This week, I’m handing over the State Court Report newsletter to our managing editor, Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot, who offers her analysis of the state cases to watch in 2025.
—Alicia Bannon

State courts are poised to issue major rulings in 2025 on issues including abortion, criminal justice, voting rights, education, and more. Here are some of the cases we’ll be watching this year.

Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that there is no federal constitutional right to abortion, reproductive rights cases have been among the highest profile litigation to weave their way through state courts. This year brings a new crop of cases.

One of the most interesting is Kaul v. Urmanski, which asks the Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide whether a 176-year-old law bans abortion. (Should the court find that it does, another case — Planned Parenthood v. Urmanski — will determine whether such a ban would violate the state constitution.) The case could echo last year’s Arizona decision upholding an 1864 law banning abortion, which set off what the New York Times called “a political earthquake.”

A looming Wisconsin Supreme Court election adds intrigue. The state’s progressive majority — and, perhaps, the outcome of this case — is at stake in the April race.

Several other pending abortion cases are notable because they involve novel legal theories. For example, a group of religious women claim that Indiana’s near-total abortion ban substantially burdens their religious exercise. And women in Wyoming argue that a ban violates a 2011 GOP-backed amendment, passed to limit the reach of the Affordable Care Act, protecting the right to make one’s “own health care decisions.” The Wyoming plaintiffs prevailed at the trial level, and the Indiana trial court enjoined the abortion ban in advance of a decision on the merits.

An abortion-related case in Texas tests the bounds of states’ power to project laws across their own borders. In Texas v. Margaret Daily Carpenter, the state attorney general sued a New York doctor for remotely prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texans. As UC Davis School of Law professor Mary Ziegler details in a recent State Court Report piece, the case pits Texas’s stated “interests in protecting unborn life” against New York’s “constitutional protections for reproductive liberty and equality.”

Finally, a challenge to Georgia’s six-week abortion ban is headed to the state supreme court. In Georgia v. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the plaintiffs argue that Georgia’s law violates state due process, equal protection, and inherent rights clauses. A lower court struck down the ban; the state supreme court stayed that decision pending appeal.

This month, the Michigan Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in several cases urging it to expand protections against life-without-parole sentences for youths. These cases are part of an accelerating trend among state supreme courts to shield children and “emerging adults” — young people who have recently turned 18 — from the harshest prison sentences, even when the federal Constitution would allow them.

The Michigan high court will also consider the constitutionality of mandatory life-without-parole sentences for so-called felony murder — a conviction for a death caused during the commission of a felony, even if the defendant didn’t mean to kill. Last fall, Pennsylvania’s supreme court heard arguments in a similar case, Pennsylvania v. Lee. A ruling by either state that such sentences violate their respective constitutions would break new ground.

The Washington Supreme Court is considering a dispute over how state election officials review voter signatures on mail ballots, while appeals are expected in challenges to voter ID requirements and restrictions on voter registration activities in Missouri. Among other issues, the cases raise questions over the level of scrutiny that courts should apply to laws that burden the right to vote — which can determine whether such laws are upheld, as Brennan Center senior counsel Eliza Sweren-Becker has previously written.

State supreme courts are set to consider whether alleged partisan gerrymandering and racially discriminatory map drawing violate state constitutions. In South Carolina, a lawsuit is asking the supreme court to declare the 2022 congressional map unconstitutional because it was drawn to favor Republicans. And in Black Voters Matter v. Byrd, voting rights groups claim that Florida’s congressional map was designed to harm Black voters.

Multiple state supreme courts are set to define the right to an adequate public education — a right that exists in some form in every state constitution.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court will decide whether the base amount the state spends per student ($4,100) is enough to meet its state constitutional obligations. A lower court calculated that the state must spend at least $7,356 per child.

The North Carolina Supreme Court is expected to overturn a 2022 ruling that state courts can order the legislature to allocate funds to meet its educational obligations. The court’s decision to rehear the case after two new justices joined the court in 2023 raises questions about respect for precedent — especially in a state where judges are elected and court majorities can regularly shift.

