What to expect from the Court next term: Trump has SCOTUS “On Speed Dial”

Get ready for more constitutionally-suspect handouts to MAGA

Chief Justice John Roberts pondering which area of American life to destroy next

This last term from the Supreme Court was brutal, and included cases that undermined our democracy, opened the door to more attacks on trans people, and expanded Donald Trump’s powers to king status. And while we hoped the summer would bring some relief from the onslaught on our rights and freedoms, the MAGA justices have made clear they won’t be slowing down any time soon. They have already announced several cases they plan on hearing this October term, not to mention the fact that the Court is spending the summer once again abusing the so-called “shadow docket” to further harmful MAGA policies without even hearing oral arguments and often without even providing an explanation. Plus, there are many other hot-button issues we’ve been following that we think have a strong chance of making their way to SCOTUS as well. Here’s what we’re looking out for:

Scheduled for oral arguments

Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. These cases are challenges to state-level bans on transgender people participating in sports. They come in the wake of the Court’s 6-3 ruling in U.S. v Skrmetti, a decision that upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. This ruling will have devastating impacts on trans kids not just in Tennessee, but in the 25 other states that have passed similar bans as well – making it nearly impossible for hundreds of thousands of kids across the country to get the care they need and deserve.

Skrmetti was a victory for far-right and transphobic activists to whip up a moral panic about trans youth and their care, and these upcoming cases are more of the same – to punish people based on nothing but bigotry based on junk science, outmoded beliefs about gender, and bigotry targeting transgender people. Not content with banning youth from receiving critical health care services, these activists are now targeting their ability to have fun with their friends on the sports field. And there is a very good chance that their efforts will find a friendly ear at the Roberts Court, who wrote in Skrmetti that “This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound.”

In other words, our freedoms – from getting health care to making decisions about our own bodies to playing sports with our classmates – are now up for “fierce debate,” subject to the “sincere concerns” of those who want to do us harm.

NRSC v. FEC This case deals with what little is left of our campaign finance system, which has been systematically dismantled by Senate Republicans and their allies on the Supreme Court. In particular, this case is a challenge by the National Republican Senatorial Committee arguing that limits on “coordinated” political spending between candidates and political parties violates the First Amendment. If this law falls, it will allow an even bigger flood of even more money into our elections by allowing extremely wealthy donors to bypass direct spending limits to candidates by laundering the donation through a political party instead. As the Campaign Legal Center put it: “The route of circumvention is simple: instead of giving their chosen candidate only the $3,300 allowed by the individual contribution limit, a deep-pocketed donor could give another $41,300 annually to the national party committee with the understanding that the party would allocate these funds to their chosen candidate. If the party could spend all this money in coordination with the candidate, then this donor — and countless future donors — could effectively give the candidate a $45,000 contribution.”

Shadow Docket abuse (so far)

McMahon v. New York Just yesterday, the MAGA justices issued a ruling on the shadow docket allowing Trump’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education to proceed, and as is its custom when issuing decisions over the shadow docket, offered no explanation as to why. It is clear to anyone who has paid attention since Trump’s inauguration that his goal is to render federal agencies effectively closed by aggressively firing as many employees as possible. Despite the fact that the agencies being targeted by Trump are bot authorized and funded by Congress, and that the Constitutions requires congressional approval to shut them down, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to proceed. This decision proves yet again that the six MAGA justices do not work for the American people or the Constitution — they work for Trump.

The Department of Education is responsible for critical tasks: providing and managing federal aid to schools and college students across the country as well as ensuring that schools comply with civil rights and disability laws. Without this oversight, the federal government would leave students’ education, safety, and future up to chance, denying them quality education and allowing them to face discrimination. Ruining countless children’s lives by destroying access to critical educational opportunities was apparently the big emergency that Trump needed the Court’s immediate help with, and the MAGA majority was more than happy to comply.

The Court’s decision is just the latest in a string of rulings that allow the Trump administration to carry on with its unconstitutional, unjust MAGA agenda before the courts can weigh on its legality. As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it… The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive.”

Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. The Supreme Court has weighed in on the Trump administration practice of “third country deportations,” or the deportation of migrants with criminal convictions to countries they are not from, and in many cases have never visited, and repeatedly the MAGA justices have determined that Trump is free to continue these efforts. Even more egregiously, the MAGA justices have issued these orders on a so-called “emergency” basis, through the shadow docket, without hearing oral arguments or receiving a full briefing on the issue.

