Presidents and former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts they took while in office, the Supreme Court said in a 6-3 decision Monday, in a case that will likely delay a potential trial for former President Donald Trump until after the 2024 election.
Read the full decision below.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the one of the final cases the court heard this term. Roberts was joined by the court’s five other conservative justices, while the three liberal justices dissented.
The Supreme Court did not say Trump has immunity in this specific case, in which the federal government has accused the former president of trying to overturn the 2020 election through his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Trump asserts a far broader immunity than the limited one we have recognized,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, adding, “The text of the [Impeachment Judgment] Clause provides little support for such an absolute immunity.”
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Instead, the court remanded the case back down to the lower courts, which will now have to determine whether Trump’s actions constituted “official acts.”
“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”
“The majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled under- standings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them,” Sotomayor said.
The Justice Department has brought four charges against Trump in this federal 2020 election case: Conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights, specifically “the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”
Trump and his lawyers argued that former presidents must have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for acts they commit while in office.
