SCOTUS unlikely to backtrack on controversial immunity ruling — here’s why: legal expert

14 April 2025

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at the University of Kentucky on July 13, 2022 (LawAnalyzer40526/Wikimedia Commons)

When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial 6-3 presidential immunity ruling in Trump v. the United States on July 1, 2024, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned, in her scathing dissent, that her GOP colleagues had paved the way for the possibility of major abuses.

The GOP-appointed majority ruled that U.S. presidents enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for "official" acts committed in office but not for "unofficial" acts. And Sotomayor argued that under that standard, a president could order the assassination of a political rival and claim it was an "official" act.

In an April 2025 MSNBC column, legal journalist Jordan Rubin answers a question about that ruling sent to him by a reader in Seattle: "If Trump truly goes off the rails, can the Supreme Court reverse itself (on its own initiative) as to presidential immunity? If so, can it be retroactive?"

The answer to that question, according to Rubin, is a firm "no." And he explains why.

"The general answer to whether the justices 'can' do something is: 'If a majority of them want to,'" Rubin explains. "But they're supposed to decide cases based on live disputes between parties. So, the Court overturns past precedents with new appeals. Take, for example, the Dobbs case in which the Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022."

With Dobbs, the High Court overturned a 49-year-old ruling, deciding that Roe was wrongly decided back in 1973. Rubin stresses, however, that the justices didn't arrive at that decision overnight.

"The majority didn't reverse Roe the day that Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Court in 2020; it needed a case, and that case was Dobbs," Rubin notes. "When it comes to potentially overturning Trump v. United States, it's unclear what new appeal would present the issue anytime soon. It's true that the president is challenging his New York State hush money conviction while citing the immunity ruling to support an appeal that could eventually reach the justices."

Rubin continues, "But the issue there would likely be about the immunity ruling's scope, not whether the ruling itself should stand…. More to the point, I don't think the Roberts Court would change its mind on immunity after just handing down the decision last year."

Jordan Rubin's full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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