This is what a 6-3 Supreme Court looks like

On a rainy Tuesday in Washington, D.C., the reality of today's high court was abundantly clear as the court handed down four 6-3 decisions moving the law to the right.

The biggest story out of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday was not any individual decision — although some of the five decisions handed down are significant. It was, rather, the sharp reminder that the right-wing control of the nation’s highest court is absolute and can be exercised whenever and however the majority wants to do so.

Four of the five decisions Tuesday were issued along the court’s 6-3 ideological divide — moving the law further and further right, even in lower-profile cases.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote dissenting in one of those cases, “The Court’s decision today is yet another notch in its belt, unabashedly remaking the law in its preferred image.“

In that case, the court’s majority gutted the Alien Tort Statute, holding that courts cannot authorize lawsuits under the act for even “heinous and inhumane acts“ contrary to international law. The decision gets Cisco out of a lawsuit over allegations that it designed a surveillance system for the Chinese Communist Party that, the lawsuit claims, was used to enable the torture of religious minorities.

The court’s majority also gave Exxon a win by reading the Helms-Burton Act so expansively that the company doesn’t even need to show that one of the exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act applies to authorize its suit against to Cuban-owned companies.

The court’s majority made it harder to sue prison officials in their personal capacity for even flagrant violations of court decisions under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. RLUIPA was passed under the Spending Clause, meaning that its obligations are a requirement to receive certain federal funding, and, as such, the court held that RLUIPA lawsuits are allowed only where the party consented to suit. Since the individual Louisiana prison officials who allegedly violated RLUIPA didn’t sign the federal contract, they hadn’t consented to being sued — and no suit is allowed.

Finally, the court’s majority made it easier to take green cards from some people with virtually no process at the border. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, lawful permanent residents can generally return to the U.S. from elsewhere easily, unless one of six exceptions applies. One of those is for a person who has committed a crime of moral turpitude. The question was when the government needs to show that exception applies, and the majority decided that the government can just act on suspicion at the border and does not need to meet its burden to show the exception applies until a removal hearing at a later time.

“I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check,“ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent.

It’s all in a day’s work when you have solid control of the court.

There is one other note about the decisions Tuesday.

The decisions came from Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — the five-justice majority that can, when it so desires, act without even needing support from Chief Justice John Roberts.

It most infamously did so to overturn Roe v. Wade four years ago Wednesday and, though Roberts was in the majority in all of Tuesday’s decisions, I couldn’t help but note the five-justice decision lineup.

Now, the truth is that the lineup likely means Roberts is working on the majority opinion in one or more of the remaining, more high-profile cases.

But, the possibility of a five-justice majority is worth remembering as we approach these final decisions. There are still 12 argued cases awaiting action, with 11 opinions expected in those cases — including over birthright citizenship, presidential firing powers, and transgender sports bans.

The next — but not final — day for decisions is Thursday.