Supreme Court enters final stretch of term poised to decide cases on birthright citizenship, transgender care and religion

The Supreme Court is turning to the final weeks of a busy term that started off with blockbuster appeals over transgender rights and TikTok but that has increasingly become wrapped up in the policies and politics of President Donald Trump. With more than half of its argued cases from the term that began in October still pending, the justices are now working toward issuing a flurry of opinions through the end of June that could have profound implications for the federal government, religious interest groups and millions of American people. The 6-3 conservative court’s end-of-term push has been complicated and overshadowed this year by more than a dozen emergency appeals tied to Trump’s second term, including cases dealing with mass firings, immigration and the president’s efforts to end birthright citizenship. Those cases will continue even after the court rises for its summer break. Here are some of the most important outstanding appeals: Birthright citizenship The first argued appeal involving Trump’s second term has quickly emerged as one of the most significant cases the justices may decide in coming weeks. The Justice Department claims that three lower courts vastly overstepped their authority by imposing nationwide injunctions that blocked the president from enforcing his order limiting birthright citizenship. Whatever the justices say about the power of courts to halt a president’s executive order on a nationwide basis could have an impact beyond birthright citizenship. Trump has, for months, vociferously complained about courts pausing dozens of his policies with nationwide injunctions. While the question is important on its own – it could shift the balance of power between the judicial and executive branches – the case was supercharged by the policy at issue: Whether a president can sign an executive order that upends more than a century of understanding, the plain text of the 14th Amendment and multiple Supreme Court precedents pointing to the idea that people born in the US are US citizens. During the May 15 arguments, conservative and liberal justices seemed apprehensive to let the policy take effect. Transgender care for minors Tennessee is among a growing number of states to enact laws limiting or banning gender-affirming care for minors. Republican lawmakers who support those bans say that decisions about the care should be made after an individual becomes an adult and that states have broad power to regulate medical treatment within their boundaries. During oral arguments in December, a majority of the court appeared inclined to agree. Before Trump took office, the Tennessee transgender case, US v. Skrmetti, was the court’s highest-profile pending appeal. Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban restricts puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors and enacts civil penalties for doctors who violate the law. Surgeries are not at issue in the Supreme Court case. The litigation will decided at a time when both the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers across the country are attempting to unwind the political and legal gains that transgender Americans have made in recent years. LGBTQ+ books in school The high court is also set to decide whether a school district in suburban Washington burdened the religious rights of parents by declining to allow them to opt their elementary-school children out of reading LGBTQ+ books in the classroom. As part of its English curriculum, Montgomery County Public Schools approved a handful of books in 2022 at issue in the case. One, “Prince & Knight,” tells the story of a prince who does not want to marry any of the princesses in his realm. After teaming up with a knight to slay a dragon, the two fall in love, “filling the king and queen with joy,” according to the school’s summary. The parents said the reading of the books violated their religious beliefs. The case arrived at the Supreme Court at a moment when parents and public school districts have been engaged in a tense struggle over how much sway families should have over public school instruction. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled during arguments in late April that it would side with the parents in the case, continuing the court’s yearslong push to expand religious rights. Preventive health care and government power The court is juggling several major cases challenging the power of federal agencies. One of those deals with the creation of a task force that recommends which preventive health care services must be covered at no-cost under Obamacare. Though the case deals with technical questions about who should appoint the members of a board that makes those recommendations, the decision could affect the ability of Americans to access cost-free services under the Affordable Care Act such as cancer screenings, statins that help prevent cardiovascular disease and PrEP drugs that help prevent HIV infections. During arguments in late April, the court signaled it may uphold the task force. The court also seemed skeptical of a conservative challenge to the Universal Service Fund, which Congress created in 1996 to pay for programs that expand broadband and phone service in rural and low-income communities. Phone companies contribute billions to that fund, a cost that is passed on to consumers. A conservative group challenged the fund as an unconstitutional “delegation” of the power of Congress to levy taxes. If the court upholds the structure of the programs’ funding, that would represent a departure from its trend in recent years of limiting the power of agencies to act without explicit approval from Congress. Never-ending emergencies In years past, the Supreme Court had tended to make little news after the justices hand down their final opinions of the term and step back from their mahogany bench in the last days of June. Those days may be over. Since Trump began his second term in January, the court has been confronted with more than a dozen emergency appeals dealing with policies from the White House and federal agencies. Though he has railed against the federal judiciary in recent months, Trump has won more emergency cases at the Supreme Court in recent weeks than he has lost. The high court has allowed him to bar transgender Americans from serving in the military for now, end temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and remove board members at independent agencies that Congress tried to shield from White House control. On the other hand, the court has blocked the administration from quickly deporting migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act without additional notice. Given how many lawsuits are pending in lower federal courts, the pace of emergency cases is unlikely to slow just because the justices are eager to leave Washington for summer vacations.