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The Supreme Court will hear Trump’s immunity and abortion cases this week

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Donald Trump has argued that no former president can be prosecuted for his actions while in office, even in cases of murder and corruption, without first being impeached and convicted by Congress.

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WASHINGTON − With cases involving Donald Trump, abortion bans, fighting baristas, homeless encampments and creepy tattoos, the Supreme Court enters a week of arguments that will impact everything from the tumultuous 2024 election to health care, the workplace and policing .

Notably, the Supreme Court will weigh whether and when a former president can claim criminal immunity for acts committed while in office, as Trump, who is currently on trial for allegedly concealing hush money payments to an adult film actress, fights three additional charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents.

But Trump’s broad assertion that a former president cannot be criminally prosecuted without first being impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate is just one of several high-stakes cases the nine justices will hear this week to deal with.

Strap in.

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Ban homeless residents from sleeping outside

Illegal blankets?

Judges have been asked to decide whether cities can punish people who sleep outside. The southern Oregon city of Grants Pass, where winter temperatures dip into the 30s, had cracked down on a homeless encampment, banning tents, blankets and pillows from public parks.

But a federal appeals court ruled that the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, does not allow criminal charges against people who sleep outside with nowhere else to go.

More: The Supreme Court slams House Republicans who dodged metal detectors in Congress after January 6

Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, joined a host of cities in supporting Grants Pass’ appeal to the Supreme Court, writing that the 2018 decision “ties the hands of local leaders.” Governments “need the flexibility to address … immediate threats to health and safety in public places,” Newsom said.

Residents of the Grants Pass homeless camp say the strict anti-sleep law was “an attempt to push homeless residents into neighboring jurisdictions” by punishing them “for existing within the city limits.”

A faith-based shelter – the only one in the city of 36,000 – wrote to the court that the number of people using its beds had fallen by 40% since the appeal court ruling prevented enforcement of the public sleeping law.

Tuesday: union disputes at Starbucks and tattoos on the visa line

In 2016, El Salvadoran tour guide Luis Asencio-Cordero was denied an immigrant visa to be reunited in the U.S. with his wife Sandra Muñoz, a U.S. citizen. After three years of trying to figure out why, he learned that a consular official had suspected Asencio-Cordero had a criminal background.

The couple suspected that Asencio-Cordero’s tattoos — one of Our Lady of Guadalupe, another of theatrical masks — resembled membership in the violent MS-13 street gang. They appealed to the U.S. Consulate that he had no criminal ties, and submitted a gang expert report that his tattoos had nothing to do with MS-13. But the decision stood.

Asencio-Cordero “is not and never has been a gang member,” his attorney, Charles Roth, told USA Today.

While visa officials have wide latitude in deciding who to admit to the U.S. and don’t have to say much to justify denials, the Supreme Court will be asked Tuesday morning whether Ascencio-Cordero was entitled to more attention because he is married to a U.S. citizen. whose interests are also affected by the visa ruling – and whether the courts have any say in visa decisions at all.

The couple have been “denied any meaningful opportunity to overcome that visa denial – and are being forced to choose between their family and their citizenship,” said Rachel Zoghlin, a lawyer at the Jewish humanitarian organization HIAS.

Later Tuesday, latte giant Starbucks, which has been involved in a brutal battle against union organizers at stores across the country, will ask the justices to clarify when the National Labor Relations Board can order employers to rehire workers who say they have been wrongfully dismissed.

While the case does not directly involve Starbucks employees, it is unfolding amid contract negotiations between the $98 billion coffee chain and the Workers United union, and against the backdrop of clashes between organizers and the company.

Last year, an NLRB administrative law judge ruled that Starbucks had committed “hundreds of unfair labor practices” during a union drive at stores in the Buffalo, New York, area.

Wednesday: An abortion ban after Roe in Idaho

After hearing arguments on immigration and labor laws, the Supreme Court will take up the challenge over Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which the Biden administration says will harm emergency room patients.

Idaho’s law, and similar measures in other states, makes it a crime to perform an abortion unless a doctor can prove there is a danger to the mother’s life, while the Biden administration says the federal law requires emergency rooms to provide “stabilizing care,” including abortions. if a patient’s health is ‘seriously at risk’.

In January, the court allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to stand while the federal government challenged the state’s standard for emergency care.

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Abortion has been at the top of the national agenda since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, as states have taken steps to eradicate the procedure or create new protections.

Last month, the court heard arguments to restrict access to the widely used abortion drug Mifepristone, and on April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated an 1864 law banning abortion in the key swing state.

More: Supreme Court justices appear to find unity in arguments against abortion pills

Thursday: The main event: Donald Trump brings the ‘Seal Team Six’ argument to the Supreme Court

Can a president get away with murder? Yes, according to Donald Trump, if they are not first impeached by the House of Representatives and found guilty by two-thirds of the Senate.

That’s the crux of the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee’s argument that he should not file federal charges alleging election interference.

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When an appeals court judge asked in January whether this means a president cannot be prosecuted for selling military secrets, selling pardons or ordering Navy SEALs to kill a political rival, the lawyer responded Trump states that criminal prosecution is only possible if the president is first impeached and then convicted in the Senate.

“I am struck by how fundamental questions about presidential power — and its limits — are underspecified by the courts,” said William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. “It’s striking that a president, 250 years after the founding of our nation, could even make this claim.”

Trump has warned that anything less than total immunity from prosecution will open the door to an endless cycle of partisan prosecutions of ex-presidents. The immunity claim is “a new, complex and weighty question,” Trump’s lawyers say.

In addition to his ongoing hush money lawsuit in Manhattan and the federal election case, Trump faces a federal indictment in Florida on hoarding of classified documents and election charges in Georgia.

Trump’s appeal on Thursday “is part of a larger effort to delay the criminal cases,” Howell said. “His main concern is not defining the limits of presidential power. It is to survive this judicial attack.”

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