Updated Jan. 30, 2026.
October is nearly here, which means U.S. Supreme Court justices are preparing to return to Washington, D.C., to hear arguments on some of the biggest policy issues in the nation.
In order to help readers navigate the vast maze of legal issues before the justices, The Federalist has compiled this guide identifying the biggest cases at SCOTUS this year. From challenges to President Trump’s tariffs to the longstanding battle over race-based redistricting, the high court’s 2025-2026 term is shaping up to be as exciting as the last.
Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections
This case stems back to May 2022, when Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., and two other Republicans identified as presidential elector nominees filed a lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections and its executive director. In their suit, the plaintiffs claimed that the state’s statute allowing ballots to be received up to 14 days after Election Day is in violation of a federal law establishing Election Day.
Bost and Co.’s lawsuit was dismissed in July 2023 by a district court judge, who ruled that plaintiffs “lacked standing” to bring the suit. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld that decision in August 2024, agreeing with the trial court that plaintiffs lacked standing and jurisdiction.
This prompted Bost and his fellow Republicans to appeal to the Supreme Court in November 2024. They specifically asked the high court to address the “sole question” of whether they, “as federal candidates, have pleaded sufficient factual allegations to show Article III standing to challenge state time, place, and manner regulations concerning their federal elections.”
SCOTUS agreed to take up the matter in June 2025, with oral arguments scheduled for Oct. 8, 2025.
Chiles v. Salazar
Kaley Chiles is a licensed therapist based in Colorado who specializes in treating clients with trauma and addiction, as well as issues related to sexuality and gender dysphoria. According to Oyez, Chiles is a Christian who has helped clients “who often seek religiously informed care that aligns with traditional biblical understandings of sexuality and gender,” and has undertaken counseling “diminishing same-sex attractions or aligning gender identity with biological sex.”
In 2019, however, Colorado lawmakers passed a law prohibiting so-called “conversion therapy” for children, all but forcing Chiles to refrain from engaging in counseling discussions with minor clients that “she believes could be interpreted as conversion therapy.”
This prompted Chiles to file a lawsuit against state officials in September 2022, in which she alleged that the statute in question violated her First Amendment rights. While a district court declined Chiles’ request to place a preliminary injunction on the law to prohibit its enforcement, it found she had standing for the suit to proceed.
[LISTEN: Inside The Key Cases Shaping The Next SCOTUS Term]
On appeal, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals “affirmed in full, holding that Colorado’s law regulates professional conduct that incidentally involves speech and survived rational basis review,” according to Oyez.
The Supreme Court announced it would take up the case in March 2025 and will address the question of whether the Colorado law violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause.
Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 7, 2025.
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin
This case came about in 2023, when New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs started investigating First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc., a pro-life nonprofit organization that provides services to mothers and families.
The alleged impetus for the inquiry, as summarized by Oyez, involved concerns that First Choice’s “client-facing websites downplayed its pro-life mission and may have misled donors and clients about its services, staff qualifications, and medical practices.” The Democrat-run state’s investigators purportedly “identified possible discrepancies between what First Choice told donors–emphasizing a pro-life mission—and what was publicly communicated to potential clients on other websites.”
As part of the state’s seemingly political investigation, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat, issued a subpoena against First Choice seeking “years’ worth” of information, such as internal communications and details on the organization’s donors. First Choice pushed back against the subpoena, “arguing that complying would violate its constitutional rights, including freedom of association and donor privacy,” according to Oyez.
While legal proceedings over the matter remained ongoing in the New Jersey court system, First Choice attempted to challenge the subpoena in federal district court, which twice dismissed the case as “unripe” and said the issue must first be fully adjudicated in state court. The 3rd Circuit eventually agreed with the district court in December 2024, holding, as noted by Oyez, that the matter cannot be examined by the federal judiciary due to ongoing state proceedings and the fact that there was no court order mandating compliance with the subpoena.
