As the U.S. Supreme Court opens its new term, the justices face high-stakes appeals on climate lawsuits, AR-15 bans, and immigration policies. Operating against a backdrop of record-low public approval and looming midterm elections, the court is poised to decide cases that will test executive authority and state regulatory power.
The Supreme Court formally opened its new term on Monday, returning to a docket that blends high-profile culture-war disputes with aggressive challenges to federal authority as big test cases on religion, bans on semi-automatic weapons, climate change, immigration come before the justices. For the court’s nine members, the traditional quiet summer months have effectively vanished, replaced by an unrelenting stream of emergency applications and emergency rulings.
Suncor Energy v. Boulder County and the Climate Lawsuit Showdown
The term kicked off with arguments in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a dispute examining whether local governments can use state law to hold energy companies financially liable for the effects of global climate change. Colorado’s Boulder County is seeking money damages from energy firms like Suncore Energy and Exxon Mobil, arguing that the marketing and sale of fossil fuels violate state law and drive local environmental costs.
According to Deepak Gupta, who teaches at Harvard Law School and practices law in Washington, D.C., The theory is that the energy company defendants deceived the public for many years.
Lawmakers in Boulder, Colorado, blame energy companies for the costs associated with climate change, including local environmental issues, and assert that these local problems are a direct result of actions taken by the companies.
The outcome carries massive stakes. Energy companies have long argued that such claims are preempted by federal law, and a ruling in their favor would shield them from accountability for the local costs of climate change while impacting similar lawsuits nationwide. Complicating matters on the bench, Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the case, raising the possibility of a 4-4 tie that would leave a lower court ruling in place without establishing a nationwide precedent.
Viramontes v. Cook County and the Second Amendment AR-15 Challenge
Gun rights advocates will see a major test when the court takes up consolidated arguments in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins regarding state and local bans on AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles. The dispute follows the court’s landmark 2022 decision expanding gun rights and will directly address whether governments can outlaw firearms that proponents argue are in common use by law-abiding citizens.
State-level bans on these semiautomatic weapons are currently in place in about a dozen states, following a federal ban that expired in 2004.
Court Reviews Trump Immigration Crackdown and Deportation Policies
The conservative majority will also vet foundational practices of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, including a policy allowing the Department of Homeland Security to deport migrants to so-called third countries,
when their countries of origin refuse to accept them. Lower courts previously split on whether the administration can uniformly deny detained migrants bond hearings or deport them without giving them a meaningful opportunity to assert a fear of persecution.
These immigration appeals arrive alongside personal legal petitions from Trump himself, who has asked the justices to review a civil judgment against him in the Jean Carroll defamation suit, revive a 2016 campaign conspiracy claim against Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and allow 2020 election defamation claims against CNN to proceed.
Supreme Court Faces Historically Low Public Approval
The court enters this demanding term facing historically low public standing. A Gallup survey showed that 33 percent of Americans said they approve, while 61 percent disapprove of how the high court is doing its job, with views falling largely along partisan lines.
According to Paul Collins, a professor at the University of Massachusetts and an expert on the politicization of the judiciary, the Supreme Court is viewed by many Americans as an overly partisan and historically unpopular institution. Collins noted that these cases give the conservative justices the opportunity to course-correct.
While the merits docket has shrunk significantly over recent decades, the court’s shadow docket has swelled under the weight of emergency applications from the administration. Paul Collins noted that during Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the administration in roughly 75% of these emergency requests, even as the justices routinely struck down major policy priorities on their merits docket.
