion plan, announced by President Joe Biden last year, and left borrowers on the hook for repayments that are expected to resume by late summer.The court held that the administration needs Congress' endorsement before undertaking so costly a program. The majority rejected arguments that a bipartisan 2003 law dealing with student loans, known as the HEROES Act, gave Biden the power he claimed.“Six States sued, arguing that the HEROES Act does not authorize the loan cancellation plan. We agree,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent, joined by the court’s two other liberals, that the majority of the court “overrides the combined judgment of the Legislative and Executive Branches, with the consequence of eliminating loan forgiveness for 43 million Americans.”Loan repayments are expected to resume by late August under a schedule initially set by the administration and included in the agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Payments have been on hold since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than three years ago.The forgiveness program would have canceled $10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 or households with less than $250,000 in income. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, would have had an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven.Twenty-six million people had applied for relief and 43 million would have been eligible, the administration said. The cost was estimated at $400 billion over 30 years.

The future of affirmative action in higher education is on the table as the Supreme Court wades into the admissions programs at the nation's oldest public and private universities.

The justices are hearing arguments Monday in challenges to policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard that consider race among many factors in evaluating applications for admission.

Following the overturning of the nearly 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade in June, the cases offer another test of whether the court now dominated by conservatives will move the law to the right on another of the nation's most contentious cultural issues.

The Supreme Court has twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 19 years, including just six years ago.

But that was before three appointees of President Donald Trump joined, as well as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's first Black woman.

Lower courts upheld the programs at both UNC and Harvard, rejecting claims that the schools discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants.

The cases are brought by conservative activist Edward Blum, who also was behind an earlier affirmative action challenge against the University of Texas as well as the case that led the court in 2013 to end the use of a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.

Blum formed Students for Fair Admissions, which filed the lawsuits against both schools in 2014.

The group argues that the Constitution forbids the use of race in college admissions and calls for overturning earlier Supreme Court decisions that said otherwise.

Colleges and universities can use other, race-neutral ways to assemble a diverse student body, including by focusing on socioeconomic status and eliminating the preference for children of alumni, Students for Fair Admissions argues.

The schools contend that they use race in a limited way, but that eliminating it as a factor altogether would make it much harder to achieve a student body that looks like America.

The Biden administration is urging the court to preserve race-conscious admissions. The Trump administration had taken the opposite position in earlier stages of the cases.

UNC says its freshman class is about 65% white, 22% Asian American, 10% Black and 10% Hispanic. The numbers add to more than 100% because some students report belonging to more than one category, a school spokesman said.

White students are just over 40% of Harvard's freshman class, the school said. The class also is just under 28% Asian American, 14% Black and 12% Latino.

Nine states already prohibit any consideration of race in admissions to public colleges and universities: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

In 2020, California voters easily rejected a ballot measure to bring back affirmative action.

Public opinion on the topic varies depending on how the question is asked. A Gallup Poll from 2021 found 62% of Americans in favor of affirmative action programs for racial minorities. But in a Pew Research Center survey in March, 74% of Americans, including majorities of Black and Latino respondents, said race and ethnicity should not factor into college admissions.

Jackson and Chief Justice John Roberts received their undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard. Two other justices went to law school there.

But Jackson is sitting out the Harvard case because she was until recently a member of an advisory governing board.

A decision in the affirmative action cases is not expected before late spring.

Activists and politicians are marking the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned a nationwide right to abortion with praise from some and protests from others.

Advocates on both sides marched at rallies Saturday in Washington and across the country to call attention to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling on June 24, 2022, which upended the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

“I’m absolutely livid that people think that they can interfere with medical decisions between a woman and her doctor,” said Lynn Rust, of Silver Springs, Maryland, at a Women's March rally in Washington.

In Chicago, dueling rallies gathered on opposite sides of a street outside a downtown federal building. There was shouting but no reports of clashes.

“The elected officials in Illinois are trying to turn us into the abortion capital of the middle of the country,” Peter Breen, vice president of the conservative Thomas More Society, told the Chicago Tribune.