First Choice petitioned the Supreme Court the following month, with the high court agreeing to take up the case in June 2025. According to Oyez, the justices will address the question of, “When the recipient of a state investigatory subpoena demonstrates an objectively reasonable chill of its First Amendment rights, does a federal court lack jurisdiction to hear the case because those constitutional claims must first be resolved in state court?”
Oral arguments are scheduled for Dec. 2, 2025.
Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.
Little v. Hecox
In March 2020, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed into law the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” which barred trans-identifying males from competing in women’s sports.
The first of its kind, the statute was quickly subject to a lawsuit the following month by a pair of Idaho athletes, one of whom identifies as transgender. Claiming that the law “impermissibly discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status and invades fundamental privacy rights,” the plaintiffs requested, in part, that the district court block its enforcement and declare it a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The district court granted plaintiffs’ request for an injunction in August 2020, which defendants appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals the following month. After remanding the case back to the district court to rectify a “procedural issue” in June 2021, a panel for the appellate court “ultimately affirmed the injunction as applied to Hecox but remanded the case to the district court to reconsider the scope of the injunction,” according to Oyez.
The 9th Circuit also denied a motion asking for a full-panel review of the case, and defendants appealed to SCOTUS in July 2024.
West Virginia v. B.P.J.
Much like Idaho, West Virginia passed a “Save Women’s Sports” law in April 2021, which similarly drew a lawsuit challenging its legality. While a district court placed an injunction on the law in July 2021, it granted summary judgment in West Virginia’s favor in January 2023, dissolving the injunction in the process.
This prompted plaintiffs to appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals the following month, which granted the challengers’ request for an injunction prohibiting the law’s enforcement. Defendants filed an application for relief with SCOTUS in March 2023, which the high court rejected as litigation in the 4th Circuit continued.
In April 2024, the 4th Circuit partially reversed the judgment of the district court, ruling against West Virginia’s law protecting the sanctity of women’s sports. Defendants appealed to the Supreme Court in July 2024.
The high court agreed to take up the Little and West Virginia cases in July 2025 and will consider whether the laws violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, “or, in the West Virginia case, Title IX,” according to SCOTUSblog. The trans-identifying individual who sued Idaho over its women’s sports law asked the Supreme Court to dismiss his case in September 2025.
Several female athletes have intervened and joined defendants in the cases, including former college soccer player Lainey Armistead, who is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom.
Oral arguments for both cases are scheduled for Jan. 13, 2026.
Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais
In spring 2022, the Republican-controlled Louisiana legislature passed a new congressional map that contained a single black-majority district. In response, a coalition of minority voters — represented by left-wing groups like the ACLU — sued, claiming the new map “dilutes Black voting strength in violation of [Section 2 of] the Voting Rights Act of 1965 … by ‘packing’ large numbers of Black voters into a single majority-Black congressional district” (Robinson v. Ardoin).
After agreeing that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims, a district court judge issued an injunction in June 2022 prohibiting the map from taking effect and additionally ordered the state to draw a new one. As The Federalist has previously reported, while the U.S. Supreme Court placed a temporary stay on that order, continued litigation resulted in the legislature redrawing the map to include a second black-majority congressional district.
This led to a separate lawsuit (Louisiana v. Callais) from a different group of Louisiana residents, who claimed that the new map violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by “prioritizing race” in its development. A three-judge panel agreed with these plaintiffs and blocked the redrawn map’s use in future elections in April 2024. SCOTUS similarly paused that ruling the following month and agreed to take up the case later that year. Meanwhile, plaintiffs from the original lawsuit have intervened in support of the new map’s congressional district (Robinson v. Callais).
[READ: Upcoming SCOTUS Case Could Reshape Redistricting As We Know It]
While the consolidated cases were originally slated to be decided in its 2024-2025 term, the high court announced in late June 2025 that it would be rehearing arguments during its 2025-2026 session. The court subsequently issued an order in August 2025, instructing parties to address “[w]hether [Louisiana’s] intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 15, 2025.
