The Supreme Court recently refused to suspend a lower court decision telling South Carolina it has to allow a transgender student to use the boys’ bathroom in a public school. This emphasizes the importance of issues the court will be reviewing as its new term begins this month.
Hans von Spakovsky
The court’s last term featured significant issues ranging from nationwide injunctions to parental rights to religious liberty, and it delivered no shortage of important rulings. This new term looks no different.
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Here are a few of the most significant upcoming cases:
Do we face an economic emergency due to our huge, debilitating trade deficit and trade barriers imposed by other countries, as President Donald Trump claims? And does the president have the authority under applicable federal law to make that determination and impose tariffs unilaterally?
That’s the issue in these combined cases the Supreme Court recently accepted. They may affect everything from the authority of a president to the nation’s economic well-being.
Despite refusing to issue a stay on a lower court ruling allowing a transgender student to continue using the bathroom of their choice in South Carolina, the court did take this case from West Virginia. So it could decide the fate of women’s sports in more than two dozen states.
West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act mandates that biological sex serve as the defining condition for participation in female sports. This was challenged by an 11-year-old who is biologically a boy yet claims to be a girl.
Whether the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts will continue to push American jurisprudence to the right -- bending the law toward its preferred policy outcomes, rather than precedent or originalist intent -- is no longer up for debate.
In a decision defying common sense, the liberal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals enjoined the law, claiming that preventing this student from competing in girls’ sports constituted sex-based discrimination.
A ruling by the Supreme Court against West Virginia would be a disaster for the future of women’s sports — and for the safety and achievements of the women who participate in those sports.
Redistricting is an issue that often appears before the Supreme Court.
After the 2020 census, Louisiana redrew its six congressional seats, creating a congressional district in which a majority of voters are Black. The NAACP and others sued, claiming that given the size of the Black population, the state’s failure to create a second such district violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
A federal district judge agreed and ordered the state to draw a new map with two majority-Black districts. The state was then sued by other voters, claiming a violation of the equal protection clause, because the lines of the second district had been drawn based on race. A three-judge panel agreed. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in March.
Instead of issuing a decision at the end of its term in June, the court ordered a new round of arguments this fall on whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-Black district violates the 14th or 15th amendments.
The outcome could influence redistricting nationwide.
This case examines the spending limits that federal law imposes on political parties engaging in candidate-coordinated campaign activities. This decision involves reconsidering a 2001 precedent in a case from Colorado.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee and then-Sen. JD Vance filed a lawsuit claiming that such limits on the activities of political parties violate the First Amendment. The lower courts all ruled against them, following the 2001 precedent. But the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit acknowledged a “tension” between the 2001 decision and more recent decisions by the Supreme Court.
This promises to be an eventful Supreme Court session. As these and other cases are being argued and decided, everyone from the president to the typical American could be affected by what happens.
Von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
