The finding lands as the court’s decisions are shaping executive power, tariffs and citizenship policy. It also shows how deeply partisan trust in the court has become.
A Washington Post/Ipsos survey found that nearly half of Americans think the Supreme Court is deciding Trump-related cases based on politics rather than the law, underscoring growing skepticism about the court’s impartiality. The poll, conducted July 8-13 among 2,648 respondents, found that 46 percent said the justices are ruling on cases affecting President Donald Trump’s agenda based on ideology. Only about a quarter said the court is ruling based on the law, while others had no opinion. The findings come as the Supreme Court weighs cases involving Trump and his administration on executive power, tariffs and citizenship policy, putting the justices at the center of a wider debate over trust in the court and whether its decisions are driven by law or politics.
The split behind the number
The poll did not show a public convinced, by majority, that the court is acting politically. It showed something more complicated: a large plurality sees ideology at work, while many others either see law or are not sure.
According to The Hill’s account of the Washington Post/Ipsos survey, 46 percent of respondents said the nine justices are ruling on cases affecting Trump’s agenda based on ideology. Twenty-five percent said the court is deciding those cases based on the law.
Another 28 percent had no opinion, and 1 percent skipped the question. The survey reported a margin of error of 1.9 percentage points.
That “no opinion” share is important. It suggests many Americans are not following each case closely enough to render a verdict, or are unwilling to reduce the court’s work to one motive. But the 46 percent figure is still politically significant: it reflects a broad belief that the nation’s highest court is not operating above the partisan fight.
Rulings cut both directions
One reason the public reaction is not simple is that the Supreme Court’s Trump-related docket has not produced only wins for the president.
The Hill reported that the court has delivered several unfavorable rulings for Trump during his second term, including a February decision striking down emergency tariffs he issued on imports the previous year. The court also invalidated his Day 1 executive order restricting birthright citizenship, according to the report.
Those outcomes complicate any straight-line claim that the court is simply serving Trump. At the same time, skepticism about judicial politics does not always depend on which side wins a given case. People may look at voting alignments, legal reasoning, timing, or the broader ideological composition of the court and reach conclusions about motivation.
That is the legitimacy problem captured by the poll: even mixed rulings can be read through a partisan lens if the public suspects the court’s legal explanations are secondary to ideology.
Agency power became the flashpoint
The poll arrives after one of the court’s most consequential Trump-era decisions involved independent federal agencies and presidential removal power.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to fire Democrat Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission. The decision overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 precedent that had helped protect some independent agencies from direct White House control for 91 years.
For supporters of a strong executive branch, the ruling can be framed as restoring democratic accountability: if the president is elected to carry out policy, agency leaders should not be insulated from presidential direction. That view treats independent commissions as a constitutional problem if they wield executive power while resisting the elected president.
Critics see the decision very differently. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned in dissent that the ruling grants “far greater power than ever before” to Trump and future presidents. She wrote that affected agencies would be transformed in ways their creators sought to avoid, “fundamentally recalibrating the balance of power in this country.”
Trump called that ruling pivotal
Trump himself underscored the political and institutional stakes after the court’s term ended in late June. According to The Hill, he described the Slaughter decision as the “biggest and most consequential decision” the court issued.
That kind of reaction can reinforce competing narratives. To Trump allies, it may show the court correcting what they view as an unconstitutional limit on presidential authority. To critics, it may deepen the sense that the court is enabling a broader consolidation of executive power.
The court’s conservative majority has often emphasized constitutional structure, separation of powers and historical meaning in major administrative-law cases. But public confidence depends not only on whether legal professionals find the reasoning persuasive. It also depends on whether ordinary Americans believe the same rules would apply if the political roles were reversed.
That is where the poll’s finding becomes more than a snapshot of opinion. It points to a widening gap between the court’s self-image as a legal institution and the public’s experience of it as a political actor in national conflicts.
Partisans see different courts
The broader approval numbers in the survey show how sharply partisan the court’s standing has become.
Overall, 55 percent of respondents disapproved of the way the Supreme Court is doing its job, according to The Hill’s report on the poll. Just over 4 in 10 approved, while 4 percent skipped the question.
Party identification drove much of that divide. Seventy-five percent of Democrats disapproved of the court’s performance, while 67 percent of Republicans approved.
That split is not surprising after years of high-profile cases involving abortion, guns, presidential immunity, administrative power and election-related disputes. But it is still consequential. The Supreme Court lacks the power to enforce its own decisions directly; its authority rests heavily on public acceptance that its rulings deserve obedience even when they are unpopular.
What the poll cannot prove
The survey measures perception, not judicial intent. It cannot prove that any justice ruled for political reasons, and it cannot assess whether a specific opinion was legally sound. A respondent’s belief that ideology is driving the court may reflect careful attention to doctrine, general distrust, partisan loyalty, or a mix of all three.
It is also possible for a ruling to be ideological and legally argued at the same time. Justices have interpretive philosophies that often correlate with political outcomes. The hard question is when a judicial philosophy becomes indistinguishable, in the public mind, from partisan preference.
That distinction may matter less outside the legal world than inside it. For voters who see the court repeatedly deciding cases with enormous political consequences, the formal difference between law and ideology can feel thin.
The unanswered question is whether future rulings can rebuild confidence across party lines, or whether every major Trump-related decision will now be absorbed into the same partisan story before the legal reasoning is even read.
The legitimacy stakes are immediate
The Supreme Court’s next moves will matter not only for Trump’s agenda, but for how Americans understand the role of the judiciary itself.
If the court blocks parts of the administration’s agenda, Trump supporters may accuse it of frustrating the elected president. If it upholds major claims of executive authority, critics may call it an ideological partner in expanding presidential power. Either way, the institution is operating in a public climate where many people already suspect politics is doing the real work.
The poll’s clearest message is not that Americans agree on what the Supreme Court is doing. They plainly do not. The message is that a large share of the country now doubts the court’s impartiality in some of the most important cases before it.
For a court that depends on legitimacy, that doubt is not a side issue. It is part of the story every time the justices decide another case tied to Trump, executive power and the limits of government authority.
Leave a Reply