[READ: In Landmark Case, Louisiana Asks SCOTUS To Put The Kibosh On Race-Based Redistricting]
National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission
In 2022, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee — along with then-Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and then-Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio — sued the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over limits imposed on coordinated campaign spending by the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). As described by Justia, they argued that “these limits, which restrict political parties from spending money on campaign advertising with input from the candidate, violate the First Amendment.”
Plaintiffs brought their challenge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, which certified the legal question to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. “The district court,” according to Justia, “asked whether the limits on coordinated party expenditures in the Federal Election Campaign Act violate the First Amendment, either on their face or as applied to party spending in connection with ‘party coordinated communications.'”
After considering the case en banc, the 6th Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs in September 2024, finding that FECA’s limits on coordinated campaign spending do not violate the First Amendment. The challengers appealed the decision to the Supreme Court in December 2024, which agreed to take up the case in June 2025.
The high court will determine whether FECA’s current limitations on coordinated campaign expenditures violate the First Amendment, “either on their face or as applied to party spending in connection with ‘party coordinated communications,'” according to Oyez.
Oral arguments are scheduled for Dec. 9, 2025.
Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc.
The origins of these consolidated cases began in early 2025, when President Trump started using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on goods from foreign nations making their way into the United States
Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc.
After the president announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, V.O.S. Selections, Inc. filed a lawsuit against the administration at the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT), claiming that imposing “across-the-board worldwide tariffs” exceeded the president’s authority. The CIT eventually sided with plaintiffs the next month, issuing a permanent injunction that prevented a number of tariff-related executive orders from taking effect.
This prompted the administration to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which placed a temporary pause on the CIT’s ruling in June 2025 until the court could hear the case en banc. Upon doing so, the Federal Circuit affirmed the CIT’s ruling in late August 2025 that the tariffs are unlawful, but terminated its injunction and remanded the case for further proceedings. The Trump administration appealed the decision to the Supreme Court several days later, on Sept. 3, 2025.
Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump
Much like in the V.O.S. Selections, Inc. case, Learning Resources, Inc. and hand2mind, Inc. filed their lawsuit challenging Trump’s tariff authority several days after his April 2025 executive order. This challenge was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which granted plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction the following month, although this was stayed shortly after as proceedings continued.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court for expedited consideration of the case in June 2025. Although SCOTUS rejected the motion several days later, the high court agreed to take up the Learning Resources, Inc. and V.O.S. Selections, Inc. cases (consolidated) on Sept. 9, 2025, and will consider whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorizes the president to impose the tariffs.
Oral arguments are scheduled for Nov. 5, 2025.
Trump v. Slaughter
This case dates back to March 2025, when President Trump fired two Democrat members (Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter) of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This prompted Bedoya and Slaughter to file a lawsuit in federal court, in which they alleged that the president’s “action is indefensible under governing law,” and requested their terminations be declared “unlawful and ineffective,” the Guardian reported.
Bedoya resigned from the FTC in June 2025, and his case was dismissed as moot by D.C. District Judge Loren AliKhan. The Biden-appointed judge did, however, issue a ruling the following month barring Trump from firing Slaughter. After failing to obtain a stay from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Trump administration filed an emergency application for relief with the Supreme Court in early September 2025.
SCOTUS granted the government’s request to temporarily pause Alikhan’s ruling later that month and simultaneously agreed to take up the merits of the case. They specifically tasked parties to address whether “the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether [Humphrey’s Executor v. United States] … should be overruled,” and if “a federal court may prevent a person’s removal from public office, either through relief at equity or at law.”
[READ: SCOTUS Tees Up Potential Takedown Of Progressives’ ‘Independent Agencies’ Theory]
Oral arguments are scheduled for Dec. 8, 2025.
Urias-Orellana v. Bondi
This case centers around Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, a Salvadoran national, who, after enduring several years of violence in his home country, illegally entered the United States with his family in June 2021. Urias-Orellana reportedly relocated several times within his home country before unlawfully entering America.
According to Oyez, Urias-Orellana and petitioners (including his wife and child) were charged by the Department of Homeland Security “with removability for illegal entry,” leading them to apply for asylum “based on persecution of their family group.” Urias-Orellana also sought “protection” under the United Nations’ “Convention Against Torture” (CAT) doctrine.
