By Nate Raymond and Will Dunham
WASHINGTON, July 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court, fresh off a momentous term, already has a slate of important cases set up for its next term that begins in October on issues including guns, voting restrictions, LGBT rights and a disputed detention policy used by President Donald Trump’s administration for certain convicted immigrants.
There also are cases due to be argued in the next term involving big corporations. These include a bid by ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to scuttle a climate-related lawsuit by officials in Boulder, Colorado, a dispute arising from an antitrust suit by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games against Apple and a trademark case involving PepsiCo.
The justices issued the final rulings of their last term — one dominated by cases involving Trump and his policies — last Monday and Tuesday, and more Trump-related cases being litigated in lower courts promise to reach them during their next term.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has steadily moved American law rightward this decade. It has taken an expansive view of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms,” and issued two more rulings last month widening gun rights.
The gun case coming in the next term gives the justices an opportunity to strike down state restrictions on assault-style rifles such as AR-15s. They took up two appeals after lower courts upheld bans on such weapons in Connecticut and in Cook County, Illinois, which includes the city of Chicago.
Gun rights groups have said Supreme Court precedents concerning the Second Amendment protect these weapons, which they described as in “common use.” Officials in Connecticut and Cook County have called them weapons of war and the guns of choice for criminals and terrorists.
The court reshaped gun regulation in 2022 when it held that modern restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” in order to comply with the Second Amendment. Since then, four U.S. appellate courts have upheld state-level bans on assault-style weapons.
“I think it’s going to be hard for them to kind of sort out what the original understanding is for these kinds of new types of weapons,” Vanderbilt University law professor Brian Fitzpatrick said.
The court will have to grapple not just with whether the bans are consistent with historical U.S. regulation of firearms but more fundamentally with whether these weapons even constitute “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment, Fitzpatrick said.
Some appeals courts have held that they are not, as these semiautomatic weapons are ill-suited for self-defense and are predominantly useful in military service.
VOTING RIGHTS
The court has an important voting rights case lined up for its next term.
It will hear a Republican-led bid backed by the Trump administration to revive voter restrictions in Arizona that would stiffen proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registrants and purge state voter rolls of alleged non-U.S. citizens.
Responding to a lawsuit by Latino-focused voting advocacy group Mi Familia Vota, a lower court halted provisions of Arizona’s law, finding they violated a federal voting registration statute.
Democrats have accused Republicans of pursuing voter suppression measures in a bid to lower voter turnout and disenfranchise specific groups of people who traditionally lean Democratic. Republicans have said their proposals are intended to protect election security.
“Much like with its mass-deportation agenda, the Department of Justice is asking for something unprecedented: the power to remove voters from the rolls based solely on suspicion that they are not citizens,” Hector Sanchez Barba, the head of Mi Familia Vota, said in a statement.
DETENTION CASE
The court has backed Trump in a series of cases involving his crackdown on immigration, though it ruled against his attempt to restrict birthright citizenship.
The justices in the coming term will hear his administration’s appeal in a case involving the legality of subjecting certain convicted immigrants with pending deportation proceedings to lengthy detention without bond hearings that would allow them to seek a release on bail.
A lower court ruled that the constitutional right to due process bars “unreasonably prolonged” detention without a hearing for non-U.S. citizens who face deportation after being convicted of certain crimes.
LGBT RIGHTS
Another LGBT-related case from Colorado comes before the court after the justices in March rejected the state’s law that banned psychotherapists from using “conversion” talk therapy intended to change an LGBT minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity on free speech grounds.
The justices will hear a bid by the Archdiocese of Denver and other Catholic entities for exemption from a Colorado preschool funding program’s nondiscrimination requirement in the court’s latest clash between religious rights and LGBT protections. A lower court found that Colorado’s program did not violate the constitutional religious rights of the Catholic plaintiffs.
(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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