Majority of Republicans, Democrats support Supreme Court after DACA, LGBTQ rights rulings: poll

Bipartisan support for the Supreme Court has remained after its controversial rulings on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and LGBTQ discrimination, according to a YouGov poll released Thursday.

After the 5-4 DACA ruling, which upheld the program for young immigrants and rejected the Trump administration’s argument for ending it, Republican approval went down from 68 percent to 51 percent.

Democratic approval for the conservative-leaning court rose from 30 percent to 56 percent after the ruling. 

The court’s DACA ruling last week allowed the program to continue after the president intended to end it in 2017. The administration has expressed disdain with the court and announced plans to repeal it again. 

The court also ruled in a 6-3 vote to ensure workplace discrimination protection for LGBTQ people. Sixty-five percent of the overall public and 52 percent of Republicans approved.

According to the ruling, the court decided that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s use of the word “sex” extends to LGBTQ people, protecting them from workplace discrimination under federal law. 

The ruling came when Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, two of the court’s conservative justices, joined liberal justices in ruling in favor of LGBTQ people. Roberts also joined the liberal justices for the DACA decision.

The poll found that approval among Republicans for Roberts and Gorsuch has declined after the rulings.

Though less than half of Americans approve of the Supreme Court, the judicial branch fares better than the two other branches of government: The same poll found President Trump’s approval rating at 40 percent with 53 percent disapproval, and public opinion of Congress is far worse. Nineteen percent of Americans approve of how Congress is handling its job.  

The poll surveyed 1,500 adults, including 1,230 registered voters, and reported a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.