Guns, voting, immigration and more: The biggest cases the Supreme Court will take up in its new term
Guns, voting, immigration and more: The biggest cases the Supreme Court will take up in its new term
The justices reconvene on Monday to take up another series of blockbuster cases involving some of the country’s most-debated issues.
The Supreme Court begins its latest term on Monday with a docket full of high-stakes cases that touch on some of the most contentious issues in American politics, including guns, voting and transgender rights.
This will be the second full term for the nation’s highest court since President Trump returned to the White House. The previous term, which wrapped up in June, was packed with landmark rulings in a long list of major cases, including Trump’s tariffs, birthright citizenship and a slate of key immigration decisions.
The justices will likely take on additional cases over the course of the term, but there are already plenty of pivotal cases for the court to consider in the coming months.
Here’s a rundown of the big cases headed to the Supreme Court this term and what their eventual rulings might mean for the country.
Guns
Over the past two decades, the Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions that have significantly expanded gun rights. It could go even further next term when it considers whether laws banning certain semiautomatic rifles, like the AR-15, violate the Second Amendment.
This category of guns was banned nationwide for a decade until Congress allowed the law to expire in 2004. Similar bans are currently in place in about a dozen states. Gun rights groups have challenged those laws, arguing that it’s unconstitutional for these specific types of firearms to be singled out for bans that don’t apply to other guns under the Second Amendment.
Citizen voting
A dozen states currently require voters to show proof of citizenship — like a birth certificate or passport — when they register to vote. The Supreme Court will consider the legality of these requirements again, this time in a challenge to Arizona’s latest proof-of-citizenship law in the case Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota. The law is currently blocked by a federal circuit court ruling that called some of its provisions “unlawful measures of voter suppression.” Republicans have asked the court to overturn that decision and allow the requirements in Arizona and elsewhere to remain in place.
The court’s final ruling could have massive implications for voting across the United States. Non-citizen voting is extraordinarily rare and there are already legal measures in place in every state to ensure that only ballots from citizens are counted. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from pushing for new laws requiring voters to prove their citizenship. Ballot measures aimed at curbing noncitizen voting will be considered by voters in six states in November. Trump’s signature elections bill, the SAVE America Act, would apply the requirements nationwide.
Some researchers argue that, rather than preventing fraud, these laws create hurdles that prevent eligible voters from casting their ballots. According to one estimate, as many as 21 million people across the United States lack the documents they would need to be able to vote under proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Transgender rights
One of the many points of debate around transgender rights in recent years has been the extent of parents’ authority over decisions involving their trans-identifying children. The court will weigh in on this issue once again this term when it hears a case challenging a Washington law that gives the operators of emergency shelters the option not to contact parents of runaway transgender youth who are seeking gender-affirming care. A group of parents has sued, arguing that the law violates their parental rights “to raise their child in accordance with the child’s biological sex.”
The pending case runs along similar lines to one decided earlier this year, in which the justices ruled in favor of parents seeking to block a California law that limited when schools can “out” transgender students to their families.
Schools
In 2020, Colorado voters approved a ballot measure to establish universal preschool throughout the state. As part of the program, state funding is only available to private preschools that meet certain “equal opportunity” standards — including a willingness to enroll LGBTQ students. Two Catholic preschools sued the state, arguing that they were being discriminated against on the basis of their religion by being denied state funding for standing by their beliefs. The state contends that there is no discrimination present because its rules apply to all schools, whether they’re religiously affiliated or not.
In two similar cases over the past decade, the court has come down on the side of the schools, ruling that states generally can’t exclude religious schools from public programs simply because they are religious.
Immigration
After siding with Trump in a series of immigration-related rulings during its most recent term, the court has agreed to take on three more cases that touch on the heart of the president’s immigration agenda.
The headline case, which the court agreed to hear just a few days before the start of the term, centers around the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy for undocumented immigrants. Historically, migrants who are being considered for removal have had the opportunity to apply for release from detention while they wait for their case to be decided by the courts. Trump changed that policy, causing tens of thousands of immigrants to remain in detention while they await potential deportation. Lower courts have split on the question of whether it’s legal for the administration to uniformly deny detained migrants the right to a bond hearing. Now, the Supreme Court will have the final say.
A second case centers around Trump’s migrant detention policies for a different group of immigrants. The central question is whether migrants with a criminal history, including those who were in the country legally, can be held in detention centers indefinitely, or if they have the right to challenge their detention in court. The case involves two lawful permanent residents who were detained for what they argue was an “unreasonably prolonged” period without a bond hearing. Immigration detention has become a major source of debate during Trump’s second term, amid reports of unsafe conditions at detention centers and a striking increase in the number of deaths among detainees.
The third immigration case involves immigrants who had once been granted asylum in the United States, had that status revoked and now argue that they should be eligible to become lawful permanent residents. The government argues, and lower courts have agreed so far, that only immigrants with active asylum protection can apply for a green card.
Climate change
Over the past few years, the Supreme Court has significantly narrowed the government’s power to regulate greenhouse emissions in a series of landmark rulings. Next term, it will take up another case that could close off yet another pathway that municipalities have used to try to fight climate change.
Lawmakers in Boulder, Colo., have sued oil and gas companies for their role in perpetuating climate change. Those companies have asked the Supreme Court to block the lawsuit. They contend, and the Trump administration agrees, that only the federal government has the power to seek these types of damages because the impacts of climate change go far beyond Boulder’s jurisdiction. Several other cities and some states have filed similar suits against the fossil fuel industry. The court could invalidate all of them if it rules in the companies’ favor.
Jury trials
The court will decide whether juries in criminal trials must have 12 jurors. That’s already the law in most of the country, but a half-dozen states allow for as few as six jurors in certain cases. The case centers around Hamed Kian, a Florida chiropractor who was convicted of practicing after his license had been suspended following allegations of inappropriate contact with patients. Kian’s attorneys argue that the small jury violated his constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial.
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