Andy Thayer of the Gay Liberation Network said people in Illinois who are pro-abortion rights can't be complacent because conservative judges have been appointed to key court positions.

“That’s why we have to be in the streets,” he said.

The Dobbs decision made abortion an unavoidable campaign issue and deepened policy differences between the states.

Most Republican-controlled states have imposed bans, including 14 where laws in effect now block most abortions in every stage of pregnancy, with varying exceptions for the life and health of the women and for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Most Democrat-led states have taken steps to protect abortion access, particularly by seeking to protect doctors and others from prosecution for violating other states’ abortion bans.

The issue is far from settled, as demonstrated by Saturday's rallies as well as the past year's battles that have played out in courtrooms, on ballots, and in state legislatures.

Judges are still weighing whether the bans and restrictions in several states comply with state constitutions. As soon as this fall, more voters could decide directly on abortion-related policies; last year, they sided with abortion rights in all six states with measures on the ballot. And the issue will be on the ballot in elections this year and next.

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about the impact of the Dobbs ruling in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“We knew this decision would create a healthcare crisis in America,” she said, pointing to women who were initially denied abortion access even during miscarriages because hospitals were concerned about legal fallout.

The laws restricting abortion “in design and effect have created chaos, confusion, and fear,” Harris said.

While there's far from a universal consensus among voters, public opinion polls have consistently found that the majority oppose the most restrictive bans but also oppose unchecked abortion access at all stages of pregnancy.

Biden has pushed for a national law to reinstate abortion access. Republicans have called for a national ban. This week, former Vice President Mike Pence, who is seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, is calling for his party's presidential candidates to join him in backing a ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

But with Democrats controlling the presidency and U.S. Senate and Republicans holding the House, no federal change is imminent.

Nikki Haley, another GOP presidential candidate and former ambassador to the United Nations, said she backs a federal ban but it doesn't have enough support to advance. Speaking at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, Haley said both parties should instead look to goals such as limiting abortion later in pregnancy. Only a half-dozen states allow abortion at any point in pregnancy, and abortions after 21 weeks or so are very rare.

“We need to make sure that our country stops demonizing this issue and we humanize this issue,” Haley said. “This is personal for everyone.”

These policies have vast practical implications.

In states with the deepest bans, the number of abortions has plummeted to nearly zero. There have been more abortions in states where access has been maintained — especially those closest to those with bans, as women travel for care they used to be able to get closer to home.

“I can’t tell you how many people arrive at the clinic utterly exhausted after driving all night from Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana,” said Amy Bryant, a doctor who provides abortions at a clinic in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

There's also been a rise in use of networks that distribute abortion pills.

But because of lags and gaps in official reporting — and because some of the pill use goes unreported, the impact on the total number of abortions in the U.S. is not clear.

And while abortions have continued, advocates say there's an equity problem: Black women and lower-income women especially, they say, are those who were expected to lose access.

