WASHINGTON (AP) — In two major decisions this week on LGBT rights and immigration, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump somewhat surprising defeats.
“Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?” Trump tweeted shortly after the court ruled Thursday that his administration hadn't acted properly in ending the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects some 650,000 young immigrants from deportation.
Trump was plowing familiar ground, turning a court decision with which he disagreed into a personal rebuke. For Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the court’s liberals in ruling against Trump in both cases, the outcomes and the conservative outcry that accompanied them may help insulate the court from accusations typically made from the left that the highest court in the land is reflexively friendly to partisan Republican and ideologically conservative interests. Further countering that perception: One of the justices ruling against Trump on Monday was one of his two appointees.
Over Trump's 3 1/2 years in office, Roberts has been both a vote for the administration and against it, his votes often decisive on a court with four more liberal justices and four more conservative. Those votes have helped him underscore his frequently repeated mantra that the judiciary is different from and independent of the political branches of government.
No one would mistake Roberts for a liberal in nearly 15 years as chief justice, nominated by Republican President George W. Bush. But since his vote in 2012 to uphold the heart of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, Roberts has injected at least a bit of doubt about where he will come down in some cases.
In 2018, Roberts and the court's conservatives upheld the president's travel...
