Conservative religious parents also cheered a major court ruling in their favor as the court continued its trend of siding with religious groups.
But advocates for migrants, LGBTQ+ rights activists and others were left shaking their heads and vowing to find other ways to keep fighting on issues that went against them.
And an appeals court that is proving to be more conservative than the Supreme Court racked up more losses.
Here is a list of winners and losers from the court’s term that began in October.
The president called a surprise news conference soon after the Supreme Court issued its final rulings of the term to praise the justices’ work, including an opinion “that we’re very happy about.”
“The Constitution has been brought back,” Trump said about the conservative majority’s decision limiting the ability of judges to block his policies from taking effect while they’re being litigated. The opinion, which left uncertain which babies born in the United States will automitially become citizens, set off shockwaves among migrant communities.
Even before that decision, the Supreme Court had helped Trump by lifting through emergency orders many of the pauses lower courts had put on Trump’s efforts to slash and restructure the federal government and to rapidly deport migrants.
The Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett trio
There's no doubt about who was in control of a court that continues to move the law in a conservative direction though not as much as some justices want.
Chief Justice John Roberts was in the majority on nearly every decision, followed closely by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
On the decisions that divided the court, they sometimes sided with the three other conservatives including when they ruled that lower courts likely went too far when they blocked Trump’s changes to birthright citizenship.
The six conservatives were also united against the three liberals when they backed bans on gender affirming care for minors, age verification requirements for pornographic websites, states’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and parents’ desire to remove their child from class when books with LGBTQ+ characters are being read.
But at times Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett joined with the court’s liberals – and against Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. Those decisions included rejections of conservative challenges to Obamacare and to a federal subsidy program for internet and phone services for poor and rural communities that is funded by user fees.
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