The Supreme Court can overturn any ruling it chooses, including its 2024 presidential immunity decision in Trump v. United States. The harder questions are whether a future majority would want to reverse that precedent and whether the right case would ever reach the justices.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who led the three Democratic appointees in dissent, recently said she hopes the immunity ruling will be overturned during her lifetime. The Obama appointee is 72 and the third oldest justice on the court.

The two oldest justices are GOP appointees Clarence Thomas, 78, and Samuel Alito, 76. Both are reportedly staying on the court this year, denying President Donald Trump and the outgoing Senate led by Republicans an opportunity to confirm their successors.

A new Democratic Senate majority is set to take office in January. It remains unclear when Republicans will again control both the White House and Senate, creating the possibility that Democrats could eventually build a Supreme Court majority.

If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028 and replaces Thomas and Alito, the court could shift from a 6 to 3 majority of GOP appointees to a 5 to 4 majority of Democratic appointees. That scenario assumes every other seat remains unchanged.

Such a court could overturn the immunity precedent, but it could not simply publish an opinion because the justices felt like revisiting the matter. The court issues decisions through appeals, meaning the majority would need a new case that presented an opportunity to reconsider presidential immunity.

That is how the court overturned Roe v. Wade through the 2022 Dobbs case after Mississippi officials pursued an appeal seeking Roe’s reversal. Abortion disputes arise regularly across the country, however, making suitable cases much easier to find.

Presidential immunity is different because former presidents are not routinely prosecuted. The immunity ruling itself could also make prosecutors less likely to bring cases that might eventually provide a future court with a vehicle for reversing the precedent.

Trump’s appeal of his New York hush money conviction could offer one possible route, although that litigation concerns a narrower issue. Trump argues in part that state prosecutors improperly used evidence of official presidential acts to convict him for unofficial conduct involving the coverup of a hush money scheme connected to the 2016 presidential election.

The appeal does not directly ask the Supreme Court to reconsider the underlying immunity precedent. It could nevertheless reach the justices and give Trump an opportunity to reverse his conviction, although the case is currently awaiting a decision from an intermediate state appeals court.

If the dispute arrived after a Democratic appointed majority took control, the justices could address the narrower evidence question and potentially overturn the broader immunity ruling. One obstacle is the general principle that courts should avoid deciding cases more broadly than necessary.

That restraint has not always stopped the Supreme Court from making a sweeping move. In Dobbs, Chief Justice John Roberts supported Mississippi but opposed overturning Roe, writing that the majority’s “dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us.”

Other appeals could also raise questions connected to the immunity precedent, including disputes about how much protection it provides to presidential subordinates. Still, a future majority would need at least an arguably relevant appeal before it could use the case to reverse the ruling.

The possibility of prosecuting Trump again is more remote because of several legal and practical barriers. Even the immunity decision did not completely prohibit prosecution in the federal 2020 election interference case, and litigation over whether that case could continue was still underway when Trump won the 2024 election.

The Justice Department dropped that case under its policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. It also dropped its appeal in the classified documents case after Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, dismissed the prosecution before trial.

Any effort by a future Justice Department to revive charges after Trump leaves office in 2029 could trigger a fight over the statute of limitations. Courts might have to decide whether the limitations period should be forgiven or whether declining to prosecute a sitting president produces a windfall for the defendant.

Trump could also try to pardon himself before leaving office, creating extensive additional litigation. If courts upheld such a pardon, other disputes surrounding a renewed federal prosecution would become unnecessary.

By the time any revived prosecution began, Trump would be well into his 80s. His 2024 victory may have saved him from federal prosecution, but a future Supreme Court could still erase the immunity precedent and deny future presidents the same powerful advantage.