From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

It was another dramatic year for the Supreme Court.

A new controversial justice was sworn in, a beloved justice got sick, and recovered,

and some major precedent-setting decisions were handed down.

We're here with a special episode of At Liberty,

joined by ACLU legal director and experienced Supreme Court litigator David Cole.

He'll talk through the highs and lows of this past term and give us a sense of what's to come when the court reconvenes this fall. David, thanks very much for joining us today. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Emerson.

So at the end of the term, what's the big headline? Is this could have been worse situation? Hope is all lost? Where are you standing at the end of the term as what's the big headline? Is this a could have been worse situation? Hope is all lost.

Where are you standing at the end of the term as a whole? Well, definitely hope is not all lost. You know, the court handed down its two most important decisions of the year on the same day,

on the last day of the term. And one of them involved

partisan gerrymandering in which the five Republican justices voted to take the federal

courts out of the picture of restraining legislatures from gerrymandering districts to entrench particular party's advantage.

But the other, the census case, our case, challenging the Trump administration's addition of

the citizenship question to the census, the court ruled five to four with Chief Justice Roberts,

joining the more liberal justices

to hold that addition of the census was illegal, essentially because the Commerce Department

Secretary Wilbur Ross lied when he explained the reasons for doing so.

And those were the two biggest cases, and one went for us and one went against us. So

definitely could have been worse. Well, you mentioned the two blockbusters that ended the term.

Are there any other highlights or important cases that you think they're mentioning?

Well, I think there were a number of important cases. It was not a term of blockbuster decisions

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