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“The main concern is not that you’re intentionally discriminating by setting parameters in the algorithm based on the training data,” said Jason R. Bent, law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. “It’s that it is going to reproduce, based on the training data, some existing biases or existing disparate outcome.”

“The liberal justices are clearly unhappy with the way the court is deciding very consequential things, sometimes with no explanation whatsoever, in very rushed ways—and their dissents have indicated as much,” said Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. “What’s spilling out into public view isn’t superficial. It’s related to the substance of what they’re doing.”

“The court never blocked the power plan on the merits, but rather used its power to decide to stop the action before they could even hear the case,” said Harold Krent, professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. “And so they deployed their power to basically protect individuals in the United States from what they saw as overreaching by the Obama administration. So this is an overtly political move because they didn’t like the power plan.”