The cases that remain

Before its summer recess begins at the end of June or in early July, the Supreme Court has 10 cases left to decide, on topics ranging from the constitutionality of Louisiana’s congressional map to the power of federal district judges to issue nationwide injunctions.

The justices are scheduled to take the bench on Thursday morning to issue opinions, although they are likely to add at least one additional decision day before beginning their summer vacations.

Here are brief summaries of the 10 remaining cases, along with (when possible) predictions about which justice might be writing which opinion.

1. Hewitt v. United States (argued Jan. 13): This is a case involving the First Step Act, a 2018 law that reduced some mandatory-minimum sentences for future offenders as well as for past offenders whose criminal cases were still pending. The question before the justices was whether those sentence-reduction provisions also apply to a criminal defendant who was originally sentenced before the law was enacted but whose sentence was thrown out, causing the defendant to be resentenced after the law was adopted.
2. Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (argued Jan. 15): This case stems from a challenge by a trade group for the adult entertainment industry to a 2023 Texas law that requires pornography sites to verify the age of their users before providing access. The law applies to any website offering content “more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors.” The question that the justices agreed to decide was whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit properly applied a less stringent constitutional test, known as rational basis review, when reviewing the law, or whether it should have instead applied a more stringent standard, known as strict scrutiny.

The justices try to spread out the workload evenly over the course of the term but also on a month-to-month basis. The only justices who have not yet written opinions for the court’s January argument session are Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson. It seems more likely that Thomas is writing in Free Speech Coalition (which, based on his questions at oral argument, should bode well for Texas) and Jackson – who once served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission – in Hewitt, but we’ll know soon enough.

• Gutierrez v. Saenz (argued Feb. 24): This is a case brought by a Texas death row inmate who has been seeking postconviction DNA testing on evidence that he says would exonerate him. The 5th Circuit ruled that he did not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, because a state court had held that even if DNA testing showed that he had not (as he contends) gone inside the victim’s home, he still would have been eligible for the death penalty because of his role in the robbery scheme that led to the murder and therefore prosecutors would not be likely to order DNA testing.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch have not yet written opinions for February, which only featured eight arguments. Sotomayor otherwise appears to be done for the term, as she has already written for March and April, while Gorsuch could still have a decision in March. If Sotomayor is indeed writing in Gutierrez, that could be good news for the inmate.

• Louisiana v. Callais (argued March 24): This is a dispute over a congressional map that the Louisiana Legislature adopted last year. After a federal court ruled, in a separate lawsuit, that a 2022 map containing one majority-Black district likely violated the Voting Rights Act, the Legislature enacted a new map, which contained two majority-Black districts. A group of voters describing themselves as “non-African American” challenged the 2024 map, contending that it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, that it sorted voters based primarily on their race. Defending the new map, the state contended that race was not the motivating factor behind the new map. Instead, it argued, it drew the map as it did to protect several high-profile Republican incumbents, such as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow, who sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.  
• Riley v. Bondi (argued March 24): The justices are considering whether and when a noncitizen who overstayed his visa and has an order for his deportation can challenge an order denying his request for withholding of removal (an order that allows him to be removed from the United States but not to a country where he could be persecuted or tortured). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that the petition for review filed by Pierre Riley, a citizen of Jamaica, came too late because it was not filed 30 days after an immigration officer issued a final removal order in his case, even if his request for withholding of removal was not resolved for more than a year after that.
• Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Research (argued March 26): This case is a challenge to a federal program that subsidizes telephone and high-speed internet services in schools, libraries, rural areas, and low-income communities in urban areas. Money for the subsidies comes from the Universal Service Fund, created by Congress and principally funded through contributions from telecommunications carriers. A private nonprofit created by the FCC, known as the Universal Service Administrative Company, administers the fund. A consumer protection group that has (among other things) recently devoted itself to fighting “woke” corporations contends that the scheme violates the nondelegation doctrine – the idea that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to other entities.
• Medina v. Planned Parenthood (argued April 2): At issue is whether a provision of the Medicaid Act that allows any eligible patient to seek health care from any “qualified” provider creates individual rights that can be enforced under federal civil rights laws. The question comes to the court in a case brought by a South Carolina woman who received care from Planned Parenthood and is challenging an order by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster that bars abortion clinics from participating in the Medicaid program.

With four cases left from the court’s March argument session and five justices who have not yet written opinions, it’s too hard to guess the possible authors for March at this point.

• Kennedy v. Braidwood Management (argued April 21): This case is a challenge to the constitutionality of the structure of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts with the power under the Affordable Care Act to determine which preventive services insurers must cover. The plaintiffs in the case, who have religious objections to the requirement that insurers provide coverage for a drug that prevents the transmission of HIV, contend that the Constitution requires members of the task force to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
• Mahmoud v. Taylor (argued April 22): In this case, the justices are deciding whether it violates the religious beliefs and therefore the First Amendment rights of a group of Maryland parents to require their children to participate in instruction at their public schools that includes LGBTQ+ themes. The parents, who are Muslim, Catholic, and Ukrainian Orthodox, want to be able to opt their children out of instruction involving LGBTQ-themed storybooks.

Only three justices – Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, and Jackson – have not yet written opinions for April. The most likely scenario has Alito writing Mahmoud and either Kagan (more likely) or Jackson writing Braidwood.  

1. Trump v. CASA (argued May 15): Although these three, consolidated cases began as a challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States – they came to the justices as an emergency appeal in which the Trump administration asked the justices to weigh in on a different question: Do federal district courts have the power to issue “nationwide” or “universal” injunctions, which prohibit the federal government from implementing the birthright citizenship order anywhere in the country?

Because this is the only opinion expected from May (when the justices do not normally hear cases), all bets are theoretically off as to the author. But this seems like one that Chief Justice John Roberts is likely to take for himself – or it could come as an unsigned (or “per curiam,” meaning “for the court”) opinion.