Supreme Court begins new term: five issues to watch

The Supreme Court returns to court Monday to begin its new term, where battles over transgender rights, guns and the use of adult websites are already underway.

So far, the court has agreed to hear 43 appeals, with rulings expected by the summer.

Although court observers have called the coming term sleepier than others in recent history, the justices are still poised to make important rulings, and more cases are expected to be added to their docket this fall.

Here are five big issues the Supreme Court must consider this term.

Gender-affirming care

In the next potentially successful Supreme Court case involving LGBTQ protections, the justices will decide the constitutionality of gender-affirming health care bans for minors in a case involving a Tennessee law.

The Biden administration challenged Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care as violating the equal protection rights of transgender people. The case affects laws passed by Republican-led legislatures in nearly half the country.

“The laws cause profound harm to transgender adolescents and their families by denying medical treatments that affected adolescents, their parents, their physicians and medical experts have all concluded are appropriate and necessary to treat a serious medical condition” , the Justice Department wrote. in lawsuits.

The case has already drawn responses from dozens of outside groups, and the number is likely to increase in the coming week, when Tennessee faces a deadline to lay out its arguments in writing.

“We fought hard to defend Tennessee law that protects children from irreversible gender treatments and secured a thoughtful and informed opinion from the Sixth Circuit,” said Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R) as the court agreed to the handling of the case.

“I look forward to ending the fight at the Supreme Court of the United States. This case will bring much-needed clarity on whether the Constitution provides special protection for gender identity,” he added.

Guns

The Supreme Court will take up guns again this term, but neither of the two cases they have agreed to hear involve the Second Amendment.

On Tuesday, the justices will hear oral arguments on whether federal law has authorized President Biden’s administration to crack down on “ghost guns,” self-assembled weapons that are difficult to trace.

The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after a lower panel invalidated the rules, siding with a group of gun owners, gun rights groups and firearms manufacturers who filed a lawsuit against the rules.

Later this term, the Supreme Court will separately consider the scope of the gun industry’s immunity under a controversial federal law passed in 2005.

A group of prominent U.S. gun makers say the statute preempts Mexico’s multibillion-dollar lawsuit over allegations that the companies allowed a flood of weapons to fall into the hands of Mexican cartels.

The court agreed to hear the gun industry’s appeal on Friday, along with about a dozen other cases that will fill much of the justices’ role this term.

Use of porn websites

At some point, the justices will consider the adult entertainment industry’s challenge to a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify the ages of their users.

The law, signed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R), requires porn sites to use age verification measures to ensure visitors are at least 18 years old. It also requires the sites to post health warnings about porn, including that it is addictive, harms development and increases the demand for prostitution and child exploitation — which the industry, represented by the Free Speech Coalition, disputes.

A federal judge previously blocked the age verification requirement and warnings as unconstitutional, but in March a split panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the age verification ruling. It upheld the lower court’s ruling on health warnings, ruling that porn sites cannot be forced to publish warnings about their content.

The justices’ decision on the issue could have far-reaching implications for First Amendment protections, threatening to upset past precedent that adults’ right to speech outweighs potential harm to minors.

Environment

The justices will also review a handful of environmental cases that have the potential to further erode the Supreme Court’s powers, a theme from the Supreme Court’s previous term.

On Friday, the court agreed to settle a dispute over plans to store nuclear waste for 40 years at a facility in Texas.

Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, has spoken out against the landfill, which is licensed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Whatever the court decides could affect plans for a similar facility in New Mexico, where the Democratic governor also opposes spent fuel storage in the state.

The administration has argued that siding with Texas could threaten the NRC’s powers to license storage, upending decades of federal nuclear policy.

Also on the justices’ docket is a case brought by San Francisco against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), challenging federal water pollution requirements.

The city claims an EPA wastewater permit for one of its sewage treatment plants contained overly vague requirements that are nearly impossible to follow. But the language is widely used in permits for municipalities across the country, and a ruling in the city’s favor would weaken the environmental agency’s ability to control the contamination.

A third environmental case asks the justices to limit the federal government’s ability to consider climate change and other environmental impacts when considering whether to approve infrastructure projects.

Vaping

For the vaping industry, this Supreme Court term is shaping up to be perhaps the most consequential yet.

No oral arguments are yet scheduled, but the justices this term will review the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) marketing denial of two companies selling flavored tobacco vaping products.

The FDA found that the companies failed to provide reliable and robust evidence to address the risks of youth addiction and demonstrate a benefit for adult smokers.

After the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the denials were unlawful, the agency appealed to the Supreme Court to defend its decisions.

On Friday, the Supreme Court said it would add another vape-related case to its docket.

The Biden administration claims the 5th Circuit is impermissibly allowing the industry to direct its challenges there. The 5th Circuit is widely considered the most conservative federal appeals court in the country and has become an attractive venue for such lawsuits.