Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed.

Trump reacted on his social media network, posting: “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”

Roberts was not entirely clear on what parts of the indictment against Trump may survive.

He said even Trump’s lawyers appeared to agree that a scheme to “submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors” was private and not part of the president’s official duties. But he said much would depend on the specifics of what Trump said or did.

“It is ultimately the government’s burden to rebut the presumption of immunity,” Roberts wrote. “We accordingly remand to the district court to determine in the first instance — with the benefit of briefing we lack — whether Trump’s conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial.”

Some legal scholars sharply criticized the ruling.

The “immunity decision will in time rank as among the court’s worst decisions in its many-year history,” said Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. “Any U.S. president can now violate the law to remain in power as long as he cloaks it in the trappings of his office.”

The court’s partisan divide in the immunity ruling reminded some of the 2000 Bush vs. Gore decision that ended the vote recount in favor of President George W. Bush.

University of Chicago professor Alison L. LaCroix said the “court has created a new category of presumptive immunity that invites all future presidents to act first and worry about constitutional consequences later, if ever. Today’s decision is potentially even more sweeping than Bush vs. Gore because it applies to all future presidents, not only to one-off situations like the Florida recount in 2000. It also runs counter to the founders’ design. The founders’ greatest fear was a popular demagogue.”

Among the Democrats slamming the ruling was Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Burbank, a lead House prosecutor in one of the impeachments of Trump.

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