The Supreme Court will hear whether the Catholic Church can exclude children of gay parents from a taxpayer-funded Colorado preschool, placing public money and religious authority at the heart of its new term. The justices return Oct. 5 with a 6-3 conservative majority and cases involving climate change, guns, religion, voting and the Trump administration.
A coalition of multifaith families backed by the ACLU has asked the justices to decide whether Texas can require public schools to display the Ten Commandments. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas law, despite a 1980 Supreme Court decision that struck down a nearly identical Kentucky law. The families’ challenge puts public schools and religious displays under the court’s authority; the article identifies the ACLU’s role but offers no details about its funding or services.
Who Gets to Set the Rules
The term’s first major case concerns Boulder, Colorado, and whether local governments can seek damages from fossil fuel companies over climate-change harms. Similar lawsuits have been filed across the country, with billions of dollars potentially at stake. The justices will hear the case when they return from summer break on Oct. 5.
The dispute reaches beyond climate claims. Bridget Fahey, an expert on federal-state relations at the University of Chicago Law School, said the case could affect states’ and local governments’ ability to regulate activity that originates outside their borders, including artificial intelligence. “Even though it’s about climate change, which feels about as big as it comes, I do feel it’s a bit of a proxy case for another major regulatory question that we’re going to see in the coming years, which is state AI regulation,” Fahey said.
Republican attorneys general want the court to broadly prevent states from effectively forcing policy changes elsewhere. Michael Williams, West Virginia’s solicitor general, helped write a filing opposing Boulder’s lawsuit. “We don’t think that there’s a role for one state to regulate the activities that are happening in another state,” he said.
Religion, Guns and the Court’s Reach
The Colorado preschool dispute follows rulings affirming religious groups’ rights. In one decision, the court found that Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy” for young people infringed on a Christian counselor’s free-speech rights. The court has also shielded religious institutions, including churches and schools, from employment-discrimination lawsuits. Demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court when the court issued that ruling on July 8, 2020.
Roman Martinez, a partner at Latham & Watkins who has frequently argued before the court, said the recent trend suggests the Catholic Church is likely to win. “Colorado, on the other hand, does not have a great track record in these cases,” he said during remarks at Georgetown Law’s Supreme Court Institute.
In December, the court will debate whether state and local governments can ban possession of semiautomatic rifles such as AR-15s in response to mass shootings. The combined cases from Illinois and Connecticut may rank as the most important Second Amendment cases since the court’s 2008 ruling that the amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, said Don Verrilli, a former solicitor general under President Barack Obama. Millions of Americans own AR-15s. Verrilli said the cases concern which firearms the Constitution covers and raise questions about the court’s rule that modern gun regulations must not stray too far from historical weapons regulations.
Power at the Ballot Box and Beyond
The justices will consider whether the administration can detain millions of immigrants without giving them a chance to seek bond. They’ll also consider whether it can deport immigrants to countries other than their own without letting them argue they could face persecution or torture there.
In December, the court will debate a Republican push to enforce strict Arizona voting laws. Cecilia Wang, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “Everyone’s eyes are on the election,” and added, “You can expect emergency applications to go up to the court relating to the election.” The justices may need to resolve election disputes quickly around the November midterms.
Last term, the court rejected President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and his attempt to redefine birthright citizenship. The justices have selected about half the cases they’ll consider this term. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school and a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, said more challenges to Trump policies are likely, including a possible dispute over Trump’s new tariffs and clashes between congressional Democrats and the administration if Democrats win control of the House or Senate in the November elections. “I just think, given the Trump administration and the times we live in,” Chemerinsky said, “every term is going to have blockbuster cases.”