Supreme Court's New Term Threatens Progress on Guns, Voting Rights, Transgender Care, and Immigration
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The Supreme Court is set to review cases that could undermine gun safety, restrict voting rights, threaten transgender youth protections, and reinforce harsh Trump-era immigration policies.
The Supreme Court will begin its new term on Monday, taking up a docket that could roll back hard-won rights and protections in the areas of gun regulation, voting access, transgender youth care, and humane immigration enforcement.
In the firearms arena, the justices are expected to consider whether bans on dangerous semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 violate the Second Amendment. This challenge, pushed by gun lobbyists, threatens to overturn state-level efforts to curb gun violence and protect communities from mass shootings.
A case involving Arizona's proof-of-citizenship voter registration law will test the legality of requiring documents like birth certificates or passports to vote. Republican lawmakers are seeking to overturn a lower-court order that blocked parts of the law, arguing the requirements are permissible, while voting rights advocates warn these measures are a thinly veiled attempt to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, particularly people of color and low-income communities.
The Court will also hear a dispute over a Washington law that allows emergency shelters to protect runaway transgender youth seeking gender-affirming care by not notifying unsupportive parents. Reactionary parental groups argue the statute infringes on their right to impose their beliefs, echoing a recent regressive decision that favored parents in a similar California case, at the expense of transgender youth safety and autonomy.
Two Catholic preschools in Colorado have sued the state after being denied public funding because they refuse to enroll LGBTQ students, alleging so-called religious discrimination. The state rightly maintains that funding criteria apply equally to all schools and should not be used to subsidize discrimination.
Three immigration cases will revisit cruel policies enacted during the Trump administration. The primary case concerns mandatory detention without bond hearings for undocumented migrants, a practice that has split lower courts and resulted in the inhumane treatment of vulnerable people. A second case examines whether lawful permanent residents with criminal histories can be held indefinitely without a bond hearing, raising serious due process concerns. The third case involves former asylees whose status was revoked and who seek permanent residency, with the government seeking to limit their rights and protections.
Finally, the Court will consider a lawsuit filed by the city of Boulder, Colorado, and other municipalities against oil and gas companies over climate-change damages. The fossil fuel industry, backed by the Trump administration, argues that only the federal government has authority to pursue such claims, seeking to evade accountability for environmental destruction.
These cases are expected to have a profound impact on national policy, with the Court poised to decide whether to uphold or undermine progress on some of the most pressing issues facing the country.