The Supreme Court is back in session Monday and is poised to hear dozens of consequential cases from gun rights, social media, and several major administrative law questions that could alter federal bureaucracy for decades to come.
As is tradition, the Supreme Court term begins on the first Monday in October. This week the justices will begin their nine-month term with the case Pulsifer v. United States, which involves the interpretation of a federal law that allows defendants to avoid mandatory minimum sentences for certain nonviolent drug crimes.
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THE FIRST WEEK
The crux of the issue in Pulsifer deals with lower courts disagreeing about the word "and" as it is used in a bipartisan 2018 criminal overhaul and whether it indeed means "and" or whether it means "or." How the justices decide could affect thousands of prison sentences each year, according to Ohio State University law school professor Douglas Berman.
On Oct. 3, the high court will hear CFPB v. Com. Fin. Services Assn., which will examine the authority of U.S. agencies, including an effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The case centers on the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve's funding mechanism for the CFPB, while most federal agencies receive appropriation from Congress.
Capping the first week on Oct. 4 is the so-called legal tester case known as Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer, surrounding a Maine-based hotel owner's attempt to thwart disability claims lawsuits after receiving a complaint for failing to disclose accessibility information of the company's website.
The case is notable in that the claimant at the heart of the case, Deborah Laufer, created circuit splits in several appeals courts across the nation by filing complaints at hotels and lodges that she later admitted she had no intention of actually booking a reservation. Several business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, claim so-called Americans with Disabilities Act testers have caused a rising trend in lawsuits against small businesses accused of discriminating against disabled people and have urged the justices to clamp down on such lawsuits.
LOOKING AHEAD
In addition to the CFPB case, the Supreme Court has already decided to hear two other major cases concerning the authority of agencies, including a bid by a conservative Texas-based radio jockey to limit the in-house enforcement proceedings of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial markets regulator. The case, SEC v. Jarkesy, has not been scheduled for oral arguments yet.
Above the CFPB and SEC cases stands a thematically similar question, albeit a much taller order. The issue in the upcoming case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo asks whether federal courts should defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretation of laws by Congress and the president, even though many are written ambiguously. Legal experts have touted the case as a means to potentially upend longstanding precedent set in the 1984 case Chevron v. NRDC, though it remains to be seen how far the justices will go. The Biden administration has urged the justices to keep that precedent intact, and an oral argument date has not been set for the case.
The justices will also take up another major gun dispute, this time in a case involving a legitimate criminal defendant who has on numerous occasions been charged after instances of gun violence. A 6-3 ruling last summer found that "history and tradition" would determine whether a gun regulation is constitutional under the Second Amendment. The high court will soon consider whether the government can ban guns from people subjected to domestic violence restraining orders in U.S. v. Rahimi on Nov. 7.
MORE CASES TO COME
The justices met back in Washington, D.C., last week to convene for their annual "long conference," where they usually reject thousands of cases, only selecting a handful of disputes for oral argument later in the term.
On Friday, they granted 12 new cases, including two featuring technology industry groups challenging state laws written by Republicans restricting social media content moderation. One, NetChoice v. Paxton, concerns a law enacted in Texas that limits what content can be banned by platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. A second closely related case, Moody v. NetChoice, relates to a similar law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in Florida.
And while the Supreme Court only just upended the 50-year precedent for abortion access in 2022 with the 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the justices may soon confront the issue again, this time over the Food and Drug Administration's approval of a common abortion pill. The maker of the drug, Danco Laboratories, has asked the justices to reverse a lower court decision that would place hefty restrictions on how it can be used and distributed.
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Much more could be coming down the legal pipeline, including a conservative group's challenge to Washington state's ban on gay conversion therapy, a fight between New York landlords and the city's long-standing rent stabilization law, and a bid by an Oklahoma death row inmate to supplant his sentence that is supported by the state's Republican attorney general.
When the Supreme Court is in session, new cases are typically granted through an orders list released at 9:30 on Monday each week. Some cases slated for oral argument this month could have decisions as early as December or January.