Washington Post – no paywall: “The court is the first since at least the ’50s to reject claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities, an analysis conducted for The Post shows. The sharply conservative Supreme Court that President Donald Trump’s three appointees remade is the first since at least the 1950s to reject civil rights claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities, according to a detailed analysis conducted for The Washington Post. The shift brings to an end a streak of successive courts expanding such protections that began with the dawn of the civil rights era. But the historic nature of the current court is also evident in other key areas of the law over the five terms since the third of Trump’s appointees joined the bench…The analysis shows that in addition to civil rights, the court powered by Trump’s picks — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — has pushed to the right of any modern court on religious rights and voting issues. The court has also entered a new era of extreme partisanship. None over the past seven decades has been as starkly polarized. “There is no center now,” said political science professor Lee Epstein, who performed the analysis with her Washington University colleague Andrew D. Martin and Michael J. Nelson of Penn State. A yawning gulf has opened between the left and right flanks of the court, Epstein said. “The polarization in American society seeps into the Senate. It seeps into the presidency. It is naturally going to seep into the courts. It would be surprising to see another John Paul Stevens,” Epstein said, referring to the late justice noted for his moderation. “Partisan identity and ideology have become so intertwined.”

The analysis examined 270 decisions handed down by the Supreme Court between 2020 and 2024 — the first five terms of the six-justice conservative majority — and drew on the Supreme Court Database, a compendium of cases the professors maintain. The professors compared that data to the body of rulings under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. before 2020, as well as rulings handed down under the six other chief justices dating back to the New Deal era. The analysis did not include rulings from the current term or orders in cases on the court’s emergency docket. Overall, the Supreme Court has consistently leaned to the right for 50 years. That pattern has persisted despite the country being closely divided politically and the White House and Congress regularly changing hands between Democrats and Republicans. Republican presidents have had more opportunities to name justices than Democratic presidents have had…”