Related video above: Medical schools scramble to accommodate influx of applicants from states enacting abortion bansThe Supreme Court said Thursday it has not determined who leaked a draft of the court's opinion overturning abortion rights, but that the investigation continues.Eight months after Politico published its explosive leak detailing the draft of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, the court said its investigative team "has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence."Never before had an entire opinion made its way to the public before the court was ready to announce it. Chief Justice John Roberts ordered an investigation the next day into what he termed an "egregious breach of trust." Investigators “conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom denied disclosing the opinion” in sworn statements, the court said in a 23-page document posted on its website.Some employees had to amend their written statements after they “admitted to telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.The court said it could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public space either inside or outside the building."Investigators looked closely at connections between court employees and reporters, and they found nothing to substantiate rampant speculation on social media about the identity of the leaker.The investigation concluded that it “is unlikely that the Court’s information technology (IT) systems were improperly accessed by a person outside the Court,” following an examination of the court’s computers, networks, printers, and available call and text logs.The “risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information” grew with the coronavirus pandemic and shift to working from home, the report said. More people working from home, ”as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks,” the report said.Investigators are continuing to “review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending,” the report said.Roberts also asked former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a onetime federal judge, to assess the investigation. Chertoff, in a statement issued through the court, described it as thorough.Politico published the draft decision on May 2. Less than 24 hours later, Roberts confirmed the draft’s authenticity and said he had directed the court’s marshal, former Army Col. Gail Curley, to lead the investigation.Since then, there had been silence from the court — until Thursday.The court had declined to say anything about the status of the investigation or whether an outside law firm or the FBI has been called in or whether it had taken steps to try to prevent a repeat. Speaking in Colorado in September, Justice Neil Gorsuch said he hoped a report was coming “soon” but he did not say whether it would be made public.Gorsuch joined Roberts in condemning the breach of trust the leak engendered. Justice Clarence Thomas spoke in even starker terms about the leak’s effect on the justices.“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” he said while speaking at a conference in Dallas less than two weeks after the leak became public.The leak itself sparked protests and round-the-clock security at justices’ homes. Alito said it made the conservative justices who were thought to be in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade “targets for assassination” that “gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”In early June, a man carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland after threatening to kill the justice. The man told police he was upset by the leaked draft.Responding to protests outside the court, officials ringed the building with hard-to-climb fencing, the same barrier that was in place for months following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.When the final decision was released on June 24, it was remarkably similar to the draft that was leaked. Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted to overturn Roe.Speculation has swirled since the draft’s release about who might be the source. Only the justices, a small number of staff and the justices’ law clerks, young lawyers who spend a year at the court helping the justices with their work, would have had access to the document.Conservatives pointed fingers at the liberal side of the court, speculating that the leaker was someone upset about the outcome. Liberals suggested it could be someone on the conservative side of the court who wanted to ensure a wavering justice didn’t switch sides.It would have taken just one conservative justice to side with Roberts to alter the decision. Instead of overturning Roe entirely, Roberts favored weakening abortion rights.

Justice Samuel Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court asked this week what may be, to millions of average internet users, the most relatable question to come out of a pair of high-stakes oral arguments about the future of social media.

"Would Google collapse, and the internet be destroyed," Alito asked a Google attorney on Tuesday, "if YouTube and therefore Google were potentially liable" for the content its users posted?

Alito's question aimed to cut through the jargon and theatrics of a nearly three-hour debate over whether YouTube can be sued for algorithmically recommending videos created by the terrorist group ISIS.

His question sought to explore what might really happen in a world where the Court rolls back a 27-year-old liability shield, allowing tech platforms to be sued over how they host and display videos, forum posts, and other user-generated content. The Google case, as well as a related case argued the next day involving Twitter, are viewed as pivotal because the outcome could have ramifications for websites large and small — and, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh observed, "the digital economy, with all sorts of effects on workers and consumers, retirement plans and what have you."

The litigation could have vast implications for everything from online restaurant reviews to likes and retweets to the coding of new applications.

Though the justices this week seemed broadly hesitant to overturn or significantly narrow those legal protections, the possibility remains that the Court may limit immunity for websites in ways that could reshape what users see in their apps and browsers — or, in Google's words, "upend the internet."

Nearly 30 years of protections

Passed in 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act sought to foster the growth of the early internet. Faced with a technological revolution it wanted to nurture, Congress created a special form of legal immunity for websites so they could develop uninhibited by lawsuits that might suffocate the ecosystem before it had a chance to flourish. In the time since, companies ranging from AOL to Twitter have invoked Section 230 to nip user-content lawsuits in the bud, arguing, usually successfully, that they are not responsible for the content their users create.

For decades, courts have interpreted Section 230 to give broad protections to websites. The legislation's original authors have repeatedly said their intent was to give websites the benefit of the doubt and to encourage innovation in content moderation.