As described by Justia, an immigration judge denied their applications, concluding “that the threats and assault he experienced did not amount to past persecution.” Furthermore, the judge “also determined that the petitioners did not meet their burden of showing a reasonable fear of future persecution,” and Urias-Orellana’s “CAT claim failed because he did not report his harassment to the police and did not demonstrate that doing so would be futile.”
According to Justia, the Board of Immigration Appeals later affirmed the decision by the immigration judge in December 2023, which prompted plaintiffs to appeal to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals for review. The appellate court similarly rejected this petition in November 2024, “upholding the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision on all claims,” according to Oyez.
Plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court in January 2025, with the high court agreeing to take up the case in late June 2025. The justices will rule on the question of whether a federal appeals court must “defer to the BIA’s judgment that a given set of undisputed facts does not demonstrate mistreatment severe enough to constitute ‘persecution'” under federal law, according to Oyez.
Oral arguments are scheduled for Dec. 1, 2025.
Trump v. Cook
The origins of this case can be traced back to late August 2025, when President Trump fired Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee. As described by a local Fox affiliate, the president terminated Cook’s employment with the agency “over allegations broached by one of his appointees that she committed mortgage fraud related to two properties she purchased in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Atlanta in 2021, before she joined the Federal Reserve.”
Cook sued the administration over the dispute shortly thereafter, which resulted in a Biden-appointed district judge issuing a preliminary injunction on Sept. 9, 2025, blocking Cook’s removal. This prompted the federal government to file a request with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to temporarily stay the injunction, which it argued “rests on a series of legal errors.”
A three-judge panel for the appellate court rejected the motion on Sept. 15, 2025.
The Trump administration then filed an emergency application for stay with SCOTUS several days later.
On Oct. 1, 2025, the high court “deferred” action on the application “pending oral argument” in the case. Arguments are scheduled for Jan. 21, 2026.
Wolford v. Lopez
This case arose in June 2023, when a group of Hawaii residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition challenged a state law prohibiting citizens from carrying firearms in specified locations. According to the Washington Examiner, the statute specifically criminalizes “carrying a handgun, even with a concealed carry permit, on private property unless the owner, lessee, operator, or manager of the property has given the person ‘express authorization to carry a firearm on the property.'”
The plaintiffs contended these restrictions violate their Second Amendment rights.
In August 2023, a district court granted in part and denied in part plaintiffs’ request to enact a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing the law’s enforcement. Hawaii appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which consolidated the case with two appealed cases from California dealing with similar gun restrictions.
As summarized by Justia, the 9th Circuit “affirmed the [lower courts’] preliminary injunctions to the extent that they enjoin restrictions on firearms at financial institutions, parking lots adjacent to financial institutions, and parking lots shared by government and non-government buildings.” The appellate court did, however, reverse “the preliminary injunctions to the extent that they enjoin restrictions on firearms at bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, beaches, parks, and similar areas, and the new default rule prohibiting the carry of firearms onto private property without consent in Hawaii.”
This prompted the Hawaii plaintiffs to petition SCOTUS in April 2025, with the high court agreeing to take up the case on Oct. 3, 2025. The justices will specifically address the question of whether the 9th Circuit “erred in holding, in direct conflict with the [2nd] Circuit, that Hawaii may presumptively prohibit the carry of handguns by licensed concealed carry permit holders on private property open to the public unless the property owner affirmatively gives express permission to the handgun carrier.”
Oral arguments are scheduled for Jan. 20, 2026.
U.S. v. Hemani
This case “began after FBI agents searched the home of Ali Danial Hemani” and “found a Glock 9 mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine, which led prosecutors to charge him with violating [a federal] law now at the center of the case,” according to left-wing SCOTUSblog. The statute, the outlet noted, “prohibits gun possession by users of illegal drugs.”
