Perhaps someone with better legal mind can explain it to me, but all I’m seeing is an act of cowardice. This matter is as pertinent to the Constitution as it gets.
Maybe certain justices want Trump to send them a new conservative justice before they take this case so they can get 5 justices to agree on the decision they want to write.
The media articles are painting this as a win for the left, but it really isn’t. As far as the court is concerned, they have already made a decision in an earlier case that applies to this one, so they sent it back to the lower court and told them to reconsider based on the SC’s previous decision.
It makes sense when you think about it. If you were the superior and you made a decision, would you like your subordinates going around pretending you didn’t? Would you want them deciding things the way they felt like it while ignoring your decisions that clearly should take precedence over theirs?
Making the lower court bow to the USSC precedent is preferable to just deciding a very similar case all over again and allowing the lower court to get away with ignoring precedent.