Each week on The Term, Supreme Court reporter Jimmy Hoover and co-host Natalie Rodriguez break down all the high court action.
Up first, Jimmy discusses the court's decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act in California v. Texas, one of the most highly anticipated cases of the term. The 7-2 decision written by Justice Stephen Breyer held that Republican states led by Texas had no standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law, the third high court defeat for GOP states over the ACA.
Next, Jimmy walks through the court's narrow decision in favor of a Catholic foster agency that refuses to place children with same-sex couples in the similarly headline-grabbing case, Fulton v. Philadelphia. The court unanimously said that the city of Philadelphia violated the free exercise of the Constitution when it terminated its contract with the agency — although the narrow reasoning of the majority left three conservatives on the court "disappointed."
Finally, Natalie explains a broad victory for Nestle, Cargill and the corporate defense bar more generally in a lawsuit from Malian nationals claiming the chocolate makers aided and abetted forced child labor on the African farms of their cocoa suppliers. Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the plaintiffs had "impermissibly" sought an "extraterritorial application" of the Alien Tort Statute for alleged overseas conduct. Although the underlying judgment was 8-1, the justices fractured over the court's precedents concerning the statute.
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