Crypto News: This Supreme Court's conservative mutation is complete

This is the theme of the week edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a digest of our top commentary published every Sunday. Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook.

Corporate America shied away from mentioning "Pride" throughout June, following protests against companies and brands like Target and Bud Light, which experienced intense backlash after advocating for the LGBTQ community. In the final week of the US Supreme Court's term, the justices demonstrated the court's complete transformation into a haven for conservative causes in a series of decisions. So we probably should have seen it coming when the Supreme Court — on the last day of 2023's Pride Month — handed down its decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis.

In 303 Creative, the justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines that a Christian website designer who wants to create wedding pages for only opposite-sex couples has the right of free speech to do so. As Noah Feldman warns in his response, "The Supreme Court has led the First Amendment further down the path to a disastrous conflict with civil rights. That's bad for civil rights. And in the end, it will be bad for free speech, too."

Just a little while later on Friday, the same lineup of justices tossed President Joe Biden's plan to forgive billions of dollars in student-loan debt (his administration is planning a new course of action). The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, invoked the new "major questions doctrine," which, Noah says in a second column, "represents a fundamental new and powerful weapon for the conservative majority to block liberal policy initiatives."

Here's what else Bloomberg Opinion's writers had to say about the court's major decisions last week:

Supreme Court Ruling Requires New Diversity Efforts: "The Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action will make it harder for colleges and universities to be what our country urgently needs them to be: engines of opportunity that propel us toward a more equal society." — Michael R. Bloomberg
Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Ruling Follows Half-Baked Logic: "I'm not insensitive to the concerns of those who don't like racially conscious programs, and I don't think opposing them marks one as a tool of White supremacy. Every selection rule disfavors somebody, and no matter how justified a program might seem in the abstract, it's different when it's your kids. So I get it. And I quite agree that some colleges have taken matters too far. But unlike the court majority, I don't think we've reached that fabled moment when we really can put all consideration of race behind us." — Stephen L. Carter
Supreme Court's Railroad Ruling Deals Setback to Big Companies: "One might read the outcome as an invitation to every state to adopt a law requiring any company wishing to do business to agree to be sued in its courts, even if the plaintiff lives in some other state, the company is located in a second, and the injury occurred in a third. But no such invitation is being issued." — Stephen L. Carter
The Supreme Court Made It Harder — Again — For Women to Get Justice: "To tell someone that they should die — especially when you seem to have been stalking them — is, in the strongest and scariest possible terms, telling them to be silent. Since it is disproportionally women who are the targets of online stalking and threats, the place we draw the true-threats line implicates the chilling of women's speech, not only the speech of people who want to make violent threats." — Noah Feldman
The Supreme Court Just Stood Up for Electoral Democracy: "When the Supreme Court wants to, it will still overrule state supreme courts' interpretations of state law when it comes to federal elections. That's the enduring legacy of Bush v. Gore. But at least for now we know that six justices don't want runaway state legislatures to break electoral democracy. That's one less thing to worry about." — Noah Feldman