The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let it detain people arrested in its immigration crackdown without bond hearings, even if they’ve lived in the United States for years. The request would preserve a sweeping interpretation of immigration law that federal appeals courts have rejected in 9 of 11 decisions.
“On the statutory question, there’s nothing left to percolate, and the alternative is a country where whether you can get bond depends on which state ICE drives you to,” said Kemal Hepsen, an immigration lawyer in Texas. That’s the immediate human cost of a rule applied by federal agencies and immigration judges: whether someone can seek release depends on how the state classifies them and where ICE takes them.
Who Gets to Decide Detention
Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the position that non-U.S. citizens already living in the country—not just people arriving at the border—qualify as “applicants for admission.” Federal law requires mandatory detention for that category while cases proceed in immigration courts, and bars bond hearings. The new interpretation broke with a long-standing reading of immigration law.
After the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Justice Department, adopted ICE’s interpretation, immigration judges employed by the department began ordering mandatory detention. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to let the system continue, despite losing 9 of 11 federal appeals court decisions.
The justices could take up the dispute during a new term that begins next Monday. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority and typically hears arguments in about 70 cases each term; it has already agreed to hear about two dozen. It was expected to announce some decisions this week as it considered whether to add other cases.
Markets, States and Corporate Stakes
The court could also weigh cases over prediction markets, including appeals involving Kalshi, Crypto.com and Robinhood. Those companies have expanded into prediction markets, while Kalshi and Polymarket have seen explosive growth. The Trump administration has backed the markets in court.
The platforms call their “event contracts” financial derivatives that should be regulated exclusively by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency. A bipartisan coalition of states says sports-related offerings amount to gambling and should fall under state sports-betting laws. Federal appeals courts disagree.
If the Supreme Court rules that the markets are gambling, the platforms could face a patchwork of bans, taxes, licensing regimes and criminal statutes. Polymarket received an investment last year from a venture capital firm backed by Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son. The dispute pits corporate platforms, federal regulators and state governments against one another over who sets the rules—and who bears the consequences.
“The stakeholder interest in this controversy encompasses 50 states, hundreds of Native American tribes, hundreds of casinos, multi-billion-dollar financial exchanges, online sports betting companies and the federal government,” said Daniel Wallach, a sports lawyer in Florida who has followed the litigation. He said the social and economic stakes made Supreme Court intervention likely at some point.
Families Challenge Classroom Mandates
Several Texas families, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, have asked the Supreme Court to strike down the state’s 2025 law requiring public elementary and high schools to display the biblical Ten Commandments in classrooms. They appealed after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law did not violate the First Amendment’s prohibitions and protections concerning religion.
“Our nation’s bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities—not politicians—get to decide what role religion plays in children’s lives,” said Chloe Kempf, a lawyer at the ACLU of Texas. The families argue that families, not politicians, should decide what role religion plays in children’s lives.
The Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law in its 1980 decision, Stone v. Graham. But the current court has taken an expansive view of religious freedom and discarded the legal framework used in that ruling in a 2022 decision for a football coach at a public high school in Washington state.
Republican-led states in the South have led efforts to require Ten Commandments displays in classrooms. Louisiana passed such a requirement in 2024, followed by Arkansas, Texas and Alabama. Critics call the laws part of what they see as rising Christian nationalism in the United States. Louisiana’s law also faces legal challenges; in February, the 5th Circuit allowed it to take effect while saying it needed more information about implementation before ruling on constitutionality.
“The Texas law does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis or imams,” Judge Kyle Duncan wrote for the 5th Circuit. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.” The Supreme Court may decide whether these disputes enter its docket, leaving detention, corporate market rules and classroom mandates before the same small body of justices.