How a lack of local reporting affects the Supreme Court

If a number of recent Supreme Court decisions had been journalistic articles, rather than court opinions, they would likely never have been published.

In 2022, for instance, in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court limited the EPA’s ability to reduce coal use in electricity production by declaring unconstitutional an act that had not yet gone into effect, and where the harm that gave the plaintiff standing was based on a 2015 study that had been completely contradicted by subsequent events.

Last year the court ruled for a wedding website designer, Lorie Smith, who felt that including LGBTQ language on a website would violate her religious beliefs, even though the only evidence her lawyers produced that anyone had asked her to do so was a letter from a man named Stewart saying that he wanted her to design a website for his wedding to a guy named Mike. It turned out that Stewart was not gay, had been married to a woman for fifteen years, and did not write the letter. Also, Stewart turns out to be a website designer himself, so even if he had been gay and planning to get married, he wouldn’t need outside help.

Then there was the lawsuit that the court took up to overturn President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. To establish standing, Missouri’s then–attorney general, Eric Schmitt, cited the potential harm to MOHELA, a nonprofit group that services student loans. It turns out that the nonprofit vehemently opposed the suit, that the state was insulated from any losses MOHELA might suffer, and, to boot, that fees from implementing the loan forgiveness program were potentially much larger than any losses MOHELA might suffer.

If the majority opinions in these cases had been articles, fact-checkers would have asked the reporters for backup.

There’s a caveat on these factual failures. Supreme Court majority opinions are not articles, and both the appeals courts and the Supreme Court focus on law, not facts, which are assumed to be settled at the local court level.

More From CJR: