This Supreme Court term could be consequential.

The Supreme Court began its November sitting this week in what is already shaping up to be a blockbuster term, both on the regular oral argument docket and the emergency docket. The latter has taken on huge significance as lower federal court trial judges in forum-shopped district courts have issued an unprecedented number of nationwide injunctions against President Trump’s executive actions.

I say “forum-shopped” because a large number of the roughly 400 cases that have been filed against the administration since January 20 have been brought in jurisdictions in which all (or nearly all) of the judges were appointed by Democratic presidents. All 11 of the sitting active judges on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, for example, were hand-picked by Democrats—one by Bill Clinton, five by Barack Obama, and another five by Joe Biden. The five judges serving on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees that court, are likewise entirely stacked with Democratic appointees—three by Obama and two by Biden.

Even before the term began on the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court was already checking what increasingly appears to be rogue rulings by anti-Trump lower court judges who are essentially second-guessing the president’s executive decisions dealing with foreign aid and other spending cuts, deportations, federal law enforcement, and administrative agency personnel firings—all core areas of executive authority.

In Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, for example, the high court stayed a lower court decision ordering the government to spend billions in foreign aid funds that ran directly contrary to the president’s foreign policy goals. In Noem v. Perdomo, the Court stayed a district court injunction barring ICE officers from using four categories of evidence highly indicative of illegal immigrant status as they enforce immigration laws. In Noem v. National TPS Alliance, the Court stayed a lower court order blocking the removal of temporary protected status for Venezuelan nationals. And in Trump v. Boyle and Trump v. Slaughter, the Court stayed lower court decisions ordering the reinstatement of three Consumer Product Safety Commissioners and a Federal Trade Commissioner, all of whom Trump had fired.

Those two latter cases, together with Trump v. Cook, which involves Trump’s firing of a Federal Reserve Board member, may prove to be the most significant of the term, as the Court asked the parties to include in their briefs whether a nearly century-old New Deal-era case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, should be overturned. That case upheld restrictions on the president’s authority to remove officials at so-called “independent” agencies, paving the way for the unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy we now describe as the “Deep State.”

And that is just the beginning of the consequential cases that will be heard. Perhaps the most significant from a financial and foreign policy perspective is Learning Resources v. Trump, which considers whether President Trump has the statutory or constitutional authority to impose tariffs. Cases involving elections, gun rights, culture wars, property rights, law enforcement, Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in crime-ridden American cities, and immigration enforcement are all also on the Court’s schedule.

Several election cases will undoubtedly get a lot of attention as the country heads into the increasingly critical 2026 midterms. Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, heard on October 8, addresses whether candidates have standing to challenge the legality of state election laws. Louisiana v. Callais, also heard last month, involves a challenge to a court-mandated racially gerrymandered redistricting map in Louisiana. National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, which will be heard on December 9, involves a First Amendment challenge to severe restrictions on political parties’ ability to coordinate campaign expenditures with their candidates. All three may have a significant impact on how the 2026 election is conducted.

Culture war cases always get a lot of attention, and this term already has several. Chiles v. Salazar, argued on October 7, involves a First Amendment challenge to Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law, which prohibits mental health professionals from providing clients under the age of 18 with therapy that attempts to “convert” LGBTQ youth to heterosexuality or traditional gender identity. West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox both involve challenges to state efforts to ban men from women’s sports, though argument dates have not yet been set. First Choice Women’s Resource Center v. Platkin, which will be argued on December 2, will address a technical issue about federal versus state court jurisdiction. The underlying issue is a First Amendment challenge to an onerous subpoena issued by the pro-abortion Attorney General of New Jersey to a pro-life pregnancy center seeking its donor records and communications. Finally, in Trump v. Orr, the Court will consider seeking a stay of a district court order requiring the State Department to use preferred sexual identity rather than biological sex on passports. And though we are still awaiting a decision on whether the Court takes the case, Davis v. Ermold seeks to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Gun rights cases, too, always generate a lot of interest, and so far there are three in this term. The question presented in Wolford v. Lopez is whether the Ninth Circuit erred (that used to be enough to predict a reversal!) in upholding a Hawaiian law prohibiting concealed-carry permit holders from carrying firearms on private property that’s open to the public, absent express permission by the property owner. U.S. v. Hemani involves a Second Amendment challenge to the federal statute that prohibits firearm possession by those who are unlawful users of or addicted to a controlled substance. Neither has yet been scheduled for oral argument. The third case, Barrett v. United States, was argued on October 7. While technically a double jeopardy case instead of a Second Amendment case, Barrett involves whether a criminal defendant can be sentenced under both Section 924(c) (prohibiting use of a firearm in the commission of a violent or drug crime) and Section 924(j) (when such use results in a death).

Two cases involve private residential property and the old adage that “a man’s home is his castle.” In Pung v. Isabella County, Michigan (argument not yet scheduled), a property owner whose $195,000 home was sold at a fire-sale price of $75,000 at a foreclosure auction to pay a mere $2,000 overdue tax bill (which, it turned out, was not owed at all) sued on both Fifth Amendment Takings Clause and Eighth Amendment excessive fines grounds for the full market value that was taken rather than just the fire-sale price. Case v. Montana, heard on October 15, involves a challenge to a warrantless entry and search of a private home that officers suspected, but did not have probable cause to believe, that an emergency situation (potential suicide) existed.

Other cases involving law enforcement are also on the docket. Scheduled for argument on December 1 is Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, which addresses how much deference must be given to a determination by the Board of Immigration Appeals that a given set of undisputed facts does not qualify for suspension of deportation. And already pending on the Court’s emergency docket are Trump v. Illinois, which seeks a stay of a lower court order blocking the deployment of troops in Chicago, and Castro v. Guevara, which seeks a stay of the Fifth Circuit’s mandate to deport a mother and 7-year-old child to Venezuela.

With President Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement efforts, as well as his deployment of the National Guard in various cities, we can expect several more cases hitting the Court’s docket—regular or emergency—before the term ends next June.

There are also several other very significant cases currently awaiting a decision on whether the Court will take them up. Trump v. Washington and Trump v. Barbara, for example, involve challenges to the president’s executive order on birthright citizenship. Allen v. Caster challenges whether the deliberate use of race to create majority-minority districts is unconstitutional. West Virginia Citizens Defense League v. ATF and National Rifle Ass’n v. Glass involve Second Amendment challenges to federal and state laws that ban the sale of firearms to 18-20 year olds. Foote v. Ludlow School Committee challenges a school’s encouragement and facilitation of a child’s gender transition without parental knowledge or consent. And Noem v. Al Otro Lado involves whether someone stopped on the Mexican side of the border must be deemed to have “arrived” in the U.S. for purposes of being able to apply for asylum.

What is already a blockbuster term in the making may become even more so in the coming months as new cases are added to the docket.

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