Supreme Court justices traditionally spend the summer teaching in Europe, promoting books, and otherwise escaping Washington. Court-watchers likewise use these months to digest the final opinions from the previous term before briefs and arguments begin anew. This year, once again, nobody got much of a break.
The emergency docket brought disputes over mail-in voting, citizenship databases, congressional district maps, construction of the White House ballroom, and the deportation of migrants to third countries (countries other than their own), among other things. Some of these cases produced opinions almost as elaborate—and divisions almost as sharp—as decisions issued after full briefing and argument. The Court may have recessed at the end of June, but the justices never really left.
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Now the regular show resumes. The cases already set for argument in the 2026–2027 term don’t sort themselves as neatly into thematic buckets as last year’s docket did. Still, a common thread runs through many of them: Who gets to decide—states or the federal government? Parents or public officials? Religious institutions or administrators? Legislatures or courts? And how clearly must the government announce the rules before imposing punishment?
The first case on the first Monday in October raises those questions on a global scale. In Suncor Energy v. Commissioners of Boulder County, the City of Boulder and Boulder County are suing oil companies in Colorado state court for the firms’ alleged contribution to climate change. The local governments claim that the companies’ worldwide activities caused wildfires, drought, reduced snowpack, and other local harms. Their causes of action—including nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy—arise under state law, but their theory of causation encompasses emissions generated everywhere on the planet.
The companies, with support from the Manhattan Institute, argue that no one state can use its tort law to regulate a global phenomenon created by activity occurring across state and national borders. Federal law necessarily governs interstate pollution, they contend, and therefore precludes Boulder’s claims. The Colorado Supreme Court disagreed, reasoning that the lawsuit targets the production and sale of fossil fuels rather than directly regulating emissions.
The stakes extend well beyond the Rocky Mountains. State and local governments have filed similar cases around the country, seeking through litigation what environmental activists have often failed to achieve through legislation. If one state can impose massive liability based on the global effects of fossil-fuel production, then every state can effectively set national—indeed international—energy policy through its courts.
An additional complication arose earlier this week when Justice Samuel Alito announced his recusal from the Suncor case (presumably because he owns stock in one or more of the defendants). His absence creates the possibility of a 4–4 split, which would affirm the Colorado Supreme Court without an opinion and without creating any nationwide precedent. That would be an inauspiciously inconclusive way to begin the term—but hardly an unprecedented one.
Several other cases involve the boundary between government programs and constitutional freedoms. St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, in which the Manhattan Institute also filed a brief, concerns Colorado’s universal-preschool program, which pays for 15 hours of weekly instruction at participating public and private schools. Providers must allow eligible children to enroll without regard to religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Yet Colorado permits certain discretionary exceptions for secular providers while refusing an accommodation to Catholic preschools that expect families to support Catholic teachings on sex and gender.
The lower courts applied rational-basis review under Employment Division v. Smith, the much-criticized 1990 decision holding that neutral, generally applicable laws ordinarily don’t violate the Free Exercise Clause. But a law isn’t generally applicable when government officials can make individualized exceptions, or when the state tolerates secular conduct that undermines its asserted interests to the same degree as the prohibited religious conduct. The Supreme Court has repeatedly reinforced those principles, most recently in cases involving Covid restrictions and foster-care contracting.
Colorado responds that none of its secular exceptions is sufficiently comparable and that the Court’s recent school-funding cases apply only when a state expressly excludes participants because they’re religious. The Court could reject that cramped understanding without overruling Smith (which I, for one, think Justice Antonin Scalia got right, even if lower courts misapply it).
Two other cases in which the Manhattan Institute filed briefs ask when people may enter a courthouse to vindicate parental or religious rights. The first, International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson, concerns Washington laws governing shelters for runaway children. (MI’s brief is here.) Ordinarily, a shelter must notify parents within 72 hours of hosting a minor, absent a threat of abuse or neglect. Since 2023, however, a shelter may instead notify the state when a minor is seeking or receiving “gender-affirming” treatment. Related provisions can allow a child to remain in a shelter for as long as 90 days without parental permission and to obtain outpatient mental-health treatment from age 13 without parental consent.
Five sets of parents challenged the scheme, arguing that it deliberately inserts the state between parents and children on momentous questions of identity and medical care. The Ninth Circuit never reached that claim, holding instead that the parents lacked standing because the possibility that one of their children might run away and seek treatment was too speculative.
The Supreme Court will initially consider only that threshold issue. Yet a ruling that parents must wait until their child has left home—and government officials have already displaced their authority—would make the constitutional right to direct a child’s upbringing difficult to enforce precisely when it’s most needed.
The second case,Grand v. University Heights presents a similar courthouse-door problem in an almost comically petty setting. Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jew, can’t drive on the Sabbath. Because existing synagogues were a difficult walk for his family, he invited a small group of friends to pray at his home. University Heights, Ohio, promptly sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening penalties unless he obtained a special-use permit. The mayor reportedly told him that even ten Jews—the number needed for a minyan (quorum)—couldn’t pray together without one.
