Below is my column in The Hill with a preview of the coming October Term at the Supreme Court. It already has the making of another “big year” on the Court.
Here is the column:
October is when hype meets reality. In baseball, the final teams are sorted out for the playoffs, and your football teams are well into the winnowing-out process for the Super Bowl. For court nerds, the start of the October term at the Supreme Court can have a similar dynamic, as long-watched cases finally come up for oral argument. Although the court continues to accept cases on a rolling basis, this term is looking like another blockbuster, with cases that range from climate change to gun rights to parental rights.
The odds of making the oral argument docket make the NFL season look like a walk in the park. After thousands of petitions, the Supreme Court accepts on average between 70-80 cases for the coveted “writ of certiorari.” If you are a lower-court judge with an appealed case, this is one Super Bowl you would probably prefer to skip. The court generally reverses the cases it accepts for review. Last term, it had a 71 percent rejection rate, slightly up from the prior year.
This year already has a number of major cases that are likely to have transformative impacts on the law and society. Here are a few.
Climate Change
In Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, Boulder sued energy companies under “theories of public and private nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy, claiming that they knowingly contributed to climate change while misleading the public about its impacts.” The Colorado Supreme Court ruled for the city and the county in finding that such lawsuits are not barred by federal preemption. If the case is allowed to go forward, it would expose companies to potentially thousands of climate change lawsuits.
Gun Rights
October is already shaping up as a major Second Amendment term. Democratic cities and states have been banning the AR-15, the most popular rifle in the U.S., and the 9mm semi-automatic handgun, the most popular handgun in the U.S. These cases out of the Seventh Circuit in Chicago (Viramontes v. Cook County) and the Second Circuit in New York (Grant v. Higgins) will likely give long-awaited clarity on these bans. They could potentially close off a major circumvention of prior rulings to achieve sweeping gun control policies.
In addition to these cases, the court is considering the possible review of Calce v. New York. In that case, the Second Circuit upheld a stun gun ban. The court previously sent back a similar case out of Massachusetts after the First Circuit ignored prior rulings. The court stressed that the fact that a weapon did not exist at the time of the ratification of the Second Amendment (such as “electric arms”) does not mean that they fall outside of the constitutional protections. The addition of Calce would make this one of the most momentous Second Amendment terms in history.
Parochial Schools and Religious Discrimination
The court will return to another parochial school controversy this term. In prior cases, the court has repeatedly stepped in to prevent states from discriminating against religious schools in voucher or subsidy programs. In St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, the Tenth Circuit upheld a Colorado provision that requires all preschools to agree not to discriminate on the basis of “race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, income, or disability.” The Catholic challengers are arguing that the policy requires them to violate their religious values as a condition for participating in the preschool program and funding.
Parental Rights
In International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson, Washington amended its laws to delay shelters in notifying parents of a runaway child who has “gender-affirming treatment” — the standard used for children in abusive homes. Instead, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families is first notified. The Ninth Circuit rejected parental claims raised in the case due to a lack of standing.
The Right to a 12-Member Jury
In Kian v. Florida, chiropractor Hamed Kian was convicted of five counts related to practicing with a suspended license. Pursuant to Florida law, he was tried by a six-person jury. Kian argues that the law violated his Sixth Amendment right to a jury of 12 members.
Some of us are watching a few other cases. Not surprisingly, my two favorites deal with the freedom of speech. The court has yet to decide whether to accept D.A. v. Tri-County Area Schools in which the Sixth Circuit upheld a school ban on high school students wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts. In the view of many of us in the free-speech community, the case is a major potential First Amendment ruling in the making.
Some of us also hope that the court will take up Tiny Zaps v. Traxler, which deals with a ban on tattoos on the face, neck, or head as well as a ban on tattoo parlors within 1,000 feet of churches, school, or playgrounds. The South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the ban, and it could allow the court to reinforce free-speech protections for “body art.”
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, “It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.” That is certainly true, but this term is already pretty big, and the court still has plenty of slots to fill before January.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor who teaches a class on the Constitution and the Supreme Court and is the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
OT, we’ve all heard the woke claims that math and showing up to work on time are white supremacy. Now the BBC says that if you don’t paint your fingernails, that’s white supremacy too. Apparently not painting your nails is now “attacking communities of colour.”
They didn’t mean it a as satire, although it could definitely have been a Babylon Bee story. But the BBC thinks it’s real.
@oldmanfromkansas (charter member of the Council of Estovir) says:
“…the BBC says that if you don’t paint your fingernails, that’s white supremacy…”
If I hadn’t already heard something to that effect on national news here in the U.S.A. I might have said that you were hallucinating, old man from Kansas! But sadly, your report is all too true.
