Trump seeks do-overs at a Supreme Court that rarely grants them
Trump Pursues Rare Supreme Court Rehearings Amid Unlikely Legal Opportunities
Trump seeks do overs at a Supreme – President Donald Trump has emerged as an advocate for second chances within the highest court in the land. Following the conclusion of the Supreme Court’s term last week, which featured numerous significant rulings, the president and his legal advisors have proposed utilizing an uncommon procedural mechanism. This approach would enable the justices to revisit several decisions they recently issued—a process that has succeeded in only a handful of instances over the past fifty years.
Historical Precedents for Court Reconsideration
The Supreme Court’s willingness to reconsider its own judgments represents one of the most infrequent occurrences in American jurisprudence. The most recent instance of the Court entertaining a rehearing request for an argued appeal dates back to 1965. That particular case, known as Maryland v. United States, concerned a tragic aviation collision from 1958 involving a commercial aircraft and a Maryland National Guard training flight. The central legal question involved whether plaintiffs could pursue damages against the federal government.
Initially, the Court determined in 1965 that the pilot functioned as a Maryland state employee rather than a federal worker. However, the plaintiffs presented a compelling argument that lower courts had examined only the pilot’s liability while overlooking the responsibility of government air traffic controllers. Consequently, the Supreme Court issued a concise order permitting this distinct issue to proceed through the lower judicial system.
Even further back in history, nearly a decade before the Maryland case, the Court granted reconsideration for a matter involving the court-martial proceedings of two civilian women who had killed their military spouses abroad—one in England and another in Japan. Upon rehearing, the justices concluded that these women could not face trial through military courts. This remains the singular occasion when the Supreme Court not only reheard a case but also reversed its original position.
Current Rehearing Requests
Trump’s legal team has already submitted formal requests for rehearings in two significant matters. The first concerns the Court’s decision to reject an appeal regarding the $5 million judgment that found Trump guilty of sexually abusing and defaming magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. The second involves the Court’s recent ruling that invalidated Trump’s executive order attempting to terminate automatic birthright citizenship.
On Wednesday, Trump publicly declared his intention to challenge the birthright citizenship decision. He expressed his dissatisfaction through social media, stating that the Court’s ruling was incorrect and that he would immediately request a rehearing. He characterized the decision as a miscarriage of justice that could harm the nation if the Court did not reconsider its “absolutely insane decision.”
“It is extremely rare for the court to grant reconsideration,” said Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell Law School. “When it does so, it is typically because some vital information was not before it originally,” Dorf told CNN. “Simple attempts to re-litigate a decided issue invariably fail.”
Legal Framework and Timing
Supreme Court regulations permit parties to submit rehearing petitions within twenty-five days following any decision. Nevertheless, the Court generally grants these requests only when substantial new developments emerge after a ruling, rather than when a losing party merely disagrees with the outcome.
The Court’s June 30 vote on the birthright citizenship matter resulted in a 6-3 decision invalidating Trump’s attempt to end automatic citizenship through executive order. Five justices determined that the order violated the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided additional reasoning, concluding that while the order was constitutionally permissible, it remained prohibited by existing federal immigration legislation.
Reconsiderations of decisions denying appeals occur somewhat more frequently than reexaminations of final judgments, though they almost invariably involve significant changes in circumstances since the Court’s original action. The last such relief occurred more than a year ago in a case concerning federal anti-doping legislation for the horseracing industry. In that instance, the Supreme Court returned the dispute to a federal appeals court for further review after a different appeals court had reached an opposing conclusion regarding the law’s constitutionality.
The Department of Justice has not yet provided responses to inquiries about Trump’s commitment to pursuing a rehearing. While Trump’s prospects in the Carroll case may be marginally improved based on historical patterns, they remain quite slim. His attorneys have requested that lower courts postpone the payment deadline while the justices evaluate their petition. Additionally, Trump has indicated plans to appeal a separate Carroll-related case and has suggested the Supreme Court should consider both matters simultaneously, though his legal team had already proposed this approach in correspondence with the Court last month.