But as large online platforms have become more central to the country's political and economic affairs, policymakers have come to doubt whether that shield is still worth keeping intact, at least in its current form. Democrats say the law has given websites a free pass to overlook hate speech and misinformation; Republicans say it lets them suppress right-wing viewpoints. The Supreme Court isn't the only one reviewing Section 230; Congress and the White House have also proposed changes to the law, though legislation to update Section 230 has consistently stalled.

Understanding how the internet may work differently without Section 230 — or if the law is significantly narrowed — starts with one, simple concept: Shrinking the liability shield means exposing websites and internet users to more lawsuits.

A lack of oversight or a legal cudgel?

Virtually all of the potential consequences for the internet, both good and bad, flow from that single idea. How many suits should websites and their users have to face?

For skeptics of the tech industry, and critics of social media platforms, more lawsuits would imply more opportunities to hold tech companies accountable. As in the Google and Twitter cases, websites might see more allegations that they aided and abetted terrorism because they hosted terrorist content. But it wouldn't end there, according to Chief Justice John Roberts.

"I suspect there would be many, many times more defamation suits, discrimination suits... infliction of emotional distress, antitrust actions," Roberts said Tuesday, ticking off a list of possible claims that might be brought.

Roberts' remark underscores the enormous role Section 230 has played in deflecting litigation from the tech industry — or, as its opponents might say, shielding it from proper oversight. Allowing the courts to scrutinize the tech industry more would bring it in line with other industries, some have argued.

"The massive social media industry has grown up largely shielded from the courts and the normal development of a body of law. It is highly irregular for a global industry that wields staggering influence to be protected from judicial inquiry," wrote the Anti-Defamation League in a Supreme Court brief.

For a moment, Justice Elena Kagan seemed to agree on Tuesday.

"Every other industry has to internalize the costs of its conduct," she said. "Why is it that the tech industry gets a pass? A little bit unclear."

Threats to comment sections, Craigslist, even Wikipedia

Exactly how the internet may change if the Supreme Court rules against the tech industry depends heavily on the specifics of that hypothetical ruling, and how expansive or narrowly tailored it is.

But in general, exposing online platforms to greater liability creates incentives for those sites to avoid being sued, which is how you would get potentially dramatic changes to the basic look and feel of the internet, according to the tech industry, digital rights groups and legal scholars of Section 230.

Websites would face a terrible choice in that scenario, they have argued. One option would be to preemptively remove any and all content that anyone, anywhere could even remotely allege is objectionable, no matter how minor — reducing the range of allowed speech on social media.

Another option would be to stop moderating content altogether, to avoid claims that a site knew or should have known that a piece of objectionable material was on its platform. Not moderating, and thus not knowing about libelous content, was enough to insulate the online portal CompuServe from liability in an important 1991 case that helped give rise to Section 230.

The sheer volume of lawsuits could crush website owners or internet users that can't afford to fight court battles on multiple fronts, leading to the kind of business ripple effects Kavanaugh raised. That could include personal blogs with comment sections, or e-commerce sites that host product reviews. And the surviving websites would alter their behavior to avoid suffering the same fate.

Without a specific scenario to consider, it's hard to grasp how all this would play out in practice. Helpfully, multiple online platforms have described to the Court ways in which they might change their operations.

Wikipedia has not explicitly said it could go under. But in a Supreme Court brief, it said it owes its existence to Section 230 and could be forced to compromise on its non-profit educational mission if it became liable for the writings of its millions of volunteer editors.

If websites became liable for their automated recommendations, it could affect newsfeed-style content ranking, automated friend and post suggestions, search auto-complete and other methods by which websites display information to users, other companies have said.

In that interpretation of the law, Craigslist said in a Supreme Court brief it could be forced to stop letting users browse by geographic region or by categories such as "bikes," "boats" or "books," instead having to provide an "undifferentiated morass of information."

If Yelp could be sued by anyone who felt a user restaurant review was misleading, it argued, it would be incentivized to stop presenting the most helpful recommendations and could even be helpless in the face of platform manipulation; business owners acting in bad faith could flood the site with fraudulent reviews in an effort to boost themselves, but at the cost of Yelp's utility to users.

