The Supreme Court ended a historic term Monday that put the justices at the center of many of the nation’s most politically sensitive debates, with blockbuster rulings on whether former president Donald Trump is immune from prosecution and on the power of regulatory agencies and the administrative state.

Here’s a look at the most significant decisions of the term.

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Prosecuting Trump for trying to block the 2020 election results

Trump v. United States

What they ruled: Former presidents are immune from prosecution for official actions taken while in the White House but do not have immunity for unofficial acts – a broad new definition of presidential power that will upend parts of Donald Trump’s criminal cases and add months more pre-trial court hearings.

Why it matters: The decision split along ideological lines and appears to rule out one set of allegations in Trump’s federal election interference trial, involving his conversations with Justice Department officials after Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. The looming delays mean that trial almost certainly will not happen before November’s presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.

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Limits on social media posts

NetChoice LLC v. Paxton, and Moody v. NetChoice LLC

What they ruled: Lower courts must take a second look at a pair of laws in Texas and Florida that would have prevented social media companies from removing certain political posts or accounts, to more fully address the First Amendment issues at play.

Why it matters: The cases test whether state governments or tech companies have the power to set the rules for what content can appear on popular social networks, which play an increasingly central role in political discourse and U.S. elections. The unanimous ruling to block the state laws while litigation continues did not answer that question.

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Charging Jan. 6 rioters with obstruction

Fischer v. United States

What they ruled: Federal prosecutors improperly charged a Jan. 6 rioter with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding, using a statute that the court said must involve impairing “the availability or integrity” of records, documents or other objects.

Why it matters: The ruling essentially says that prosecutors overreached in using the charge against Jan. 6 defendants, since it was created to address document shredding and other fraud after the collapse of the energy giant Enron. Hundreds of charged or convicted rioters can now go back to court to ask for their charge to be thrown out. Most also face other charges, or have completed their sentences, but a few dozen could see their jail time reduced.

The ruling could also affect the Justice Department’s stalled federal election interference case against Trump. Two of the four charges he faces are based on the obstruction statute. But prosecutors say those charges should still stand.

4. Power of federal agencies

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, and Relentless Inc. v. Dept. of Commerce

What they ruled: Judges no longer have to defer to agency officials when interpreting ambiguous federal statutes about the environment, the workplace, public health and other aspects of American life.

Why it matters: In issuing its ruling, the court overturned a 40-year-old legal precedent known as “Chevron deference,” long a target of conservatives interested in reining in the power of the administrative state. The court’s decision will significantly curtail the power federal agencies have to regulate thousands of private companies, products, industries and the environment.

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Homeless encampments in public spaces

City of Grants Pass, Ore. v. Gloria Johnson

What they ruled: Homelessness is not a status protected by the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, therefore laws banning homeless people from sleeping in public spaces are constitutional.

Why it matters: Local and state officials are struggling with how to manage the nation’s homelessness crisis. Prohibiting homeless encampments is one potential tool, but many jurisdictions do not have enough beds for everyone, and many unhoused people prefer staying outdoors to being in a shelter.

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Emergency room abortions

Idaho v. United States

What they ruled: While litigation on the issue continues in lower courts, hospitals in Idaho that receive federal funds must allow emergency abortion care to stabilize patients – even though the state strictly bans the procedure.

Why it matters: The Biden administration sees this case as one of the few ways it can protect abortion access in states that have banned the procedure since the overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago. Idaho bans abortions unless necessary “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” while the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, requires hospitals to stabilize or transfer patients needing emergency care even if they are not at risk of death. The decision, issued a day after it was prematurely posted on the court’s website, is temporary, and does not settle the question of whether the federal law preempts strict state bans.

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SEC tribunals

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy

What they ruled: A divided court invalidated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s use of in-house legal proceedings to discipline those it believes have committed fraud, saying the reliance on internal tribunals, rather than federal courts, violates the Constitution.

Why it matters: The ruling is another example of the court limiting the power of federal agencies and one of several cases this term challenging the power of the executive branch.

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Opioid lawsuit settlement

Harrington v. Purdue Pharma

What they ruled: The justices blocked a controversial Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan that would have provided billions of dollars to address the nation’s opioid crisis in exchange for protecting the family that owns the company from future lawsuits. In a 5-4 decision that scrambled ideological lines, the majority found that the plan was invalid because all the affected parties had not been consulted on the deal.

Why it matters: The closely watched fight involving the maker of OxyContin is part of a national reckoning over the role of drugmakers and other companies in the opioid addiction public health crisis. It split relatives of overdose victims and those whose lives were shattered by opioid addiction.

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Downwind industrial pollution

Ohio v. EPA, Kinder Morgan Inc. v. EPA, American Forest & Paper Association. v. EPA, U.S. Steel Corp. v. EPA

What they ruled: The court ruled 5-4 to pause the Environmental Protection Agency’s ambitious “good neighbor” plan as it is challenged in a lower court. The plan would have limited smog-forming pollutants from power plants and other industrial facilities that cause problems for their downwind neighbors in other states.

Why it matters: The decision is the third time in as many years that the court’s conservative majority has curbed the EPA’s power to regulate pollution. Those challenging the plan called it unworkable, prohibitively expensive and illegal. The EPA disagreed and said the initiative was needed to protect the health of residents in downwind states, particularly the young and elderly.

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White House communicating with social media companies on misinformation

Murthy v. Missouri

What they ruled: The Supreme Court rejected an effort to sharply limit what the White House can say to social media companies about posts the administration believes contain misinformation. A divided court said the Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri and individual social media users who brought the challenge did not have legal grounds, or standing, to do so.