State courts also continue to grapple with the proper application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. This month, the Washington Supreme Court will consider whether the state’s ban on large-capacity magazines is unconstitutional. In defense of the ban, the state argues that such weapons are military-style accessories, not constitutionally protected arms, and that gun rights are subject to reasonable regulation pursuant to the state’s police power — including public safety measures to curb mass shootings.

President-elect Donald Trump’s designated border czar has threatened to retaliate against city leaders who have expressed concern about mass deportations conducted by federal agents in their communities. Many cities across the country have local policies in place to resist or refuse to assist such federal actions. “Whether those local governments can enact friendlier immigration policies is ultimately a matter of state law,” writes Northeastern University School of Law professor Martha F. Davis. Read more

In its first decision interpreting Iowa’s new constitutional provision protecting gun rights, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the state’s process for restoring gun rights revoked by federal law. But the “splintered decision left more questions than it answered,” writes Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University. Read more

Members of the Texas legislature stalled the execution of a man whose murder conviction was based on the controversial “shaken baby syndrome” by calling the man to testify in front of a legislative committee. The Texas Supreme Court later ruled that the legislature misused its subpoena power, but Michigan State University College of Law’s Quinn Yeargain disagrees. “The best use of the legislature’s agency and constitutional powers,” Yeargain writes, is to prevent death sentences in cases like Robert Roberson’s in the first place. Read more

As part of our 50-state series about the nation’s constitutions, University of Montana law professor Constance Van Kley explains how Montana’s constitution “reflects the state’s natural beauty, its libertarian streak, and its trust in the citizenry.” Read more

The 2024 election included many proposed statutes or constitutional amendments related to hot-button political issues. In many cases, state courts weighed in on those initiatives well before they reached voters. “One lesson from the 2024 election is that state courts play a major role in overseeing how officials communicate with the public about the issues being put to a popular vote,” the Brennan Center’s Alice Clapman and CUNY School of Law student Stuart DeButts write. Read more

Large-scale campus protests last spring over Israel’s war in Gaza resulted in a wave of litigation over students’ free speech rights. Vanderbilt University student Ochuwa Garuba and State Court Report editor in chief Alicia Bannon discuss two lawsuits in California, as well changes to university rules that “may themselves become fodder for future litigation.” Read more

Oklahoma and Texas each have two state high courts — one that oversees criminal cases and one for civil cases. What happens if the state high courts are in conflict? Regarding search and seizure law in Oklahoma, writes the University of Oklahoma’s Stephen Henderson, it means that Oklahomans enjoy greater protections in front of one court than the other. Read more

Webster v. Commission for Lawyer Discipline, Texas Supreme Court
Held that a disciplinary complaint accusing the state attorney general’s senior-most deputy of making misrepresentations in a petition filed in the U.S. Supreme Court alleging 2020 election “irregularities” violated separation-of-powers principles. Such a complaint, arising outside the litigation where the challenged statements were made, “improperly invades the executive branch’s prerogatives” and risks the independence of the judiciary, the opinion said. // Texas Tribune

Held v. Montana, Montana Supreme Court
Ruled that the state’s policy of excluding greenhouse gas emissions from certain environmental reviews violated the state constitution’s guarantee of a clean and healthful environment. State Court Report covered what the case might mean for future climate litigation. // Daily Montanan

O’Neil v. Gianforte, Montana Supreme Court
In a 4–3 decision, ruled that the state constitution’s protection of the public’s “right to know” allows for a limited gubernatorial privilege exception if the governor meets the “high bar of demonstrating that the information is essential to carrying out a constitutional duty and that its disclosure would chill future candor.” The documents at issue in the case will be reviewed by a lower court to determine if they meet that high bar. // Daily Montanan

City of Fargo v. State, North Dakota Supreme Court
Ruled unanimously that a 2023 statute barring localities from enacting ordinances related to the purchase, sale, or possession of firearms that are more restrictive than state law preempted the city of Fargo’s limits on the sale of firearms or ammunitions and did not violate state constitutional “home rule” clauses as applied to Fargo’s restrictions. // North Dakota Monitor

You can find briefs and opinions from notable state constitutional lawsuits in our State Case Database.