This prompted Hemani to argue that the district court should dismiss the charge because its application to him violated his constitutional rights. The charge was thrown out “after a federal appeals court ruled that the ban is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s expanded view of gun rights,” according to Fox News. The district court’s decision was later upheld by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer petitioned SCOTUS to take up the case in June 2025, asking the justices to address the question of whether “the federal statute that prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who ‘is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance,’ violates the Second Amendment” as applied to Hemani.
The high court agreed to take up the case on Oct. 20, 2025.
Oral arguments are scheduled for March 2, 2026.
Watson v. Republican National Committee
This case dates back to January 2024 when the Republican National Committee and the Mississippi GOP filed a lawsuit against the state. The parties alleged that a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be received up to five days after Election Day violates existing federal statutes that establish an election day for federal contests.
The U.S. District for the Southern District of Mississippi sided with the state in late July 2024. As summarized by Justia, the court ruled that “Mississippi’s statute did not conflict with federal law and thus was not preempted.”
This prompted plaintiffs to appeal to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the lower court’s decision in October 2024. A three-judge panel for the appellate court “held that the federal Election Day statutes preempt Mississippi’s law because federal law mandates that all ballots must be received by Election Day,” and remanded the case “for further proceedings to determine appropriate relief, considering the proximity to upcoming elections,” according to Justia.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch petitioned SCOTUS to take up the case in June 2025, asking the justices to rule on the question of whether “federal election-day statutes preempt a state law that allows ballots that are cast by federal election day to be received by election officials after that day.”
The high court agreed to consider the case on Nov. 10, 2025.
Oral arguments are scheduled for March 23, 2026.
Noem v. Alt Otro Lado
The origins of this case date back to 2016, when the Department of Homeland Security instituted a policy known as “metering,” in which “Customs and Border Patrol officials turned back asylum seekers before they entered the United States,” according to left-wing SCOTUSblog. The policy was later expanded “to all ports of entry across the U.S. border with Mexico, and it was formalized in a memorandum in 2018” by the Trump administration.
This prompted the left-wing immigration group Al Otro Lado and more than a dozen asylum seekers to sue over the policy’s enactment. As noted by The Center Square, the dispute centers around the 1990 Immigration and Nationality Act, which “allows an individual who ‘arrives in the United States’ to apply for asylum status and be inspected by an immigration officer.”
A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided (2-1) with plaintiffs in an October 2024 ruling. A majority of the full 9th Circuit later declined to reconsider the case in May 2025.
The Trump administration filed a petition with the Supreme Court in July 2025, asking the justices to address the question of “whether an alien who is stopped on the Mexican side of the U.S. Mexico border ‘arrives in the United States’ within the meaning of [the Immigration and Nationality Act’s] provisions.”
SCOTUS agreed to take up the case on Nov. 17, 2025.
Oral arguments are scheduled for March 24, 2026.
Trump v. Barbara
This case dates back to Jan. 20, 2025, when President Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which asserted that individuals born to parents who are unlawfully present or lawfully but temporarily present in the United States are not automatically granted U.S. citizenship.
The order specified that “It is the policy of the United States that no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship” to individuals who fit these criteria.
While the order endured legal challenges and was subject to universal injunctions following its issuance, the Supreme Court limited the lower judiciary’s abuse of nationwide injunctions in its June 2025 Trump v. CASA ruling.
Shortly after enacting these limitations on lower courts’ injunction power, a group of noncitizens brought a class-action lawsuit against the executive order seeking to prevent its enforcement. The plaintiffs requested that the district court certify a class “of all current and future children who are or will be denied United States citizenship by [the] Executive Order … and their parents,” which effectively sought to exploit one of the loopholes in the Supreme Court’s CASA decision.
A New Hampshire-based district court judge granted the class certification and preliminary injunction requests in July 2025.
The Trump administration petitioned SCOTUS to take up the case in September 2025, and asked the justices to address the question of whether the president’s executive order “complies on its face with the [14th Amendment’s] Citizenship Clause and with 8 U.S.C. 1401(a), which codifies that Clause.” The high court granted the petition on Dec. 5, 2025.
Oral arguments are scheduled for April 1, 2026.
