ON JUNE 30th, the final day of its 2013-14 term, the Supreme Court’s slim conservative majority took pains to deny that its last two rulings were radical. In Burwell v Hobby Lobby, the Court decided, 5-4, that some employers with religious objections do not have to pay for contraceptives for their staff, despite a law (Obamacare) that tried to make them do so. This ruling will not open the door to “a flood of religious objections” to American laws by pious employers, insisted Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative. Oh yes it will, retorted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal, albeit in grander language. The case sparked furious controversy (see article). Yet it may have been the less consequential of the two cases decided that day. The other was Harris v Quinn, a dispute about unions that turned on the arcane question of how to categorise home-healthcare workers. Pamela Harris, an Illinois mother, bridled when she was told to pay fees to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Under Illinois law, because Ms Harris received Medicaid cheques for looking after her disabled son, she was deemed a public employee and had no choice but to be represented by SEIU in negotiations with the state.

By the narrowest of margins, the court ruled that this was unfair. Mr Alito observed that Ms Harris and other home health aides are employed by the people they care for, not by the state, and that they enjoy few of the perks that fully-fledged public workers get, such as pensions and ironclad job security. “Illinois deems personal assistants to be state employees for one purpose only, collective bargaining,” wrote Mr Alito. He ruled that Ms Harris was at most a “partial” public employee, and therefore not obliged to pay the SEIU for representation she did not want.

Although the opinion was narrow, labour leaders saw ominous signs in it. Mr Alito and some other conservatives would probably have liked to overturn Abood v Detroit Board of Education, a 1977 precedent holding that public-school teachers who do not join a union must still contribute cash to its collective-bargaining efforts. Unions see this as a safeguard against free-riding: they fret that, if they could, some workers might opt to enjoy the benefits of union-negotiated wages without paying the negotiators. Democrats fear that removing this safeguard would deprive their party of a crucial source of funds. Republicans, who see the cosy ties between Democrats and unions as a conspiracy to fleece taxpayers, would not mind that. For the moment, though, Abood stands.

The Court’s conservative-liberal split was equally raw in McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, decided in April. The justices lined up 5-4 to chip away at campaign-finance laws. Individuals were previously allowed to donate up to $2,600 to any political candidate during each election cycle, up to a total of $48,600 (plus $74,600 to political parties and political-action committees). More than that, it was feared, might be corrupting.

The court found this an unconvincing rationale for curbing free speech, and scrapped the aggregate limits while leaving the per-candidate limits in place. “The government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer retorted that the ruling “eviscerates our Nation’s campaign-finance laws.”

Despite such fireworks, the past year has seen more agreement than any for half a century: two-thirds of rulings were unanimous. One area where the justices found it easy to agree was when upholding limits on presidential power (see article). In three notable cases, the court ruled 9-0 against the Obama administration.

In National Labour Relations Board v Noel Canning, for example, a Pepsi bottler contested the legitimacy of an NLRB ruling against it. Because President Barack Obama had bypassed the Senate, which is supposed to vet senior appointments, and installed three members of the board as “recess appointments” when the Senate said it was not in recess, Noel Canning sued, and won. Mr Breyer’s opinion set new guidelines for recess appointments: the Senate gets to decide when it is in recess, and no appointments may be made during breaks of fewer than 10 days. That could stymie future presidents facing obstructive Senates.

In Riley v California, the court swept aside the objections of Mr Obama’s Justice Department and ruled 9-0 that police need a warrant to search a suspect’s mobile phone. In Bond v US, a unanimous court rejected the administration’s claim that a woman who smeared mildly toxic chemicals on a love rival’s car, causing a minor burn on her thumb, could be prosecuted under a global chemical-weapons treaty.

The Court also grappled with race, religion and abortion. In McCullen v Coakley, it ruled unanimously that Massachusetts’s 35-foot “buffer zone” keeping peaceful protestors away from abortion clinics infringed free-speech rights. (Those who harass women seeking an abortion are a different matter.) In Schuette v Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action the justices said that voters could insist on colourblindness, upholding a ban on racial preferences in public college admissions that Michigan had approved in a ballot initiative. And in Greece v Galloway, the Court ruled 5-4 that a town board could begin meetings with mostly Christian prayers without offending the First Amendment’s bar on “the establishment of religion”.

After nullifying the Defence of Marriage Act and permitting same-sex marriage to resume in California a year ago, the justices took a break from gay issues this term. But a year on, with 19 states now recognising gay marriage and a judge in Kentucky on July 1st joining the stampede to strike down bans on it, the question is sure to return to the Supreme Court soon.