It is astounding (to me, at least) that the Loony Left, both in the U.K. and here on our own shores, now sees racism in even the most innocent of events or trends. As I recollect–and as may have already been noted by another commenter on this thread–even mathematics and “showing up on time” are now symbols of racism or white supremacy.
I simply cannot fathom where the Loony Left finds its followers; it defies all the understanding that I can try to muster. But there it is. My only hope is that the Loony Left is punching well above its weight and that its numbers are actually far fewer than their vociferousness (with the enthusiatic help of the mainstream media) makes them appear.
If not, well, God help the rest of us sane individuals!
@oldmanfromkansas (charter member of the Council of Estovir)–
I apologize profusely! In my reply to you above, I remarked that another commenter on this thread may have noted that “even mathematics and “showing up on time” are now symbols of racism or white supremacy.” .
And now I remember that it was YOU who had made that statement. Again, I apologize profusely. Short-term memory increasingly fails with age, and I guess that I am the living proof.
With sincerest apologies,
An Old Man From New Mexico.
At first I thought that you must’ve gotten something about the story wrong. So I checked. And there the lunacy is:
The bare nails trend “perpetuates white supremacist standards of beauty and can stigmatize bold manicures.” Why? Because those bold nail paintings are important to minority cultures.
So if a woman goes bare, she’s a racist. If she goes bold, she’s guilty of “cultural appropriation.”
There is no pleasing the eternally aggrieved.
Suncor Energy v. Boulder County:
Substantive question presented: Whether federal law precludes state-law claims seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate.
Petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of Colorado granted. In addition to the question presented by the petition, the parties is directed to brief and argue the following question: Whether this Court has statutory and Article III jurisdiction to hear this case.
-Scotus order 2/23/2026. So there’s a threshold jurisdictional issue, meaning the Supremes might not address the merits.
Kinda weird the Supreme Court would say “the parties is” in an order, but there it is.
Chatbot
#. Interstate and international? Internationally the hydrofluorocarbons aren’t due until 2040. The US has addressed it of course.
Anonymoose.
And Alito has now recused.
#. I’ll Google it and find the opinion. Hang on…
Anonymoose.
#. It’s ridiculous. What unique, specific damage has Colorado been subject ? Perhaps world climate doesn’t exist in Colorado?
Anonymoose
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Declaration of Independence, 1776
America is a perverted and conquered communist welfare state.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Put this on the docket:
American Revolution II
The only ‘Despotism’ going on is the District Court judges who politically rule against President Trump and the Constitution every time a case involving the Trump administration, even after having been warned by the Supreme Court Justices.
That any of this sheet is on the docket tells you precisely how much damage the dems caused from 2020 onward. What a f****** waste of time. They did it with the full intention it would be very difficult to correct, because the modern left is comprised of clinical narcissists and sociopaths. Nevertheless, precedent must be set, and I hope it is. To anyone over 40, this is just unreal when we are talking about the god**** Supreme Court in the United States of America.
Congratulations, children: you have dragged us all backward by decades with your idiocy. It is why we do not respect you and will never hand you the levers of power, which to this day pi$$es you off to no end. And because we do not believe being healthy, or not ascribing to pharmaceutical solutions to our problems, is racist, or some kind of conservatism, we will very likely outlive you.
Don’t know what we will do with the later-day ‘blue-from-old tattoos mummies’ you will become when you are over 45 years old, but we’ll figure it out. You simply aren’t that important, no matter how many trophies you got as a kid. Nobody cares about you. We openly reject you. Don’t blame us; blame your enabling and pathetic parents that smoke p*t with you, misled you your entire life, or that still think it’s 1968, 1988, or even 2008.
Wish it was just a temporary aberration, but freedom restricting cases have been accepted and wrongly decided by the court for as long as there’s been a Court. Dred Scott, Plessy, Wickard v, Filburn, Kelo, Griggs v Duke
There already is a very effective gun control law, it’s called stop and frisk, and it’s legality has been upheld by the Supreme Court (Terry v Ohio, 1968). To justify a stop and frisk, a police officer must have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and reasonably believe the person is armed and dangerous. It must follow the Fourth Amendment limits on unreasonable searches and seizures. The risk of being stopped and frisked likely makes even the most imbecilic thug think twice about carrying an illegal gun on his or her person when leaving the home. Unfortunately, stop and frisk has been banned at the local level in many locales (such as New York) based upon the concern that it disproportionately affected minorities and that illegal guns were found in only 1% of those frisked. However, that 1% yield likely proves how effective “Stop and Frisk” was to remove illegal guns from the streets.
