Donald Trump is shielded from criminal prosecution for actions taken in his official capacity as president but not for private actions, the US Supreme Court has ruled, in a landmark decision that will impact the legal contours of the presidency for years to come.
In a 6-3 vote, the high court on Monday held that a former president has absolute immunity from actions taken to exercise his “core constitutional powers” and “is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts”. But there “is no immunity for unofficial acts”, it added.
The decision would allow proceedings to resume in one of the most serious criminal cases against Trump, the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, who is charged in federal court with seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 vote.
But it could still take a while for the case to come to trial. Lower courts will now have to draw the boundaries between a president’s personal and official acts, a potentially time-consuming process that reduces the likelihood of any verdict before November’s election, in what amounts to a win for Trump and a blow to Jack Smith, the Department of Justice special counsel who brought the federal indictment.
The momentous presidential immunity case has thrust the Supreme Court once again into the heart of a fraught presidential election mere months before the vote in November, while establishing new standards of accountability for the country’s most powerful office.
“The president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the president does is official. The president is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “But Congress may not criminalize the president’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the executive branch under the constitution. And the system of separately powers designed by the framers has always demand an energetic, independent executive.”
He noted that lower courts had not determined which of Trump’s alleged conduct “should be categorised as official and which unofficial”. That process “raises multiple unprecedented and momentous questions about the powers of the president and the limits of his authority under the constitution”, he added.
Trump’s discussions with the acting US attorney-general counted as an “official relationship”, for instance, but other incidents, such as Trump’s comments to the public as well as interactions with then vice-president Mike Pence or state officials, “present more difficult questions”, Roberts added.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent, which was joined by the court’s other two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She said the majority’s decision “reshapes the institution of the presidency” and “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law”.
The court’s majority “invents immunity through brute force” and “in effect, completely insulate[s] presidents from criminal liability”, Sotomayor added. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent”.
Trump’s lawyers had argued for a broad interpretation of immunity, saying presidents may only be indicted if previously impeached and convicted by Congress for similar crimes — even in some of the most extreme circumstances — to allow them to do their jobs without fear of politically motivated prosecutions. The DoJ argued that doing so could embolden presidents to flout the law with impunity.
Trump “asserts a far broader immunity than the limited one we have recognised”, Roberts wrote — although Sotomayor disagreed, arguing the difference was minimal.
The high court had previously ruled on presidential immunity from civil liability, but this is the first time it has made a determination with respect to criminal cases. The decision adds clarity to a particularly complex aspect of US law. No statute grants presidential immunity from criminal charges, and case law is limited.
The DoJ declined to comment.
The ruling comes on the final day of a whirlwind term for the Supreme Court, which has handed down divisive opinions, including one that kept Trump on presidential ballots in the state of Colorado.
A federal appeals court in February unanimously ruled that Trump was not entitled to immunity in the case. The Supreme Court decided later that month to hear Trump’s appeal, with oral arguments in late April. That has effectively brought proceedings in the trial court to a halt for months, drawing criticism. But Roberts said “the expedition of this case” and “the lack of factual analysis by the lower courts” had caused concern.
The decision will not affect Trump’s criminal case in New York state court, where he was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, in connection with “hush money” payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a bid to throw out damaging stories about him in the lead-up to the 2016 general election. Trump is set to be sentenced in that case on July 11.
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He has also been charged in Georgia state court in a racketeering case related to the 2020 election and in a separate federal indictment accusing him of mishandling classified documents. But these proceedings have yet to go to trial amid legal wrangling between Trump and US prosecutors.
Trump said in a social media post: “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”
A senior campaign adviser for Joe Biden, the incumbent president who will once again square off with Trump in the 2024 election, said the ruling “doesn’t change the facts, so let’s be very clear about what happened on January 6: Donald Trump snapped after he lost the 2020 election and encouraged a mob to overthrow the results of a free and fair election”.
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