Being a Supreme Court judge is a very sweet gig.
Court usually hears 60 cases a yearwith the breakdown of “shadow docket” fast-tracked cases. Like school kids, judges take their summer off — usually wrapping up their backlog in June and then skipping town in early July.
And the judges are currently in the final stage before enjoying their summer. On Wednesday, the Court heard the final arguments of its current term. So all that’s left for the judges to do is finish writing their current opinions (with a mix of concurrences and dissenters), before their summer break begins.
Two issues dominate the remainder of this term’s proceedings: democracy and President Donald Trump. The court has just decided the case that started Another round of Republican gerrymanders in South America – and that will wipe out Black representation in many red states in the South in the process. They are there two more election cases come before justices of the peace in the summer.
The court will also decide several cases where Trump wants to expand his powers and the powers of the presidency. These include some cases where the outcome is predetermined – the majority of the Court’s Republicans, for example, have long placed on “unity executive,” a legal theory that gives Trump the power to fire almost anyone who heads a federal agency. But the Court is also likely to reject Trump’s claims that he can strip the citizenship of many Americans born in the United States.
The term also highlights two issues in the perennial culture war: guns and LGBTQ rights. Gun advocates will probably celebrate two upcoming decisionswhereas the Court is likely to take a broader view of the Second Amendment. Transgender student-athletes, meanwhile, should prepare for bad news.
On Wednesday, the Court issued Louisiana vs. Callaisbig results – but not exactly unexpected – A decision to change a provision of the Voting Rights Act that sometimes requires states to draw more Black or Latino districts. The result of this decision is that between half a dozen and a dozen seats that are currently held by Democrats of color may be held by white Republicans after several red states redraw their maps.
The court will also decide National Republican Senatorial Committee (“NRSC”) v. FECwhere the Republican Party is asking the Court to set limits on the amount of money that party organizations such as the Democratic and Republican National Committee can spend in collaboration with candidates. This is important because the law allows donors to give larger amounts to the DNC or RNC than they can give to candidates, so a decision on the part of the GOP would allow wealthy donors to give more influence to individual communities.
Congressmen in the majority in the Republican Court already took a toll on America’s campaign finance lawso the decision in NRSC it will probably only matter in the margins. But the Court is expected to use NRSC removing one of the few remaining limits on money in politics.
And then there is Watson vs. RNCwhere the GOP is asking judges to throw out thousands of absentee ballots; in recent elections, Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to vote by mail. In the age of neutral referees, Watson it would be rejected by the lower court and would not be heard again. The GOP’s legal theory is that the 160-year-old law that sets the date for federal elections requires all ballots that arrive after that date to be thrown out even if they were mailed in before the election — and that somehow no one saw this counting limit up. after Trump started claiming that voting by mail is bad.
At oral argument, however, at least four of the Court’s Republicans appeared to support the GOP’s arguments in Watson. So the case is worth watching for the same reason that coal miners keep a close eye on their canary. If the Supreme Court embraces the GOP’s cockamamie legal arguments Watsonthat is a warning that they will accept other highly questionable legislative arguments that benefit the Republican Party.
Trump has already lost one major case this term. In Anti-Trump Learning Resources (2026), three Republicans on the Court upheld their party’s traditional support for free trade and struck down many of Trump’s tariffs. All three Democrats of the Court also joined this decision.
Trump is also likely to lose Trump vs. Barbarahis challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment clause granting citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States. Like Learning Resources, Barbara it involves an issue that divides the Republican Party, and where Republicans largely agreed with Democrats until Trump came along.
At the same time, the president can win big Trump against slaughtera case asking whether Congress can create “independent” federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission or the National Labor Relations Board, whose members can only be removed by the president for incompetence or incompetence in office. All Judicial Republicans are loyal to the “unity executive“A legal theory which holds that such organizations cannot exist, except one.” The Court already signaled last year that members of the Federal Reserve can be protected from the president being shotand is likely to confirm this decision later this year.
There is uncertainty about how the Court will issue a decision Mullin v. Doe and Trump vs. Myottwo lawsuits questioning whether the Trump administration followed due process when it revoked “temporary protected status” from Haitian and Syrian nationals living in the United States. If the Court rules in favor of the foreign nationals, that will mean that some of the most dangerous nationals will get to stay in the US for perhaps a few more months.
But the legal issue in Doe and Garbage it is only procedural, and no one really questions that the Trump administration it can deport these people if it gets due process. So a victory for these Syrian and Haitian plaintiffs would be only a small defeat for Trump.
Guns and the Second Amendment
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the Supreme Court declared a a much despised system which now governs Second Amendment cases. A lawyer advocating gun laws must point to the law of the time the Constitution was created that is the same as the law they are advocating today. If five judges consider the old law to be sufficiently similar to the new law, the new law will be upheld. Otherwise it gets knocked down.
Judges have struggled to explain how the two laws should be similar, or in what way the new law must be similar to the old one, and many judges have complained that this new system is unworkable, and that they do not know how to use it. In fact, in a 2024 commentsJustice Ketanji Brown Jackson cited several separate court opinions — some of which were written by Trump appointees — that have complained that, in the words of one judge, Bridge has caused “confusion” because it “does not provide lower courts with clear guidance on how modern laws should resemble establishment-era gun laws.”
In any case, this time the Court will decide two cases that may give the judges a chance to explain how BridgeA random historical test should work. The first, Wolford vs. Lopezrefers to a Hawaii law that requires gun owners to obtain a permit from stores, restaurants, and other private businesses before bringing firearms on the premises. Second, United States vs. Hemanrefers to a federal law that prohibits an “illegal user” of marijuana from owning a firearm.
In oral argument in both casea majority of the justices seemed likely to strike down both laws. The more uncertain question is whether they can do so in a way that makes it transparent to non-conformists. Bridge system.
One of the most surprising decisions of Chief Justice John Roberts as head of the Court was an opinion last March. Mirabelli v. Beautiful (2026), where Republican justices held that the Constitution requires public school teachers to release transgender students to their parents, even if the student wishes to conceal their gender identity.
As I explained shortly after the handover, Mirabelli is a surprising decision because the Court relied on “important process,” a controversial legal doctrine that was also the basis of the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wadeand that allows the Court to create “rights” that are not clear in the Constitution.
For decades, legal conservatism defined itself by opposing due process. The fact that the Republicans were ready to rely on this doctrine in Mirabelli suggests that their personal prejudice against trans people has trumped their commitment to applying the law in a predictable and consistent manner.
Mirabelli left a little doubt lingering on Little v. Hecox and West Virginia vs. BPJtwo pending lawsuits challenging state laws barring trans female student-athletes from playing on women’s sports teams. Republican justices’ questions in oral arguments on these cases gave trans athletes little reason for hope. Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, the only Republican justices who have supported transition rights in the past, had skeptical questions for the attorney representing the athletes.
The plaintiffs in these cases always faced a difficult road in court. Although the Supreme Court held Bostock vs. Clayton County (2020) that laws prohibiting “sex” discrimination sometimes protect trans people from equal treatment, gender discrimination is not prohibited in competitive sports. Indeed, sexism is the entire reason why women-only sports teams exist.
Considering the intention of the Republican party judges to put politics against the law against the legal principles Mirabelliit is difficult to imagine this Court going further Bostock to hold that trans athletes have the right to compete on teams that match their gender identity.
