The Supreme Court will open the “Trump term” Monday with questions about President Trump’s aggressive first-year agenda and the limits of executive power.
Cases about presidential firing powers and tariffs are on the docket, and others about immigration and spending powers are speeding their way to the court.
They will join what is shaping up to be a monumental term.
Three cases could determine the scope of transgender rights, and a ruling on a voting rights dispute could deliver the final word on whether the Constitution is colorblind or demands special consideration for historically oppressed minorities.
The justices have been issuing preliminary rulings on Mr. Trump’s executive actions over the past nine months, and the president has done exceptionally well on what is known as the emergency docket.
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Now, the cases will be firmly before the court, fully briefed and argued and ready for rulings that will shape the contours of the American presidency for decades to come.
“This is the Trump term,” said Josh Blackman, a South Texas College of Law professor. “So many of the Trump cases that came to the court on the emergency docket will now need to be resolved on the merits docket.”
The first major test will be a case challenging Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs, which the court will take up Nov. 5.
The president says he is acting with authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows him to impose customs and duties. He says that includes tariffs, but lower courts have said the word “tariff” doesn’t appear anywhere in the law.
A president’s power to fire at will is also on the line in a pair of cases.
A case scheduled for oral arguments in January will test whether Mr. Trump’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board for cause was valid. The other could overturn a 90-year-old precedent and grant Mr. Trump wide-ranging latitude to fire members of independent agencies for disagreeing with his policies.
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In emergency docket rulings, the justices have allowed him to fire members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Trade Commission. Those interim rulings froze actions while the cases developed in lower courts.
The justices now have agreed to hear the FTC firing case in full.
In a 1935 case known as Humphrey’s Executor, the court ruled that President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke the law by firing an FTC member over policy differences.
Mr. Trump also has asked the justices to overturn a court decision blocking his attempt to limit birthright citizenship for babies born to illegal immigrants. A series of immigration arrest and deportation cases and federal spending cases are also winding their way to the docket.
“It is fair to say that litigation over the administration’s executive orders is going to be a major part of this term,” said Daniel Sullivan, a partner at Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP and a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia.
Carolyn Shapiro, a Chicago-Kent College of Law professor, said the justices will firm up the rest of the term’s calendar in a few months, showing just how Trump-centric the term will be.
“We don’t know what all of those cases will look like,” Ms. Shapiro said. “Usually, I would think by December, maybe the very beginning of January, is usually when they are done granting cases that will be argued during the term.”
Transgender and voting rights
The court’s 2025-2026 term kicks off Monday with lower-profile oral arguments involving defendants’ ability to discuss their cases with their attorneys and judicial rules for dismissing complaints.
The first transgender case begins Tuesday. A Christian licensed counselor is challenging Colorado’s rules forbidding “conversion therapy” for transgender minors. She says the regulations violate her free speech rights.
Next week, the court will hear the voting rights case, which grew out of Louisiana’s attempt to draw congressional maps. Its first map after the 2020 census included one majority-Black district out of six.
Prodded by Black voters, a federal court ruled that one district was too skimpy given the state’s population, which is 34% Black. The court said the map violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which courts have cited to prod states to maximize Black voting power.
Louisiana redrew its lines to create two majority-Black districts. Non-Black voters in the state challenged that map, saying the Legislature was too focused on race.
The case came to the high court last term, but the justices delayed a ruling and ordered a rehearing this term. They specifically ordered all sides to file briefs on whether focusing so heavily on minority voting power violates the 14th or 15th amendments to the Constitution.
Depending on how the case plays out, it could directly challenge a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 known as Section 2. That part pushes states to maximize minorities’ voting power to compensate for past oppression.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s senior jurist and one of its two Black members, said it’s impossible to square the favored treatment of minority voters required by the Voting Rights Act with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
When the court announced it would rehear the case, he urged his colleagues to settle the matter and side with the Constitution.
“I am hopeful that this court will soon realize that the conflict its Section 2 jurisprudence has sown with the Constitution is too severe to ignore,” Justice Thomas wrote.
The justices have another election-related case in a challenge to campaign finance limits.
Current law limits the extent to which political committees can directly coordinate with candidates’ campaigns for office. The National Republican Senatorial Committee says that violates the First Amendment.
In a death penalty case, the court will weigh the factors that judges can consider in deciding when a convict’s IQ is so low that carrying out an execution would violate the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
In addition to the conversion therapy case, the high court will review Idaho and West Virginia laws barring transgender athletes from competing outside their biological sex.
Lower courts have blocked the laws, arguing that they discriminate against transgender athletes in violation of the equal protection clause.
Roughly two dozen states have laws restricting transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports.
Decisions in the cases are expected by the end of June, when the justices wrap up their in-person work for the 2025-2026 term.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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