And Microsoft has said that if Section 230 no longer protects algorithms, it would jeopardize its ability to suggest new job openings to users of LinkedIn, or to connect software developers to interesting and useful software projects on the online code repository GitHub.

Even a 'like' could trigger a lawsuit

Liability could also extend to individual internet users. A Supreme Court ruling restricting immunity for recommendations could mean any decision to like, upvote, retweet or share content could be identified as a "recommendation" and trigger a viable lawsuit, Reddit and a number of volunteer Reddit moderators wrote in a brief.

That potential nightmare scenario was affirmed in Tuesday's oral argument, when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Eric Schnapper, an attorney going up against Google, to explore the implications of his legal theory. Schnapper represented the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American student killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris; the Gonzalez family has alleged that Google should be held liable under a U.S. antiterrorism law for its YouTube recommendations of ISIS content.

"If you go on Twitter, and you're using Twitter, and you retweet, or you 'like' or you say 'check this out,'" Barrett said, "on your theory, I'm not protected by Section 230."

"That's content you've created," Schnapper agreed.

The sweeping, seemingly unbounded theory of liability advanced by Schnapper seemed to make many justices, particularly the Court's conservatives, nervous.

Both liberals and conservatives on the Court struggled to identify a limiting principle that could allow the Court to ratchet back the scope of Section 230 without also raising legal risks for innocuous internet use.

Kagan told Schnapper that even if she didn't necessarily buy his opponent Google's "'sky is falling' stuff... boy, there is a lot of uncertainty about going the way you would have us go, in part, just because of the difficulty of drawing lines in this area."

WASHINGTON —

The Supreme Court is deciding whether women will face restrictions in getting a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, while a lawsuit continues.

Video above: Get the Facts: 1873 Comstock Act Used in Abortion Pill Decision

The justices are expected to issue an order on Wednesday in a fast-moving case from Texas in which abortion opponents are seeking to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone.

The drug first won FDA approval in 2000, and conditions on its use have been loosened in recent years, including making it available by mail in states that allow access.

The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the drug, want the nation’s highest court to reject limits on mifepristone’s use imposed by lower courts, at least as long as the legal case makes it way through the courts. They say women who want the drug and providers who dispense it will face chaos if limits on the drug take effect. Depending on what the justices decide, that could include requiring women to take a higher dosage of the drug than the FDA says is necessary.

Alliance Defending Freedom, representing anti-abortion doctors and medical groups in a challenge to the drug, is defending the rulings in calling on the Supreme Court to let the restrictions take effect now.

Video below: Doctor explains how medical abortion drug mifepristone works

The legal fight over abortion comes less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

Even as the abortion landscape changed dramatically in several states, abortion opponents set their sights on medication abortions, which make up more than half of all abortions in the United States.

The abortion opponents filed suit in November in Amarillo, Texas. The legal challenge quickly reached the Supreme Court after a federal judge issued a ruling on April 7 that would revoke FDA approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions.

Less than a week later, a federal appeals court modified the ruling so that mifepristone would remain available while the case continues, but with limits. The appeals court said that the drug can’t be mailed or dispensed as a generic and that patients who seek it need to make three in-person visits with a doctor, among other things.

Video below: Ex-FDA commissioner on mifepristone ruling

The generic version of mifepristone makes up two-thirds of the supply in the United States, its manufacturer, Las Vegas-based GenBioPro Inc., wrote in a court filing that underscored the perils of allowing the restrictions to be put into effect.

The court also said the drug should only be approved through seven weeks of pregnancy for now, even though the FDA since 2016 has endorsed its use through 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Complicating the situation, a federal judge in Washington has ordered the FDA to preserve access to mifepristone under the current rules in 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia that filed a separate lawsuit.

The Biden administration has said the rulings conflict and create an untenable situation for the FDA.

In an order issued last Friday by Justice Samuel Alito, the court put the restrictions on hold through Wednesday to give the court time to consider the emergency appeal.

