The U.S. Supreme Court concluded its 2024-2025 term, which included cases on topics such as the scope of authority of federal judges, immigration, and religious liberty. When the court begins its 2025-2026 term, it will again hear cases concerning religious liberty.
John Bursch, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy, told OSV News that the high court has recently shown a trend of "vigorously protecting religious liberty," and such cases will continue.
"We sometimes think of this court as being divided six feet between conservatives and liberals, but there have been several unanimous religious liberty cases, and Catholic Charities was just the latest," Bursch said in reference to Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. The ruling overturned a decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court after the Catholic agency argued the state court wrongly discounted its religious identity in denying it an exemption from paying into the state's unemployment benefit program available to employers that operate primarily for religious purposes.
"This term showed the court's strong commitment to religious liberty and to the idea that Americans shouldn't have to leave their faith at the door when they enter public life," Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, told OSV News.
Among the religious liberty cases heard by the court during its recently concluded term were Mahmoud v. Taylor and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. In Mahmoud, the court ruled in favor of an interfaith group of Maryland parents who sought to opt their children out of classroom instruction pertaining to books containing LGBTQ+ themes to which they object on religious grounds.
Mahmoud, Rienzi said, "was a historic victory reaffirming the right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children."
"The court made clear that parents don't surrender that right just because they use public schools," he added.
In the St. Isidore case, a deadlocked court sidestepped a major ruling over what would have been the nation's first Catholic charter school. The 4-4 split effectively blocked the effort by leaving in place a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which found the establishment of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School as a publicly-funded religious school was unconstitutional.
"St. Isidore left open the critical question of whether religious groups can participate equally in charter school programs," Rienzi said. "While that was disappointing, the court is likely to revisit the issue soon."
But one religious liberty case the court declined to take up was Apache Stronghold v. United States, involving a coalition of Western Apache people, along with other Native American and non-Indigenous supporters, that sought to protect their sacred site at Oak Flat, Arizona, from destruction by a copper mining giant.
But Rienzi argued the Mahmoud ruling may give the group a new avenue forward.
"There is still time for the court to protect Oak Flat from destruction by a Chinese-owned mining giant," he said. "A pending petition for rehearing offers the justices another chance to consider the case in light of the Mahmoud ruling."
Other major cases included the high court's first significant foray into the issue of state laws banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender. In United States v. Skrmetti, the court found that a Tennessee law restricting gender transition treatments, including puberty blockers for minors, did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The court also found in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic that there is not a private right to bring a lawsuit challenging South Carolina's decision to end Planned Parenthood's participation in the state's Medicaid program, likely paving the way for other states to remove the nation's largest single abortion provider from their Medicaid programs.
Bursch, who argued the case before the court, said the ruling was "an unqualified victory for states that want to be able to defund Planned Parenthood" or "other abortion providers in their state."
Federal law generally prohibits the use of Medicaid funds for abortion. However, supporters of allowing Planned Parenthood to receive Medicaid funds point to that group's involvement in cancer screening and prevention services -- such as pap tests and HPV vaccinations -- but critics argue the funds are fungible and could be used to facilitate abortion.
Perhaps the most controversial of the court's decisions was a ruling limiting the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions in Trump v. Casa, Inc. The case concerned the Trump administration's executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents without legal status or temporary visa holders, without addressing whether or not the order itself is constitutional.
Bursch argued, "I think another big theme is that the court is willing to apply the rule of law even when some people might not be happy politically with the decisions that they make."
"That certainly applies to the Planned Parenthood defunding case that I argued, but also would apply to the national injunctions case, where the court did exactly what it was supposed to do in defining what the role of the federal judiciary was, even though it got a lot of political pushback because of that," he said.
Writing for a 6-3 majority in Trump v. Casa, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, "Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them."
But at a Georgetown Law conference on July 2, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, argued the ruling ended "an important judicial check on the federal government."
"This lessens the power of federal courts to check the executive branch of government, and it happens at the moment when the executive branch is systematically ignoring the Constitution," he argued.
Pedro Aleman, a policy advocate for the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, also known as CLINIC, told OSV News that one of the key takeaways of the term was that the Supreme Court "will have a firm grasp on our immigration system for years, and possibly decades to come."
"Many of these decisions, no matter what the outcome, will have a rippling effect for future generations," he added.
In Trump v. Casa, the court did not directly rule on the question of birthright citizenship in the case, Aleman stressed. He argued if the order were enforced in the meantime, it would have "devastating and long-lasting consequences, both in our immigration and judicial system."
"Birthright citizenship has been the rule of law for more than 150 years," he said. "The United States has held birthright citizenship as a clear element of its laws and values in society. In fact, under English common law -- the foundation of American law -- birthright citizenship has existed since colonial America. Time after time, centuries of unanimous rulings have favored birthright citizenship."
Aleman cited rulings from the court that "allowed the administration to pave the road and terminate the statuses of more than half a million individuals under the CHNV (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela) program, terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 300,000 Venezuelans and the use of an 18th century law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, to deport undocumented individuals" as among other causes for concern.
In its next term, the Supreme Court will hear cases including challenges to Idaho and West Virginia state laws requiring student athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond to their biological sex rather than their gender identity, and an appeal from a group of faith-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey. The group is challenging an investigation by that state's attorney general alleging the pregnancy centers misled people about their services and seeking information about their donors.
It will also hear a First Amendment challenge to a Colorado law banning counseling services that practice so-called "conversion therapy" for minors, or efforts intended to change one's gender identity or sexual orientation.
Opponents of the law argue it restricts their ability to provide counseling to minors experiencing same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, the feeling of distress that one's biological sex and gender identity are not aligned. But supporters of the law argue such treatments are discredited and the ban shields minors from treatments they might be forced to undergo by their parents or guardians.
Bursch argued that the licensed counselor at the center of that case, Kaley Chiles, has "worked with many children who have same sex attraction and questions about their gender identity, and she wants to be able to have conversations with them about these things and help them align their choices with their faith. And yet, Colorado is telling her that she can't do that."
The Supreme Court's next term, beginning in the fall, is also expected to include major cases on campaign finance and digital copyright laws.
