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The Supreme Court started its latest term on Monday, and while the justices are still filling out their calendar, there are already some crucial cases to watch on guns, voting rights and more, including an important one argued Tuesday that’s the first in a series of big business attacks on government regulations.
An emerging theme, which extends to the justices’ off-bench ethics as well, is the court dealing with messes of its own — and, relatedly, Donald Trump’s — creation. One of the big questions will be how the GOP supermajority, half of which Trump appointed, handles extreme rulings from the right-wing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which Trump also helped make more extreme.
And the Deadline: Legal newsletter is back to guide you through the term, so sign up for that one if you haven’t yet.
Guns
The court’s Republican appointees last year expanded the Second Amendment right to carry outside the home, in the Bruen case that called a host of gun laws into question. Citing Bruen, the 5th Circuit in United States v. Rahimi struck down a law barring gun possession for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders. Now that case is at the Supreme Court, and the justices must decide how far their Bruen ruling goes. Rahimi will be argued on Nov. 7.
Voting rights
After the surprise 5-4 voting rights victory (or non-loss) in the Alabama case in June, the justices recently rejected state Republicans’ attempt to get the court to flip and bail the state out of having to draw a second majority-Black congressional district. We’ll see if the court’s fortitude holds this term, with a racial gerrymandering case set for argument on Oct. 11, Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.
Regulations attack
That case argued Tuesday, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association, is the first in that series this term in the GOP’s war on the so-called administrative state. A 5th Circuit panel of Trump appointees called the CFPB’s funding structure unconstitutional, a dubious decision that threatens not only consumer protection but other government functions as well.
In addition to a case involving the Securities and Exchange Commission, another appeal in that series may sound familiar. It was previewed, in a sense, by the latest ProPublica report on Justice Clarence Thomas. In that case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Koch network (which ProPublica uncovered Thomas’ ties to) and others are hoping to overturn a longstanding precedent called Chevron, which gives deference to administrative agency expertise. Overturning the doctrine could have major consequences for environmental protection efforts and other regulations.
Social media
Social media and the First Amendment is another theme, as the justices just took up an appeal regarding red state efforts to stop social media companies from banning users. Meanwhile, we’re waiting to see what the court does with the Biden administration’s challenge to restrictions on government contacts with platforms regarding disinformation, imposed by a Trump-appointed judge and approved by — you guessed it — the 5th Circuit.
Ethics and scandals
The term got off to a somewhat surprising start on the ethics front, with Thomas recusing from a rejected Jan. 6 appeal brought by pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman. But ethical issues that dog the court (largely due to Thomas) aren’t going away anytime soon, including when it comes to recusal. Justice Samuel Alito has already unconvincingly explained why he isn’t recusing from the upcoming tax case of Moore v. United States, and Thomas faces recusal calls in the Loper Bright case and any others with Koch network connections.
Of course, this all happens against the backdrop of the court’s self-inflicted, untreated wound of failing to have a binding ethics code, so we’ll see if the justices finally get that together — and, more importantly, if they do, whether and how it’s enforced.
Cases still to come
Remember, it’s only the beginning of the term, and the justices will be taking on new cases as it progresses, some of which we might not even know about yet. A huge case that we do know about, which could be hitting the docket later this term, is the mifepristone case, which has been pinging around the courts ever since a Trump-appointed judge tried to take the abortion pill off the market in April.
And on top of appeals involving Jan. 6 defendants that the justices could take up, we could see high court action from Trump himself, as he fights four criminal cases and multiple civil cases while running for president again. Buckle up.