The Supreme Court’s docket this term touches on some major issues worth watching.

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On the docket

The Supreme Court opened its new term this week.

The docket does not yet have the blockbuster potential ([link removed]) of the term that ended in July. Abortion, affirmative action, federal agency power were among those marquee cases. But the 40 cases this term ([link removed]) touch on some major issues worth watching.

Guns are again on the docket as are cases involving gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, age restrictions for access to online porn, federal regulation of vapes, and a case that raises pressing questions ([link removed]) around capital punishment.

Election Day could also require the court’s attention. The 2024 election hovers over the docket like a dark cloud on a bright autumn day, full of possible voting issues the justices may need to resolve.

Guided by two PBS News correspondents who attended some of this week’s oral arguments in Washington, D.C., we take a look at key cases that will come before justices between now and the end of April.

This newsletter was compiled by Joshua Barajas. ([link removed])
A NEW TERM IN THE SHADOW OF A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
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Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
By Marcia Coyle, @MarciaCoyle ([link removed])
U.S. Supreme Court Analyst

The U.S. Supreme Court opens a new term on the eve of an intense, historic election in which the justices may be called on to play a key role in the results.

“There’s a lot of trepidation,” said David Cole, national legal director of the ACLU, referring to the possibility of election cases reaching the high court. “If the election is close, then there’s a whole set of questions about voter access, counting ballots. I don’t think the court wants to get involved, but it may be forced to.”

Some court scholars said the less intense docket this term may reflect the justices’ desire to create space for post-election cases, if necessary.

“They had to make space for the possibility” there would be election cases, said Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. “They had to have that on their minds.”

If Trump wins the presidential election, he suggested, there is a possible challenge to him holding office based on the insurrection clause in the 14th Amendment — despite the justices rejecting a Colorado ballot case last term that invoked the same clause. If Trump doesn’t win, Gornstein added, “There’s almost certainly a number of immunity cases they will have to decide” related to ongoing criminal cases, a consequence of their separate decision last term awarding immunity for a president’s “official acts.”

The term also opens at a time when public approval of the Supreme Court is the lowest in decades. ([link removed]) A series of ethics-related revelations involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have damaged the court’s image. While the justices have adopted an ethics code after continuing outside criticism of them for lacking one, the new code does not have an enforcement mechanism. And sharply ideologically divided votes in culture-war cases appear to lend credence to some of the public’s belief that the court is a partisan institution.

But for now, the justices are doing business as usual. They added 15 cases to their argument docket on Sept. 30 when they met to examine more than 1,000 petitions that had lingered from the last term or been filed over the summer. They will continue to add to the docket until about mid-January, and traditionally have filled argument slots through April.

Here is a brief look at key cases thus far that will be argued through the spring.

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More Guns

Last term, the court ruled that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could not ban bump stocks under the definition of “machine guns” in federal law. This week, the justices faced a similar case involving regulation of “ghost guns.” ([link removed]) Kits can be purchased online that allow anyone to assemble a gun quickly and without background checks. These ghost guns have no serial numbers and are largely untraceable.
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Watch the segment in the player above.
The bureau issued a rule in 2022 that the definition of “firearm” under the Gun Control Act of 1986 includes weapon parts kits that can be “readily” assembled into a firearm. The rule also states that the term “frame or receiver,” as referenced in the act’s “firearm” definition, includes “a partially complete … frame or receiver.” A lower court found that the bureau had exceeded its authority in issuing the rule. The Biden administration appealed to the Supreme Court ([link removed]) (Garland v. Van der Stok.)

The second gun-related case ([link removed]) , Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, came to the court from Mexico. That country charged Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms with aiding the illegal trafficking of firearms to drug cartels in Mexico. A lower court refused to dismiss Mexico’s suit under a 2005 federal law that shields gunmakers from liability for crimes committed with their guns.

