WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a transgender youth’s victory in a case on access to high school bathrooms and revived a lawsuit from the parents of a man who had died in police custody.
Both moves drew opposition from some of the court’s most conservative members. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
said they would have heard the transgender case, and they, along with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, said the court had bowed to fear of public criticism in the case on police violence.
The court’s default mode this term has often appeared to be caution, frustrating conservatives on and off the court who had hoped its six-justice majority of Republican appointees would act more boldly.