Earlier this month, the MAGA justices ruled that Trump could deport an additional eight foreign nationals to South Sudan, without due process. Experts say there is a strong potential for these immigrants to face severe human rights violations, including torture or even death. According to the New York Times, “none of their family members have heard from them since they landed just before midnight on July 4.”

Trump is claiming that because these eight migrants have criminal records, that they don’t deserve due process. But in America, a criminal conviction does not mean you lose your basic rights to due process or habeas corpus—and Trump doesn’t get to pick and choose who deserves fundamental rights. Yet the MAGA supermajority on the Court has rubberstamped this outrageous policy and paved the way for Trump to increase these kinds of deportations. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in her dissent: “If this Court wishes to permit the Government to flout the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause, it cannot avoid accountability for that lawlessness by tasking the lower courts with inventing a rationale. The Court’s continued refusal to justify its extraordinary decisions in this case, even as it faults lower courts for failing properly to divine their import, is indefensible. … Today’s order clarifies only one thing: Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial.”

Trump v. AFGE Trump has made no secret of his desire to entirely undermine the functionality of the federal government, euphemistically claiming that he wants a “critical transformation” of the government by addressing “inefficiencies” – the impetus of Elon Musk’s absurd DOGE project. In reality, Trump’s “transformation” has entailed stacking agencies with MAGA acolytes, effectively shutting down agencies despite the fact they have been authorized and funded by Congress, and wholesale firing federal workers who make up those agencies and provide critical services. The effect of these moves has been devastating – experts say that these cuts at agencies like USAID have contributed to 300,000 deaths across the world, and could lead to 14 million more globally.

AFGE, the labor union that represents thousands of federal employees, sued Trump over his rampant, illegal firings of its members. Trump asked the Supreme Court, again on an “emergency” basis through the shadow docket, to allow this policy to continue despite a lower court blocking his plans to dismantle our entire government. The MAGA justices ruled in favor of Trump, clearing the way for him to engage in illegal behavior that will have a brutal impact on our country and throwing the government even further into chaos.

This is becoming a pattern for the MAGA justices: handing victories to Trump without even bothering to hear a full argument or briefing on the case, all while claiming this is some sort of emergency to allow Trump to continue his authoritarian march to remake our country in his MAGA image. As Justice Ketanji Brown put it in her dissent, the lower court’s decision blocking implementation of Trump’s plan was a “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo [that] was no match for this Court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”

Issues that are bubbling up

Citizenship revocation

• While the Supreme Court has not yet taken up any cases dealing with citizenship revocation the Trump administration has already announced their intention to start prioritizing cases against people they think should be denaturalized. While the administration claims they’ll only go after “the worst of the worst,” and target only naturalized U.S. citizens, it’s exceedingly hard to believe that they’ll stop there, especially if they get the green light from SCOTUS. In fact, Trump already posted on his social media site, Truth Social, that he wanted to strip former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship after she criticized his response to the deadly flooding in Texas.

Birthright citizenship (again)

• This most recent term included the Supreme Court’s awful ruling in Trump v. CASA, a case that centered around Donald Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional executive order to deny citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are undocumented immigrants. The Court ruled that Trump could continue to enforce his executive order against anyone who hadn’t already sued him over it, throwing thousands of people into immigration and citizenship chaos. However, that ruling did not discuss class action lawsuits – in other words, whether a class of affected children could band together and sue, thereby protecting an entire group of people instead of just individuals. This new case deals with the implementation of Trump’s executive order in a class action lawsuit. An adverse ruling here could, again, roil our understanding of not just citizenship rights, but presidential powers as well.

Trans teachers and their right to use their correct pronouns

• Wood v. Florida is a challenge to a Florida law that bans teachers from using pronouns or honorifics that do not correspond to their gender assigned at birth. An affected teacher, Katie Wood, is suing over the law on First Amendment grounds. Earlier this month, an appellate court panel in the 11th Circuit based in Florida ruled against Wood. While the Supreme Court hasn’t taken up this case (yet), it seems incredibly likely they will – like Skrmetti and the transgender student sports ban cases they are planning to hear next term, the Court seems eager to insert themselves in as many hot button issues as possible.