Catholic schools, banned rifles and ‘climate lawfare’: Blockbuster fights await Supreme Court
The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with cases that could reshape religious liberty, gun rights, immigration and the balance between state and federal authority.
While the last term was dominated by major cases testing presidential power — including Trump’s authority to restrict birthright citizenship, impose tariffs and fire independent agency officials — many of the court’s marquee cases this term span a wide range of issues, including federalism and individual rights.
"There’s a couple of religious freedom cases," Carrie Severino, president of JCN, told Fox News Digital. "We have a couple cases that touch on state and federal preemption, but I’m not sure there’s an easy theme for all of them."
The blockbuster case this term is Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, and it centers on whether Colorado officials can use state tort law to seek damages from oil giants Suncor and ExxonMobil for climate-related harms, or whether federal law blocks those claims.
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"If Colorado actually succeeds on its nuisance claims and others against these companies, the upshot would not just be these companies changing what they do in a way to protect Colorado or remedy Colorado, but rather it would affect their operations far outside of the state," Adam White, senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute, shared during a Federalist Society Panel. "And the question is, can Colorado courts reach outside of their own state and try in effect to regulate?"
Suncor and ExxonMobil argue that the Clean Air Act gives the federal government authority over interstate and international emissions, leaving Colorado unable to hold them liable for conduct outside the state. But the state argues that it is seeking damages under state law and that the Clean Air Act preserves states’ authority to enforce their own laws.
The Supreme Court will decide whether federal law blocks Boulder’s climate lawsuit and whether the justices can hear the case.
Severino said the case is an effort by "climate lawfare activists" to regulate carbon emissions.
"If the court is viewing this as an effort to weaponize one jurisdiction's law to really regulate outside its borders, then I think they're going to be not very happy about this claim," Severino said. "If the court really views it as an attempt by Colorado to legislate worldwide actions of these energy companies, then I think they're going to say this is actually something that fits within the federal government's sphere of activity, not a single state."
The case marks the first oral arguments heard before the high court.
An Arizona election integrity measure is at the center of another Supreme Court case testing the balance of power between states and the federal government over how elections are run.
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Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota stems from an Arizona law requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for certain voter registrations. Voters who register without that documentation may qualify as "federal-only" voters, allowing them to vote in federal elections but not state and local races. The law also allows the state to purge noncitizens off voter rolls close to an election. The dispute centers on whether the National Voter Registration Act prevents Arizona from imposing additional requirements on voters.
The Supreme Court will also hear major cases involving gun rights and religious liberty and will determine how far states can go in limiting those freedoms.
Colorado is up to bat twice before the Supreme Court this term, with St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy testing whether the state can exclude Catholic preschools from its universal preschool program because of religious policies barring same-sex couples and LGBT students from attending the schools, which conflicts with the state’s nondiscrimination requirements.
Colorado provides funding to private preschools that participate in the program but requires them to follow state anti-discrimination rules covering sexual orientation and gender identity. The Catholic schools argue those rules clash with their religious beliefs and that they should not have to abandon their policies to receive the same funding available to other private schools.
"They don't agree with the state on things like allowing children to use the opposite sex bathroom if they identify with the opposite sex. So this is something the Supreme Court has been very favorable to religious organizations of and for not allowing states to just cut them out of otherwise generally applicable state benefit programs," Severino said.
But Amanda Shanor, an attorney who helped represent the gay couple who were denied a wedding cake before the Supreme Court, said during a Federalist Society Panel there is concern that the case could chip away at anti-discrimination protections by expanding when businesses and institutions can refuse to serve people based on their identity.
"The schools are not saying, like in the earlier cases — like Masterpiece Cake Shop or 303 Creative — that they want to not serve somebody because of the expression that it would express with regard to a particular event, but instead that they don’t want to have the kids or the families because of the status of the kids or the families," Shanor said. "And will that then go spread over into other things, like will the bakery be able to say, ‘I don’t want to serve all X type of people?’"
Illinois and Connecticut have cases, with state laws restricting certain semiautomatic firearms facing challenges at the Supreme Court.
"This is important because the Supreme Court, for the first time following its landmark Bruen decision, is going to be looking at how states or municipalities can limit particular types of weapons," Severino said. "What the court said it's going to look at is whether these are weapons that are in common use and have lawful purposes, and so this is the court's opportunity to look at things like the popular AR-15 type rifle and decide is this something that qualifies as something that's in common-use and therefore is protected by the Second Amendment."
And while presidential power may not be a major theme this term, the Supreme Court will still weigh the limits of the Trump administration’s authority in a case involving its push to deport illegal immigrants to third-world countries they are not from, and that are not listed in their removal orders.
The case is not a direct test of presidential power, but instead centers on whether federal immigration law gives the administration the authority to carry out the policy.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear more than two dozen cases and still could pick up more.