Supreme Court prepares to release major opinions on birthright citizenship, LGBTQ books, porn sites
From digging into President Donald Trump's battle with the courts to deciding whether people can be required to identify themselves before viewing porn online, the Supreme Court in the coming days will deliver its most dramatic decisions of the year.
With most of its pending rulings complete, the justices are now working toward issuing the final flurry of opinions that could have profound implications for the Trump administration, the First Amendment and millions of American people.
Already, the conservative Supreme Court has allowed states to ban transgender care for minors — a blockbuster decision that could have far-reaching consequences — sided with the Food and Drug Administration's denial of vaping products and upheld Biden-era federal regulations that will make it easier to track 'ghost guns.'
Here are some of the most important outstanding cases:
The first argued appeal involving Trump's second term has quickly emerged as the most significant case the justices will decide in the coming days. The Justice Department claims that three lower courts vastly overstepped their authority by imposing nationwide injunctions that blocked the president from enforcing his order limiting birthright citizenship.
Whatever the justices say about the power of courts to halt a president's executive order on a nationwide basis could have an impact beyond birthright citizenship. Trump has, for months, vociferously complained about courts pausing dozens of his policies with nationwide injunctions.
While the question is important on its own — it could shift the balance of power between the judicial and executive branches — the case was supercharged by the policy at issue: Whether a president can sign an executive order that upends more than a century of understanding, the plain text of the 14th Amendment and multiple Supreme Court precedents pointing to the idea that people born in the US are US citizens.
During the May 15 arguments, conservative and liberal justices seemed apprehensive to let the policy take effect.
The high court is also set to decide whether a school district in suburban Washington, DC, burdened the religious rights of parents by declining to allow them to opt their elementary-school children out of reading LGBTQ books in the classroom.
As part of its English curriculum, Montgomery County Public Schools approved a handful of books in 2022 at issue. One, 'Prince & Knight,' tells the story of a prince who does not want to marry any of the princesses in his realm. After teaming up with a knight to slay a dragon, the two fall in love, 'filling the king and queen with joy,' according to the school's summary. The parents said the reading of the books violated their religious beliefs.
The case arrived at the Supreme Court at a moment when parents and public school districts have been engaged in a tense struggle over how much sway families should have over instruction.
The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled during arguments in late April that it would side with the parents in the case, continuing the court's yearslong push to expand religious rights.
The court is juggling several major cases challenging the power of federal agencies. One of those deals with the creation of a task force that recommends which preventive health care services must be covered at no cost under Obamacare.
Though the case deals with technical questions about who should appoint the members of a board that makes those recommendations, the decision could affect the ability of Americans to access cost-free services under the Affordable Care Act such as certain cancer screenings and PrEP drugs that help prevent HIV infections.
During arguments in late April, the court signaled it may uphold the task force.
The court also seemed skeptical of a conservative challenge to the Universal Service Fund, which Congress created in 1996 to pay for programs that expand broadband and phone service in rural and low-income communities. Phone companies contribute billions to that fund, a cost that is passed on to consumers. A conservative group challenged the fund as an unconstitutional 'delegation' of the power of Congress to levy taxes.
If the court upholds the structure of the programs' funding, that would represent a departure from its trend in recent years of limiting the power of agencies to act without explicit approval from Congress.
For years, the Supreme Court has considered whether congressional districts redrawn every decade violate the rights of Black voters under the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. This year, the justices are being asked by a group of White voters whether Louisiana went so far in adding a second Black-majority district that it violated the 14th Amendment.
The years-old, messy legal battle over Louisiana's districts raises a fundamental question about how much state lawmakers may think about race when drawing congressional maps. The answer may have implications far beyond the Bayou State, particularly if a majority of the court believes it is time to move beyond policies intended to protect minority voters that were conceived during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Arguments in the case, which took place in March, were mixed.
A ruling against Louisiana would likely jeopardize the state's second Black and Democratic-leaning congressional district, currently held by Rep. Cleo Fields, a Democrat. And any change to Fields' territory could affect the boundaries of districts held by House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
The justices will also decide a fight that erupted in 2018 when South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster yanked Medicaid funding for the state's two Planned Parenthood clinics.
Technically, the legal dispute isn't about abortion — federal and state law already bar Medicaid from paying for that procedure — but a win for South Carolina could represent a financial blow to an entity that provides access to abortion in many parts of the country. McMaster, a Republican, argued the payments were a taxpayer subsidy for abortion.
McMaster's order had the effect of also blocking patients from receiving other services at Planned Parenthood. A patient named Julie Edwards, who has diabetes, and Planned Parenthood South Atlantic sued the state, noting that federal law gives Medicaid patients a right to access care at any qualified doctor's office willing to see them.
The legal dispute for the court deals with whether Medicaid patients have a right to sue to enforce requirements included in spending laws approved by Congress — in this case, the mandate that patients can use the benefit at any qualified doctor's office. Without a right to sue, Planned Parenthood argues, it would be impossible to enforce those requirements.
The Supreme Court has tended to view such rights-to-sue with skepticism, though a 7-2 majority found such a right in a related case two years ago.
The court is expected to release more opinions Thursday and will need at least one other day — and possibly several more — to finish its work.
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