#. The case re tattoos is voluntary v. Involuntary. The involuntary identity tags forced upon the Jewish people WWII is an example of illegal tatoos. The things of prophecy…
The generalized voluntary tattoos today are unknown to me..
Adieu
#. Does the EPA still exist? Follow the standards. Climate change exists for hydroflourocarbons in some way. That’s removed from the market. Unsure if it’s a worldwide standard. 😏
Wait for the trifecta and declare everything damaging to earth such as unregulated sewage and fertilizer run-off. 😏
Oops, no comments from anons.
Ciao
#. Last word repubs, the pubs have had a trifecta and did nothing. They haven’t changed nor clarified USC for Barbara.
Let’s see what the next trifecta can do? At this point pubs deserve it imo.
Ciao
I love this time of the year. This year’s docket has the potential to be one of the truly historic.
The Supreme Court has the ability to clean up some of the ambiguity on both gun cases and free speech cases. It is time for both and I think the gun cases close loopholes to the anti-gun states.
I do not feel so good for student first Amendment rights as they have been curtailed in the past. I can only hope the Supreme Court holds the line for the kids.
No less important are the religious case and the parental rights case. The religious case for me is slam dunk. You want the money, take the strings. Yet, I do not think it goes that way and past cases show this.
As for parental rights, I am all for them. Parents have the right to know and yes not all are good apparent or even non-abusive. But when there is a plan in place to prevent a parent from being a parent, what does that say on any decision, let alone on gender issues? I think there will be a balancing issue and prong test. I do hope these parents win, although I also hope they have the child’s best interest at heart.
Bans against head, neck, and face tattoos? How? As for placement, These parlors should be treated no different that any other business and meet the same standards. Not harsher or lesser, but the same. I get it, it is a vice to some, but art to others.
Professor Turley writes, “In Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, Boulder sued energy companies under ‘theories of public and private nuisance, trespass, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy, claiming that they knowingly contributed to climate change while misleading the public about its impacts.’”
Lawfare. In the name of climate change, Democrats are jacking up energy costs with their buddies, the trial lawyers, while attacking Trump on the cost of energy. Trump is doing it to prevent Iran from becoming the nuclear hegemon of the Middle East. The trial lawyers are doing it to get rich. Democrats are doing it to get campaign donations from trial lawyers.
And don’t tell me about Erin Brockovich. Her trial lawyer, Thomas Girardi, is serving a seven-year prison sentence for embezzlement:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/tom-girardi-sentence-fraud-real-housewives.html
There are good lawyers out there. None of them are Democrats.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but SCOTUS could put an end to most Lawfare by creating automatic “loser-pays” opinions for the costs associated with most suits, no? Seems the Leftys on the Court are tired of so many hearings yet they do nothing to stem the flow of the numbers of suits being appealed to them due to the lawfare being practiced on their own ‘side’.
I’m not sure what authority the Court would rely on to order such a thing.
“. . . Democrats are jacking up energy costs . . .”
While in the next breath claiming that they are the party of “affordability.”
Rinse and repeat on countless other products and services, and you have yet another D Big Lie.
Sam,
NY governor is trying to hold off state “green mandates” till after the election in NOV. She helped pass a climate change act in 2018 with Cumo that took natural gas base power plants off line/retirement and did not have enough solar or wind to replace them with.
#. It’s to raise the cost. This isn’t a court case. It’s another case for the impotent, ignorant bums known as congress. They’ll have us gathering dung to burn.
Trump has been fighting a one man war.
The Court needs to find all gun related restrictions to be unconstitutional. Background checks, waiting periods, preventing violent felons from having guns, making gun possession a factor in drug possession crimes; even age limitations on ownership or possession.
If little Billy Smith wants to use his allowance to buy a 6 shooter to wear on his hip into 6th grade because he’s tired of Timmy beating the snark out of him to get his lunch money, I say Billy should be able to have a gun to defend himself.
I particularly look forward to the Colorado and Washington decisions.
The State of Washington seems to be more abusive of children’s rights than the parents who are trying to protect their children. All they are going to need is for a child to commit suicide while under the state’s care or murder someone while not getting the appropriate mental health care. Of course the state will then plead immunity.
Seems when states make those types of decisions they should be compelled to give up their immunity. If they no longer had immunity the state might be a little more hesitant about butting into family care. I know that is not the question being argued but the SCOTUS might want to consider that. Their inference may well worsen child care, especially in light of the the recent Finnish study, and others, that has showed significant worsening of mental health when drugs and surgery were used in trans care.
Should be very interesting.
I know that is not the question being argued but the SCOTUS might want to consider that. ??????????????
