CityLab, June 27, 2018: What Justice Kennedy’s retirement could mean for fair housing
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the most important decision on fair housing in a generation. He’ll almost certainly get to see it overturned in his lifetime.
When Kennedy announced his long-rumored retirement on Wednesday, he shined a spotlight on the tenuous political balance of the U.S. Supreme Court. Famously a swing vote, Kennedy sided with the court’s four liberal justices on defining decisions on reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and other hot-button social issues.
Any person President Donald Trump picks to replace Kennedy is unlikely to see eye-to-eye with him on these topics. That has stoked fears on the left that the Supreme Court could revisit some of the more contentious decisions delivered during his tenure, including Planned Parenthood v. Casey—or reach back even further to overturn Roe v. Wade.