A transgender health care ban and reverse discrimination

Tennessee, like 25 other Republican-controlled states, passed legislation banning medical treatments ([link removed]) intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” at birth or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” In taking on United States v. Skrmetti, the justices agreed to decide ([link removed]) whether the law discriminates on the basis of sex in violation of the equal protection clause.

The justices will also decide a woman’s claim ([link removed]) (Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services) that she was denied a promotion because she is heterosexual and her former boss, a gay woman, instead advanced two LGBTQ+ people. Marlean Ames, an Ohio government employee, challenges a court-imposed requirement that “majority” Americans raising discrimination claims must demonstrate “background circumstances,” such as statistical evidence of a pattern of discrimination against a majority group, before their suits can proceed.

Free speech and online porn

In 2023, Texas joined a growing number of states that have passed laws requiring websites that publish sexual material deemed “harmful to minors” to verify their users’ age before they can access anything on the site. The Texas law also requires covered sites to prominently publish “sexual materials health warnings” written by the government.

In Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton ([link removed]) , the justices will decide what type of scrutiny — rational basis or strict scrutiny — to apply to the law, which the challengers contend unconstitutionally burdens users and compels speech.

A fight over vapes

Wages and White Lion Investments makes flavored e-liquids containing nicotine for use in e-cigarettes, such as vapes. The company sought marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration to continue making and selling its products. But the FDA denied premarketing approval after finding that the products did not show strong, reliable evidence to overcome the risks of youth addiction and benefits to adult smokers.

The company has challenged the FDA’s denials, claiming it lacked authority to impose those requirements and acted arbitrarily and capriciously. A lower appellate court agreed with the company, and the FDA turned to the Supreme Court ([link removed]) (FDA v. Wages and White Lion Investments).

Not in my backyard!

The justices will return to an old and thorny issue: where to store nuclear waste. Texas challenged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s plan to store 40,000 metric tons of waste in Texas’ Permian Basin. A lower federal appellate court ruled that the federal agency did not have the authority to issue licenses to store the waste away from reactors.

The case, Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas ([link removed]) , could become another chapter in the conservative majority’s recent efforts to rein in the power of federal regulatory agencies.

AN OKLAHOMA DEATH PENALTY CASE REFLECTS DIVIDES OVER CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
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Watch the segment in the player above.
By Adam Kemp, @Adam_WK ([link removed])
Communities Correspondent, Oklahoma City

A case involving an Oklahoma man who’s been on death row for more than 25 years was back before the Supreme Court ([link removed]) this week.

Richard Glossip, 61, has faced nine execution dates and eaten three “last meals.” Justices weighed in Wednesday’s oral arguments whether Glossip’s constitutional rights were violated during trial. His defense team argued, supported by an unlikely advocate in the state’s Republican attorney general, that he deserved a new day in court.

There are three big takeaways from the arguments (laid out here ([link removed]) ), which comes on the heels of other high-profile state execution cases. (The high court also has a separate death penalty case ([link removed]) , currently unscheduled, on its docket this term.)

William Berry, a law professor at University of Mississippi, said there’ll likely be more challenges to death penalty cases in the U.S. as public support for capital punishment continues to trend downward. A Gallup poll released about a year ago showed, for the first time, that more Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly than fairly. ([link removed])

Berry cited the execution last month of Marcellus Williams in Missouri. Prosecutors in that case asked for the 55-year-old’s conviction to be overturned, citing concerns over tainted jury selection and evidence tampering. The justices opted not to grant a last-minute halt ([link removed]) to Williams’ execution.

“We're not asking the philosophical question about whether we think this punishment is OK or not,” Berry said. “People are asking the question, ‘Is the way that we're doing it is justifiable?.’”

The most revealing indicator over how people really feel about the death penalty is how juries handle capital punishment sentences, he added.

In some of the most conservative counties in Texas, which leads the nation in executions since 1976, Berry said juries have been selecting life without parole more frequently. ([link removed])

“People would say they support the death penalty,” Berry said. “But when they actually have the choice to make, they're not making it. The death penalty definitely is slowly dying.”
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