Why it matters: The case gave the Supreme Court an opportunity to shape how government officials interact with social media companies and communicate with the public online. The challengers wanted to bar the Biden administration from pressuring social media companies to remove posts from their platforms that the government deems problematic, accusing the administration of violating the First Amendment by operating a sprawling federal “censorship enterprise.”

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Guns for suspected domestic abusers

United States v. Rahimi

What they ruled: People who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders can be banned from having firearms.

Why it matters: This is the first major Second Amendment decision since the conservative majority bolstered gun rights in its decision two years ago known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. The Bruen ruling required the government to point to historical analogues when defending laws that place limits on firearms, leading to court challenges against limits on possessing firearms – including the one in this case, which the justices upheld as constitutional.

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Trump tax cuts

Moore v. United States

What they ruled: An obscure provision of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax package is constitutional.

Why it matters: In a 7-2 decision, the court upheld a one-time tax on offshore earnings that helped fund the massive tax cut, ruling that it is permitted under Congress’s limited powers of taxation. Some viewed the challenge to the tax – brought by a Washington couple who were backed by an anti-regulatory advocacy group – as an effort to preemptively block Congress from creating a wealth tax. Many experts feared that a ruling that the tax was unconstitutional could destabilize the nation’s tax system.

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Bump stock ban

Garland v. Cargill

What they ruled: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down a federal ban on bump stock devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire hundreds of bullets a minute. The majority said bump stocks do not qualify as machine guns under a 1986 law that barred civilians from owning the weapons.

Why it matters: The 6-3 ruling upends one of the few recent efforts by the federal government to address the nation’s epidemic of gun violence and continues the conservative majority’s record of limiting gun restrictions.

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Abortion medication restrictions

FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

What they ruled: The justices maintained broad access to mifepristone, unanimously reversing a lower court decision that would have made the widely used abortion medication more difficult to obtain. The decision was not on the substance of the case, but a procedural ruling that the challengers did not have legal grounds to bring their lawsuit.

Why it matters: Ever since the high court eliminated the nationwide right to abortion in 2022, medications to terminate pregnancy have increased in importance and become a major target of litigation, in part because the pills can be sent by mail, including to states that have severely limited or banned abortions. The court’s decision is unlikely to end efforts to restrict access to the pill, with three states poised to try to quickly revive the challenge. A Republican president could also impose regulations on mifepristone or move to take the drug off the market. Democrats are trying to prevent that possibility by overhauling the Comstock Act, an 1873 federal law that bans sending abortion-related materials through the mail.

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Voting maps

Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP

What they ruled: South Carolina is permitted to use a congressional map, created by the GOP-led state legislature, that a lower court said wrongly “exiled” Black voters from one district to another to protect a White Republican incumbent.

Why it matters: The court’s conservative majority said those challenging the map had not proved it was motivated by race, which would be illegal, rather than by partisan politics, which is legal. The case is one of several redistricting cases that have been closely watched because the U.S. House is so narrowly divided, and because the outcomes of the legal challenges could affect who controls Congress in the future.

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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Consumer Financial Services Association of America

What they ruled: The funding mechanism Congress adopted to ensure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s independence is legal and does not violate the Constitution’s command requiring congressional appropriation of money.

Why it matters: The CFPB case is one of several the high court heard this term that challenge the power of federal agencies. The Biden administration said that a ruling in favor of the challengers would have had implications for the funding of other regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve Board, and could even cast doubt on Social Security and payments to the national debt. The CFPB plans to restart its aggressive crackdown on payday lenders and other companies that offer high-cost, short-term loans to poor borrowers.

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Employment discrimination

Muldrow v. City of St. Louis

What they ruled: Workers can pursue employment discrimination claims over job transfers without having to show that the involuntary move caused a “significant disadvantage,” such as harm to career prospects or a change in salary or rank.

Why it matters: Some lower courts had ruled that employees must show they suffered significant harm from a job transfer to successfully lodge a discrimination complaint under Title VII, a federal civil rights law. In unanimously ruling for a police sergeant in St. Louis who said she was moved to a lesser role because she is a woman, the Supreme Court lowered that bar, saying employees must show only that they experienced some harm. The court’s ruling was hailed by conservative activists intent on dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that they say discriminate against White people and men.

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Blocking critics on social media

O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, and Lindke v. Freed

What they ruled: Public officials can be liable for blocking or deleting critics from their social media accounts – but only when they are acting in an official capacity and with “actual authority” to speak on behalf of the government.

Why it matters: In a pair of unanimous decisions, the court said public officials are still private citizens with their own constitutional rights. The Supreme Court decisions set the rules for interactions between the government and its citizens, who are increasingly relying on popular social media platforms to access public officials and critical community information.

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Donald Trump ballot eligibility

Donald Trump v. Norma Anderson

What they ruled: Colorado cannot disqualify Trump from 2024 election ballots because of his actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The justices said the Constitution does not permit a single state to bar a presidential candidate from national office, declaring that such responsibility “rests with Congress and not the states.”

Why it matters: Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to prevent Confederate leaders from returning to positions of power after the Civil War. It has rarely been invoked in modern times. The ruling raises new questions for Congress and the high court, including whether lawmakers could refuse to count electoral votes for Trump if they determine that he committed insurrection during the Capitol attack.

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Robert Barnes and Justin Jouvenal contributed to this report.