If the justices aren't inclined to block the ruling from taking effect for now, the Democratic administration and Danco have a fallback argument, asking the court to take up the challenge to mifepristone, hear arguments and decide the case by early summer.

The court only rarely takes such a step before at least one appeals court has thoroughly examined the legal issues involved.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans already has ordered an accelerated schedule for hearing the case, with arguments set for May 17.

Mifepristone has been available for use in medication abortions in the United States since the FDA granted approval in 2000. Since then, more than 5 million women have used it, along with another drug, misoprostol, to induce abortions.

The U.S. Supreme Court has stripped federal agencies of authority over millions of acres of wetlands, weakening a bedrock environmental law enacted a half-century ago to cleanse the country's badly polluted waters.

A 5-4 majority significantly expanded the ability of farmers, homebuilders and other developers to dig up or fill wetlands near rivers, lakes and streams, finding the government had long overreached in limiting such activities.

The ruling Thursday may nullify key parts of a rule the Biden administration imposed in December, which two federal judges already had blocked from being enforced in 26 states. It's the latest turn in a decades-old struggle by courts and regulators to determine which waters are subject to protection under the Clean Water Act.

Some experts say the battle over wetlands now may shift to states, with red and blue states writing laws that take dramatically different approaches.

The high court's decision follows one in 2022 curtailing federal power to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and indicates a willingness by the court's emboldened conservatives to limit environmental laws and agency powers.

"This is one of the saddest chapters in the 50-year history of the Clean Water Act," said Jim Murphy, an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation.

Industry and farm groups praised the ruling.

"We're absolutely thrilled with the results," said Travis Cushman, deputy general counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation. "This is the exact answer that we've been asking for for a long time."

The court's majority sided with an Idaho couple who sought to build a house near Priest Lake in the state's panhandle. Chantell and Michael Sackett objected when federal officials identified a soggy portion of the property as a wetland requiring them to get a permit before filling it with rocks and soil.

"Now that the case is finally over ... they'll be able to make reasonable use of their property," said Damien Schiff of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the couple.

While all nine justices agreed the Sacketts' property was not covered by the law, they disagreed over the definition of "waters of the United States" and which wetlands it includes.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, echoed a 2006 opinion by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. It said federally protected wetlands must be directly adjacent to a "relatively permanent" waterway "connected to traditional interstate navigable waters" such as a river or ocean.

They also must have a "continuous surface connection with that water, making it difficult to determine where the 'water' ends and the 'wetland' begins," Alito wrote.

The court jettisoned a 17-year-old opinion by their former colleague, Anthony Kennedy, describing covered wetlands as having a "significant nexus" to larger bodies of water. It had been the standard for evaluating whether permits were required for discharges under the 1972 landmark environmental law. Opponents had objected that the standard was vague and unworkable.

Justice Elena Kagan, one of three liberals on the court, said the majority rewrote the law to reach the political decision it wanted by coming up with new ways to curtail environmental protection powers Congress gave the Environmental Protection Agency.

"The court will not allow the Clean (Water) Act to work as Congress instructed," Kagan wrote. "The court, rather than Congress, will decide how much regulation is too much."

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the decision "erodes longstanding clean water protections" and the agency was considering its options.

The Biden administration regulations replaced a Trump-era rule that federal courts had thrown out and environmentalists said left waterways vulnerable to pollution.

Even after the latest court ruling, some experts said ambiguities remain – and likely will persist as the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers craft yet more regulations tailored to the court's edicts.

Landowners wishing to develop property near waterways will still need to hire consultants, "walk the land and figure out whether you're in or out" of federal reach, Boston real estate attorney Peter Alpert said. "There's still going to be a lot of doubt about what's in the gray area."

The ruling could scuttle protections for at least 45 million acres of wetlands, an area roughly the size of Florida, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.

"They just put huge swaths of wetlands at risk," said Kelly Moser, an attorney with the center.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the majority likely stripped protections from wetlands that were long considered regulated, including those behind levees along the flood-prone Mississippi River.

