Since joining the Supreme Court in October 2020, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s major rulings have shaped American law on gun rights, abortion, religious liberty, federal agency power, presidential immunity, elections, and immigration. Her method is textualist and originalist: she reads statutes by their plain words and interprets the Constitution by how its provisions were understood when adopted. That approach usually places her with the Court’s conservative majority, but it occasionally leads her to vote with the liberal justices when the text points that way.
How Barrett Decides Cases
Two habits run through her opinions. She looks for historical evidence rather than policy balancing when a constitutional right is at stake, and she sticks to statutory text even when the result cuts against the outcome her usual allies prefer. Both habits are visible across the rulings below.
Second Amendment Rulings
Barrett joined the six-justice majority in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which held that a modern firearm regulation stands only if it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulation. The decision replaced the interest-balancing tests many lower courts had used to weigh public safety against the right to bear arms.1Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc v Bruen
Her commitment to that framework predates the Court. Sitting on the Seventh Circuit, she dissented in Kanter v. Barr (2019), arguing that stripping firearm rights from someone convicted of a nonviolent felony has no historical basis. “Legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” she wrote. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous.”2Justia Law. Kanter v Barr, No 18-1478 (7th Cir 2019)
When lower courts struggled to apply Bruen, Barrett refined her view in a concurrence in United States v. Rahimi (2024). The Court upheld a federal law barring people under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms, and Barrett agreed. She used her concurrence to clarify that the historical test does not require an exact match: “Historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold.” A modern law needs to resemble founding-era restrictions in purpose and in how it burdens the right, but not replicate them.3Supreme Court of the United States. United States v Rahimi
Abortion
Barrett joined the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and returned authority over abortion policy to elected legislatures.4Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health Organization She did not write separately. The vote was consistent with her textualism: because the constitutional text is silent on abortion, she treated it as an issue for legislatures rather than courts. The majority also concluded that the reasoning in Roe and Casey was flawed enough that stare decisis did not justify keeping them in place, a willingness to unsettle entrenched precedent that distinguishes her approach from ones that prioritize stability.
Religious Liberty and Free Speech
Barrett has repeatedly voted to protect religious exercise from government restrictions, and she has extended that protection to expressive freedom more broadly.
Religious Exercise
In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021), the Court unanimously ruled that Philadelphia violated the Free Exercise Clause by refusing to contract with a Catholic foster care agency that would not certify same-sex couples as foster parents. Barrett joined the outcome and wrote a concurrence acknowledging strong arguments for reconsidering Employment Division v. Smith, the 1990 precedent that allows neutral, generally applicable laws to burden religion. She stopped short of calling for Smith to be overruled, agreeing that Philadelphia’s contract allowed for individualized exemptions and so was not truly neutral.5Supreme Court of the United States. Fulton v City of Philadelphia Pennsylvania
During the pandemic, she joined the per curiam opinion in Tandon v. Newsom (2021), which blocked California’s restrictions on at-home religious gatherings. The Court held that when government allows secular activities like hair salons and retail stores to operate under fewer restrictions than religious gatherings, it must justify the disparity with a compelling reason.6Supreme Court of the United States. Tandon v Newsom
Workplace Accommodations
Barrett joined the unanimous decision in Groff v. DeJoy (2023), which raised the bar employers must clear before denying a religious accommodation under Title VII. “Undue hardship” now requires showing that granting the accommodation would impose substantial increased costs on the business, not merely a trivial burden. The previous reading, drawn from a 1977 case, had allowed employers to deny accommodations based on almost any cost.7Supreme Court of the United States. Groff v DeJoy
Compelled Expression
In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023), Barrett joined the 6-3 majority holding that the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create content expressing messages she disagrees with, even under a state public accommodation law. The Court found that custom website designs qualify as protected speech and that free speech protections take priority when they collide with anti-discrimination statutes.8Supreme Court of the United States. 303 Creative LLC v Elenis
Federal Agency Power
No area has seen more Barrett-influenced change than the relationship between federal agencies and the courts. She has voted to limit authority agencies claim without clear congressional direction and to expand private parties’ ability to challenge agency rules.
