Damon Root on Obama’s Disappointing Year at the Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court went out with a bang on
Monday, ending its 2013-2014 term with Justice Samuel Alito’s
majority opinion in
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., in which the
Court held that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
violated federal law by placing a substantial burden on the
exercise of religion when it required two “closely held” private
corporations to cover certain forms of birth control in their
employee health plans.

It was a painful legal defeat for the Obama administration—and
it was not the only such defeat in recent days. In fact, in the
past month alone, the White House has suffered a series of
embarrassing losses at the Supreme Court, where it failed to
prevail on issues ranging from the scope of the Fourth Amendment to
the limits of executive power. To make matters worse, the president
lost all but one of those cases by a vote of 9-0. Senior Editor
Damon Root surveys Obama’s dismal finish this year at the Supreme
Court.

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