On Oct. 5, the Supreme Court returns from its summer break to hear a case with billions of dollars potentially at stake. Boulder, Colorado, wants to seek damages from fossil fuel companies for climate-change harms. Similar suits have reached courts across the country.
The justices begin a new term with a 6-3 conservative majority and cases involving climate change, religion, guns and the Trump administration.
Climate Suits and State Borders
The Boulder case asks whether local governments can use the courts to hold energy producers liable. Republican attorneys general want the justices to go further, broadly barring states from effectively forcing policy changes elsewhere. Michael Williams, West Virginia’s solicitor general, helped write a filing opposing Boulder’s lawsuit. His position is blunt. “We don't think that there's a role for one state to regulate the activities that are happening in another state,” he said.
The stakes extend beyond energy. Bridget Fahey, a University of Chicago Law School expert on federal-state relations, said the case could affect whether states and local governments can regulate activity that begins beyond their borders. “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.
Faith in the Public Square
In November, the court will hear a Colorado dispute over whether the Catholic Church can exclude children of gay parents from a taxpayer-funded preschool. Earlier rulings favored religious groups. In one, the court held that Colorado's ban on “conversion therapy” for young people infringed on a Christian counselor's free-speech rights. In another, the justices shielded religious institutions such as churches and schools from employment-discrimination lawsuits.
Roman Martinez, a Latham & Watkins partner who has frequently argued before the court, said the trend points toward a Church win. “Colorado, on the other hand, does not have a great track record in these cases,” he said at Georgetown Law's Supreme Court Institute.
Another request remains pending. A coalition of multifaith families backed by the ACLU wants 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, even though the Supreme Court struck down a nearly identical Kentucky law 46 years ago. Genevieve Lakier, a First Amendment expert at the University of Chicago Law School, said experts once would have assumed the justices would reject the appeals court. Now, she said, it's unclear whether they'll take the case at all. “This is going to be very illuminating if it doesn't,” she said.
Guns, Immigration and the Executive
In December, the court will weigh whether state and local governments can ban semiautomatic rifles such as AR-15s after mass shootings. The combined cases from Illinois and Connecticut may rank as the most important Second Amendment cases since the 2008 ruling that 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 is among the legal experts who predict the court will say they can't be banned.
The administration’s agenda also features on the docket. The justices will consider whether it 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 allowing them to argue they could face persecution or torture there. Last term, the court rejected President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs and his attempt to redefine birthright citizenship.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, expects more. “I just think, given the Trump administration and the times we live in,” he said, “every term is going to have blockbuster cases.” The court will also hear a Republican push in December to enforce strict Arizona voting laws. Cecilia Wang, national legal director for the ACLU, said, “You can expect emergency applications to go up to the court relating to the election.”
Why This Matters:
This term could decide where authority lies among Washington, state capitals and local governments. If Boulder wins, one jurisdiction’s courtroom could set costs for industries operating nationwide, with the billions at stake falling on energy producers and, ultimately, consumers. A ruling for the Republican attorneys general would reinforce the idea that states stay within their own borders. Fahey’s AI point suggests the principle could carry over to the technology sector. The religion and gun cases ask how firmly the Constitution protects individual liberties from public officials who want to restrict them. With November’s midterms approaching and emergency election appeals expected, the court’s rulings will arrive in a politically charged environment. Predictable, text-based rulings would give businesses, schools, churches and gun owners clearer rules to plan around.