Despite their vital role in blocking flood waters and filtering out pollutants, those wetlands may lose protection because they aren't directly connected to the river, he said in an opinion that concurred on the Sackett case but disagreed significantly with the majority on the broader issues.

The ruling will have a big impact in the arid Southwest, where some rivers and streams dry up between infrequent rainstorms, experts said. The court majority said the Clean Water Act protects only wetlands connected to rivers and streams that are "relatively permanent" or "continuous."

"Continuous is a big deal because we don't have water, really, for 10 months of the year," said Maureen Gorsen, a California environment and regulatory attorney.

The ruling might lead some developers to decide they don't need to seek permits for projects that could disturb wetlands, said Jim Murphy, director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation.

And those who are discussing settlements for wetland damage or building new ones to compensate for losses might back out, said Alpert, the Boston attorney.

"Everybody involved in enforcement actions … is going to hit the pause button on negotiations with agencies right now and question with their consultants whether under this decision there is a reason to even be talking with the government," he said.

Environmental advocates will prod Congress and states to "plug some of the gaps that have been created by this decision," Murphy of the National Wildlife Federation said.

But Congress showed in March it is in no mood to do so, voting to overturn the administration's wetlands rules and prompting a veto from President Joe Biden.

State governments may become another battleground. More than a dozen prohibit environmental regulations tougher than federal ones.

"You're going to see a patchwork of regulation depending on what state you are in," said Ashley Peck, an environmental attorney in Salt Lake City.

The Supreme Court ruling will likely create "'red state' and 'blue state' approaches to water protection," said Cara Horowitz of the UCLA School of Law.

___

Reporters Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday as she takes her first steps toward confirmation.

Democrats and the White House are pushing for a swift timeline, hoping they can vote on her confirmation to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer by mid-April.

Jackson first met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York.

"I've read and studied the judge's career. I've heard so many good things from so many people, and now I look forward to meeting her in person and sort of fleshing out all the great things that we've read about," Schumer said Wednesday prior to his meeting with Jackson. "Seeing her in person is a great thing. I am just so pleased the president has nominated someone with such amazing qualification and breadth of experience."

She also met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who posed for photographs with the judge.

Jackson will continue to make the customary rounds of Senate visits Wednesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for hearings. She'll also meet with the committee's chairman, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, its ranking member, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

If confirmed, Jackson would be the court's first Black female justice. Confirmation hearings are expected to start in mid-March

President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night that Jackson was "one of our nation's top legal minds."

WASHINGTON —

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, taking her first steps toward confirmation as Democratic senators and the White House push for a swift timeline.

Jackson met in the morning with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and afterward was going to see Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Later, she will visit with the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and the committee's top Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.

As Schumer and Jackson sat down in the Capitol to talk, he told reporters that he was pleased President Joe Biden chose a nominee "with such amazing qualifications and breadth of experience.”

Jackson, a federal appeals court judge, will make the customary rounds of Senate visits in the coming days as the committee prepares for hearings expected in mid-March. Democrats are hoping they can vote on her confirmation to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer by mid-April.

If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve as a justice in the court’s 200-plus year history. Breyer has said he won’t leave the bench until this summer, when the court’s session is over, but Democrats are taking no chances in case there is any shift in a 50-50 Senate where Vice President Kamala Harris provides the deciding vote.

Biden cited Jackson's nomination and honored Breyer in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening.

“One of our nation’s top legal minds, who will continue Justice Breyer’s legacy of excellence,” he said of Jackson.

Jackson, 51, was confirmed last year as an appeals court judge in Washington after eight years on the district court. She once worked as one of Breyer’s law clerks and served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the agency that develops federal sentencing policy.

Biden said she was a “consensus builder,” noting her work as a private litigator and as a federal public defender, and that she comes from a family of public school educators and police officers.

In a 149-page questionnaire Jackson returned to the Senate committee this week, she disclosed that she was first contacted by the White House Jan. 30, three days after Breyer announced his retirement. Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, had long been seen as Biden’s top candidate for the job, which he had promised would go to a Black woman.