The End of Chevron Deference
Barrett joined the 6-2 majority in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), which overruled the forty-year-old Chevron doctrine. Under Chevron, courts had routinely deferred to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute the agency administered. Loper Bright held that the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to use their own independent judgment when deciding whether an agency has acted within its legal authority. Courts can still consider an agency’s reasoning and expertise, but they no longer must accept its reading simply because a statute is ambiguous.9Supreme Court of the United States. Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo
Major Questions and the EPA
In West Virginia v. EPA (2022), Barrett joined the majority applying the major questions doctrine to block the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to restructure the nation’s energy industry. Agencies cannot make decisions of vast economic and political significance without clear congressional authorization, and the majority concluded the Clean Air Act did not give the EPA specific authority to force power plants to shift from coal to natural gas or renewable energy.10Supreme Court of the United States. West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency
Corner Post: Reopening the Challenge Window
Barrett authored the majority opinion in Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2024), holding that the six-year statute of limitations for challenging a federal agency regulation does not begin when the regulation is issued. The clock starts when a specific party is actually injured. A business that opened after a rule was finalized can still challenge it within six years of suffering harm.11Supreme Court of the United States. Corner Post Inc v Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Combined with the end of Chevron deference, this ruling significantly widened the ability of regulated parties to challenge longstanding agency rules.
Wetlands Under the Clean Water Act
In Sackett v. EPA (2023), the Court narrowed the scope of wetlands the federal government can regulate under the Clean Water Act. The majority rejected the “significant nexus” test and required instead a continuous surface connection to a regulated waterway, making it difficult to tell where the water ends and the wetland begins.12Supreme Court of the United States. Sackett et ux v Environmental Protection Agency et al
Presidential Immunity and the January 6 Statute
Barrett’s votes in two cases arising from the events of January 6, 2021, show both her alignment with the conservative majority and her willingness to break from it.
In Trump v. United States (2024), the Court held that former presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their core constitutional powers, presumptive immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial conduct.13Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v United States Barrett concurred in part. She agreed with the immunity framework but parted with the majority on evidence: where the majority would bar prosecutors from introducing evidence of official acts even when charging a president for unofficial conduct, Barrett indicated she would not have gone that far.
She crossed ideological lines more sharply in Fischer v. United States (2024), which involved the federal obstruction statute used to charge many participants in the Capitol breach. The majority narrowed the statute’s reach to conduct targeting the integrity of evidence or records used in an official proceeding. Barrett dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, arguing the statute’s text is broader than the majority acknowledged. She wrote that the law was “a very broad provision” and that while “events like January 6th were not its target,” statutes “often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway.”14Supreme Court of the United States. Fischer v United States
Elections
In Moore v. Harper (2023), Barrett joined a 6-3 majority rejecting the “independent state legislature” theory, which claimed state legislatures had sole and unreviewable authority over federal election rules. The Court held that state legislatures setting rules for congressional elections remain subject to review by state courts under state constitutions, as they are for any other law.15Supreme Court of the United States. Moore v Harper Had the theory prevailed, state courts would have lost the ability to strike down gerrymandered maps or voting restrictions based on state constitutional provisions. Barrett did not write separately, but her vote was decisive.
Immigration
Barrett authored the majority opinion in Department of State v. Muñoz (2024), holding that a U.S. citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in having a noncitizen spouse admitted to the country. The case involved a citizen whose husband’s visa was denied on security-related grounds with minimal explanation from the consulate. Barrett’s opinion reaffirmed the doctrine of consular nonreviewability, under which visa decisions by consular officers are generally not subject to challenge in federal court. She wrote that while Congress has shown “special solicitude” to noncitizen spouses through immigration law, that generosity is “a matter of legislative grace rather than fundamental right.”16Supreme Court of the United States. Department of State v Munoz
She dissented in Biden v. Texas (2022), which held that the executive branch had authority to end the Migrant Protection Protocols, known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The majority read the word “may” in the relevant immigration statute as giving the government discretion over whether to return asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases were pending.17Justia Supreme Court Center. Biden v Texas, 597 US (2022) Barrett, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, disagreed with that reading. Her dissent focused on the statutory text governing detention requirements, arguing the majority gave the executive too much latitude to sidestep congressional mandates.
Where She Has Broken From the Conservative Bloc
Barrett’s Rahimi concurrence, her partial split in Trump v. United States, and her Fischer dissent all show the same pattern. When the text of a statute or the historical record points one way, she follows it, even if the practical result places her closer to Justices Sotomayor and Kagan than to Justices Thomas and Alito. The Fischer dissent is the clearest example: a broad statute reaches broadly, whatever the political valence of the defendants it happens to cover.