How have courts ruled on presidential immunity for criminal prosecution since 2023 and what precedent did the Supreme Court set?

1. How lower courts ruled in 2023 — categorical immunity rejected

A federal district court rejected former President Trump’s motion to dismiss on absolute-immunity grounds and the D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed that decision in December 2023, holding that a former president does not enjoy blanket criminal immunity and emphasizing that specific factual inquiry is required to determine whether particular conduct fell within official duties ^{[2] [1]}.

2. What the Supreme Court decided and the standard it announced

In a 6–3 decision the Supreme Court held that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for acts at the “core” of constitutional power, presumptive immunity for other acts that are “official,” and no immunity for unofficial acts, creating a three-part structure and grounding its analysis in separation-of-powers concerns rather than past absolute denials of immunity ^{[2] [5] [6]}.

3. The practical remand and courtroom consequences

The Court did not resolve whether the specific allegations against the former President in the Jan. 6 indictment were official acts; instead it sent the case back to the trial judge for fact-finding to determine which alleged duties qualify for immunity, a procedural move that paused the criminal proceedings and made a pre‑election trial unlikely ^{[3] [4] [7]}.

4. How commentators, advocacy groups, and lawmakers framed the precedent

Legal and civic organizations described the ruling sharply differently: civil‑liberties groups and critics warned that the Court’s combination of “absolute” and “presumptive” protections for official acts will substantially impede criminal accountability and could invite abuse of executive power (Brennan Center, ACLU), while supporters argue the decision protects the President’s ability to exercise core constitutional functions without fear of post hoc prosecution; Congress members such as Rep. Zoe Lofgren called the opinion a radical departure that elevates the office above the law ^{[8] [9] [10]}.

5. The doctrinal roots and precedents the Court relied on

The majority relied on separation‑of‑powers doctrine and civil‑immunity precedents such as Nixon v. Fitzgerald to analogize the need for functional protections in certain official contexts, but it also distinguished earlier cases that limited immunity in civil suits for unofficial conduct, making the new criminal-immunity rule the first time the Court recognized any constitutionally based immunity from criminal prosecution for a President ^{[6] [11]}.

6. The dissent and the long-term legal uncertainty

Dissenting justices warned that the new framework starts with a presumption that criminal law does not apply to presidential conduct in important spheres and that the Court’s indeterminate standards will leave accountability to ad hoc, case‑by‑case judgments that may be difficult to administer; commentators note the decision yields broad protections in principle while delegating messy, fact-intensive line-drawing to lower courts, ensuring years of litigation over the contours of “official” versus “unofficial” acts ^{[12] [13] [3]}.

7. Bottom line: what the Supreme Court set as precedent

The Supreme Court set a precedent recognizing for the first time that a President can possess criminal immunity for some functions of office—absolute for a narrow core, presumptive for other official acts, and none for unofficial acts—while leaving the application of that rule to specific allegations to lower courts, a doctrinal shift that both narrows immediate prosecutorial options and guarantees downstream factual battles over scope and applicability ^{[2] [3] [4]}.