Already on the docket is a case challenging the legality of most of the tariffs at the heart of Trump’s economic policy and another dealing with his aggressive push to exert greater control over independent agencies.
Though it is an emergency appeal, the justices are treating a case over whether Trump can fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook like one on the regular docket. It will determine the independence of the central bank and could have major implications for the U.S. economy, businesses and consumers.
The justices could also be called upon in the coming months to issue up-or-down decisions on Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship, his use of a wartime law to swiftly deport alleged gang members and his effort to strip 300,000 Venezuelan migrants of deportation protections.
The cases will force the justices to either embrace Trump’s sweeping assertions of presidential power or curb them. They set up a major test for the reputation of the court and the success of the president’s agenda, and either way, they appear certain to reshape the law.
“This will be a term in which the court will resolve major clashes between the Trump administration and its critics on core questions of executive authority and perceived executive overreach,” predicted Roman Martinez, an attorney who regularly argues before the high court. “The justices are going to be doing a lot of thinking and writing about separation of powers.”
It will also be a term that keeps the justices busy on other high-profile matters, including elections and policies toward gay and transgender individuals.
So far, all of the roughly two dozen cases this year dealing with Trump policies that have been decided by the high court have come on its emergency docket.
Decisions in such cases are temporary: The justices decide whether to let a policy go forward while legal challenges play out in court. Briefings are limited, and the justices don’t rule on the underlying legality of the issue.
The Trump administration has been overwhelmingly successful in these provisional cases, prevailing in 18, losing two and receiving mixed rulings in two others, according to a tally by Irving L. Gornstein, who argued dozens of cases before the court as a Justice Department lawyer and is a professor at Georgetown Law Center.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative supermajority, has allowed the administration to ban transgender soldiers from the military, slash the Education Department, give the Department of Government Efficiency access to Americans’ sensitive Social Security records and cut nearly $800 million in National Institutes of Health grants while challenges grind on in lower courts.
The justices have occasionally blocked Trump. They temporarily prohibited administration officials from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, required the administration to restart $2 billion in foreign aid it had frozen, and ordered the government to facilitate the return of Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García from a prison in El Salvador.
Many of those rulings have featured only short opinions or none at all. That has led to criticism by some of the court’s liberals and lower-court judges that the majority should do more to explain itself and to questions about what the justices ultimately think about the legality of Trump’s moves.
“They’re leaving the circuit courts, the district courts out in limbo,” Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, said of the high court during a recent oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. “They could easily just give us direction, and we would follow it.”
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh pushed back on such criticism in a recent appearance, saying that writing too much at an early stage of a case can create a “lock-in effect” that hardens views before the justices have had full briefings and arguments.
Now, as these cases begin to reach the court for full arguments, the justices will have to be more forthcoming, with full opinions that detail their thinking.
Gornstein said it’s unclear whether Trump’s early wins on the emergency docket – which often divided the court along ideological lines – portend even larger victories when the justices take up the substance of his policies.
“If it does, we are in for one of the most polarizing terms yet,” he said.
Nou, the University of Chicago law professor, said the justices could seek to avoid that outcome by ruling against the president in at least some cases, with an eye toward their legitimacy and public opinion, as well as the law.
Public approval of the court remains near all-time lows and is sharply divided by party. A September poll by the Pew Research Center found 50 percent of those surveyed had an unfavorable view of the court, while 48 percent had a favorable one. A recent Gallup poll tallied a record 65-point gap in approval of the court between Democrats and Republicans.
“The court is going to be mindful of these cases … lest it be accused of being Trump enablers after a series of terms under the Biden administration where they struck down one presidential initiative after another,” Nou said.
Several experts said the court is likely to allow Trump to fire heads of independent agencies, which Congress set up to be insulated from political interference. The justices already have allowed him to temporarily remove four agency heads in provisional rulings in recent months.
Trump could have a harder time persuading the justices to end birthright citizenship if that case reaches them, experts said.
Opinions on the likely outcomes of the tariffs case and the potential one involving the Alien Enemies Act were more mixed.
While cases involving the president’s policies will dominate much of the agenda, there are plenty of others to watch.
“It looks to be shaping up as a blockbuster political law term, both in the case of elections, regulation, redistricting and voter rights, and campaign finance,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
In potentially the biggest case, the justices could rule on the constitutionality of a key section of the Voting Rights Act that allows states to draw majority-minority voting districts to protect the power of Black and Hispanic voters. The complicated dispute revolves around Louisiana’s creation of a second Black-majority congressional district to give African Americans a greater political say.
The court will also weigh whether the federal government can limit how much a political party spends in coordination with its candidates and whether an Illinois politician has standing to sue the state to try to prevent it from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
For the second straight term, the court will take up cases dealing with gay and transgender issues that are fronts in the culture wars.
In one, the court will hear a challenge to a Colorado law banning “conversion therapy” for minors that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. More than 20 states ban such therapy, based on research showing it is ineffective and harmful, but a Christian therapist argues the restrictions violate her right to free speech.
In another case, the Supreme Court will rule on laws in nearly 30 states that ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports at schools and universities. Last term, in one of its biggest decisions, the court ruled states could ban gender transition treatments for minors.
And the court will handle a significant Second Amendment case. The justices will hear a challenge to Hawaii’s ban on carrying concealed weapons on publicly accessible private property without the owner’s consent. A ruling against the state could result in more guns in places like restaurants and stores.
If those cases weren’t enough, the high court is once again facing weighty issues on its emergency docket, including the dispute over whether Trump has the power to fire Cook. Trump has been waging a high-stakes battle to exert influence over the Fed, which sets interest rates. The court will hear oral arguments in that case in January.
In another, the administration has asked the high court to allow it to end a Biden-era policy of allowing people to self-identity their gender on passports with an “M,” “F,” or “X” for nonbinary, intersex or gender nonconforming.
That was one of a flood of emergency cases that arrived on the court’s doorstep during a usually quiet summer recess. The pace is not expected to let up as the justices return for the fall, and other emergency requests are sure to follow. The administration is facing more than 400 lawsuits.
“It never felt like last term ended,” Shapiro said. “It feels like we never got a breather.”