Jackson met with Harris in a video call on Feb. 11 and then interviewed with Biden at the White House on Feb. 14, she says in the questionnaire. Biden called and offered her the nomination on Feb. 24, a day before he made his decision public.

The questionnaire provides the committee with a record of every job she has held and the decisions she has made in her nine years as a federal judge, as well as any recusals and potential conflicts of interest. Senators and staff will be able to vet that information much more quickly than they would have for other candidates since they just considered her last year for her current position.

Jackson's list of her most significant cases contains only one new entry from the appeals court, describing an opinion she wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel that came out in favor of labor unions.

Durbin said Monday he’s still hoping to win some GOP votes for her confirmation, even though many Republicans have expressed skepticism that Jackson is too liberal. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were the only Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to the appeals court last year.

While Collins has appeared open to voting for Jackson again, Murkowski said in a statement last week that her previous vote did not mean she would be supportive this time.

Graham had pushed for a different candidate from his home state, federal Judge J. Michelle Childs, and expressed disappointment that she was not Biden’s pick.

President Joe Biden has reached a decision on his first nominee to the Supreme Court, people familiar with the selection said Thursday, with his historic selection of the first Black woman to serve on the nation's highest court set to be revealed as soon as Friday.

The precise timing of the announcement remains fluid, given the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but a Friday ceremony would mark two years to the day when Biden made his initial pledge to choose the first African American female justice during a 2020 primary debate in South Carolina.

But even if the announcement is delayed beyond Friday afternoon, aides said, it will take place no later than Monday, the eve of the State of the Union address.

The first step of the carefully orchestrated rollout calls for the president to formally offer the lifetime position, a step that was poised to take place Thursday evening or Friday morning in hopes of preserving secrecy.

People familiar with the matter declined to say whether the offer had been extended by the president, who was focused on the Russia crisis, but confirmed his decision had been made.

Vice President Kamala Harris postponed a trip to Louisiana scheduled for Friday, raising speculation that an announcement was forthcoming.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of a Colorado web designer who says her religious beliefs prevent her from offering wedding website designs to gay couples.

Lorie Smith also wants to post a statement on her website about her Christian beliefs. That would run afoul of a Colorado anti-discrimination law.

Smith argues the law violates her free speech and religious rights.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it would look only at the free speech issue.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser says his state's laws prevent discrimination and uphold free speech. The law had been upheld by two lower courts.

The case is expected to be argued in the fall. At that time, it's expected President Joe Biden will have his first Supreme Court pick on the bench.

Biden has said he will pick a Black woman to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring.

DEL MAR, Calif. (AP) — A California bill would allow private citizens to go after gun makers in the same way Texas allows them to sue abortion providers.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday backed a new bill in the state Legislature that would let private citizens enforce the state’s assault weapons ban by filing civil lawsuits.

“It’s time to go on the offensive with new measures that empower individuals to hold irresponsible and negligent gun industry actors to account, crack down on shameful advertising that targets our kids and more," Newsom said. "This is not about attacking law-abiding gun owners – it’s about stopping the tragic violence ravaging communities across the country.”

The bill is modeled after a Texas law that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers for performing abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the Texas law to stay in effect pending a legal challenge.

A gunowners' advocacy group promised an immediate legal challenge should the California proposal become law.

U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico says his health is improving after suffering a stroke.

Lujan, a Democrat, posted a video on social media with two of the doctors who have been treating him.

"I'm doing well. I'm strong. I'm on the road to recovery and I'm going to make a full recovery. I'm going to walk out of here. I'm going to beat this," Lujan said.

Lujan suffered a stroke in the cerebellum and underwent surgery to ease swelling.

Once the senator leaves UNM Hospital in Albuquerque, he said he will go to a rehabilitation center to continue the recovery process.

With the Senate split 50-50, there was some concern about whether Lujan would be able to vote for Biden's eventual Supreme Court nominee. Lujan said he expects to be back in Washington in time to consider the nominee.

The 49-year-old is a first-term senator. He was elected in 2020 after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.