Grand canceled the gathering and applied for a permit, after which he alleges that the city subjected him to a hostile public hearing, police surveillance, and a criminal investigation. The Sixth Circuit held that his claims weren’t ripe because he had never obtained a final land-use decision—even though the city later conceded that a home prayer gathering required no permit.
The question is whether the usual land-use finality rule displaces the First Amendment’s chilling-effect doctrine. Our amicus brief argues that it does not: if a credible government threat deters worship and assembly, the constitutional injury has already occurred. Citizens shouldn’t have to complete a zoning obstacle course before challenging officials who have frightened them out of exercising basic rights.
The Court will also return to the Second Amendment in consolidated challenges to bans on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins. Cook County (Chicago) and Connecticut prohibit possession of rifles with specified features that are commonly grouped under the political label “assault weapons.” The Seventh Circuit held that AR-15s fall outside the Second Amendment’s text, while the Second Circuit deemed them “unusually dangerous weapons” that may be banned consistent with historical tradition.
Those conclusions are difficult to square with District of Columbia v. Heller and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Heller protects firearms “in common use” for lawful purposes and permits bans on weapons that are both dangerous and unusual. AR-15-style rifles are certainly dangerous—as are all firearms—but they’re among the most popular rifles in America and therefore can’t plausibly be called unusual.
The Court has spent years sending Second Amendment cases back to lower courts with increasingly exasperated instructions to apply its precedents faithfully. This time, it appears ready to answer a key question directly: Does the Constitution protect the right to possess America’s most versatile type of rifle?
Two property cases lack the culture-war heat of guns or gender identity but present unusually vivid examples of government power. In Jouppi v. Alaska, a bush pilot was convicted of transporting alcohol into a “dry” village after troopers found beer in a passenger’s luggage. He received the statutory minimum punishment: three days in jail and a $1,500 fine. However, Alaska also sought mandatory forfeiture of his $95,000 Cessna.
The trial court found that result grossly disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause. The Alaska Supreme Court reversed, assessing the gravity of alcohol importation in the abstract and looking to the maximum penalty authorized by law.
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether proportionality instead requires consideration of this defendant’s actual conduct and culpability. The difference between those approaches is the difference between treating forfeiture as a constitutional punishment and giving legislatures virtually unlimited power to seize valuable property whenever it has some connection to a crime.
Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission concerns a different kind of taking. A natural-gas company used the Natural Gas Act’s eminent-domain provision to condemn an easement across North Dakota ranchland. The parties eventually agreed on compensation but disputed whether the landowners could recover their attorney and expert fees. North Dakota treats those costs as part of just compensation; the usual federal rule makes each party pay its own way.
The Eighth Circuit held that a private pipeline company exercising federal eminent-domain authority steps into the federal government’s shoes and owes only what federal law requires. Other federal courts have used state compensation rules in similar cases. The doctrinal question is technical, but the practical issue is simple: If the government delegates its awesome condemnation power to a private company, should the property owner have to spend much of the compensation award proving what his property was worth?
Election law returns in Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota. Arizona requires proof of citizenship to vote and “satisfactory evidence” of citizenship from applicants using the state’s registration form. It also directs election officials to cancel a registration when official information confirms that the registrant isn’t a citizen. The Ninth Circuit blocked key parts of those laws, holding that the National Voter Registration Act preempts the proof requirement and that the act’s 90-day “quiet period” restricts systematic removal of noncitizens close to an election.
The case sits at the intersection of two propositions: the Constitution gives states authority to establish voter qualifications, while Congress may regulate the mechanics of federal elections. Nobody claims that noncitizens have a right to vote. The dispute is whether federal law or an old consent decree prevents Arizona from demanding evidence of the very qualification it unquestionably has power to impose—and whether a statute designed to prevent last-minute purges of eligible voters requires officials to leave confirmed noncitizens on the rolls.
Finally, Apple v. Epic Games sounds like an antitrust sequel but is really about the rule of law. Epic challenged Apple’s App Store rules requiring developers to use its in-app payment system and barring them from steering users elsewhere. Though the district court rejected Epic’s federal antitrust claims, it enjoined Apple from prohibiting buttons, external links, and other directions to alternative payment methods. Apple allowed links but imposed new design requirements and commissions on purchases made after users clicked them. The district court held the company in civil contempt for violating the injunction’s “spirit,” though the injunction said nothing about commissions. The Ninth Circuit affirmed.
Courts possess formidable contempt powers precisely because their orders must be obeyed, but that power depends on clarity. The Supreme Court will decide whether the Ninth Circuit’s free-floating “spirit” standard survives or whether contempt must rest on the violation of a clear and unambiguous command.
From global climate policy to a minyan in an Ohio living room, this Supreme Court term’s cases repeatedly ask where one decisionmaker’s authority ends and another’s begins. More cases, including inevitable return visits from the emergency docket, will arrive as the year unfolds—perhaps even one involving baseball great Roberto Clemente. After a summer in which the Court never quite recessed, First Monday feels less like opening day than the start of the next inning.