Plenty of children commit suicide under parental care, often enough because there are parents who refuse to accept their children as they are. There are parents who don’t like how their children have turned out no matter how much abuse, physical and mental, they heap upon them.
Examples? The “consent to gender shifting or your kid will kill him/herself” is the worst sort of emotional blackmail. To assert it should come with a lot of examples —- examples that can be attributed to gender dysphoria rather than an underlying and pre-existing mental disorder.
There is no cure for being straight. No amount of therapy will cause a straight person to be homosexual.
As that is the case the opposite is also true.
Breast reduction surgery for pubescent males is the most common gender affirming surgery. Breast implants, hair implants, hair coloring, face lifts, are all cases where a person is desperately unhappy with their natural look.
Torturing people, however, for being different than others think they should, when viewed as human property, has a long history.
Alan Turing stands as a prime example.
Young people are dying of suicide, drug overdose, car accidents.
Tragedy 🙏
St Augustine of Hippo had no romantic notions of babies. He had a son, Adeodatus, with a woman before his conversion to Catholicism. In his book, Confessions, St Augustine characterizes babies as a mirror of human nature: needy, underdeveloped, incapable of providing for itself, self-absorbed, cries at a whim and dependent on parents to care for them. He knew from experience and from his application of his classical philosophical training.
Democrats today are man-babies, to paraphrase Bishop Robert Barron in a recent sermon. While they may be adults in chronological age, they throw fits when they dont get their way, whine, scream, are large in physique but under developed in intellect and emotional state. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are the biggest man babies of them all
I remember many times picketing at abortion centers during my college years, protesting Roe v Wade. We gathered as Catholics to pray the Rosary, carried signs, and stayed on the public sidewalk in front of the abortion mills. The excoriation by the pro-aborts was instructive. I once had a balloon filled with red dye thrown at me. It only strengthened my resolve, and that infuriated the Left. They came and insulted us, screamed obscenities, spit on us, but we never wavered. That made them bat shlt crazy given the peaceful protest we projected.
Now that SCOTUS reflects a decidedly Catholic intellectual philosophical bent, it was predictable that the Left would seek to destroy SCOTUS. They can not pass legislatively in states and the nation that which they wish to impose on Americans. So violence is their only answer, bankrupt as they are intellectually.
Steve Forbes explains:
Democrats Must Be Stopped From Trying To Pack The Supreme Court
Democrat party leaders are furious about certain Supreme Court decisions, so they’re bandying around ideas to effectively destroy the third branch of government. To get their way, they’re ready, in effect, to tear up the Constitution.
[…]
For decades, the Democratic party’s liberal activists saw the court system as a way to enact their agendas without having to go through the drudgery of the legislative process, especially when their notions were unpopular. But gradually this judicial activism of legislating from the bench has been tempered by adverse public opinion and the growing influence of legal scholarship that objected to this usurpation of traditional legislative powers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2026/06/03/democrats-must-be-stopped–from-trying-to-pack-the-supreme-court/
Estovir, are you really X ? Several weeks ago, I used the abbreviated N.B. to draw attention to something I said. Now, out of nowhere, you have started throwing out “NB” in your comments . You must have been really impressed. (BTW, “NB” should be punctuated as “N.B. or n.b.).
N.B. Catholics are “devout”.
“While they may be adults in chronological age, they throw fits when they don’t get their way, whine, scream, are large in physique but underdeveloped in intellect and emotional state.”
That certainly sounds like someone that used to be a Democrat but found the Republican Party more fertile ground. Recent examples; Kennedy Center, banning news networks, disparaging judges, I could go on. Give me an example in the Democratic Party that outshines Trump and I’ll be silent.
Fertile ground for what, Tobacco, Indigo, Peaches etc?
And please do go on, always interested in seeing the opinions of ignorant people. Regardless of race.
You’ve been “Trump Trolled©”!
TDS is just narcissism.
Please give us examples of the democratic party’s shining examples (of anything) that outshine Trumps? Come on, don’t be shy.
The black enigma is very shy this morning.
” Give me an example in the Democratic Party that outshines Trump and I’ll be silent.”
We cannot.
There are no examples. Not with a party that hates women, wants pornography in elementary libraries, wants to mutilate children, protects violent criminal illegals and blames the victims.
Estovir is Estovir
The past tense of spit is spat, just as the past tense of sink is sank.
You mean it’s not spatted?
Anonymoose
Any prayers to Sheen?
“I remember many times picketing at abortion centers”
What a horrible thing to do. If one thinks women are terrible people for abortion, what sort of mother will they be if forced to carry a child? Given the horrors typical in the adoption process, that isn’t a good alternative.
But, if one relishes the idea that the woman will have the permanent financial burden and raise an angry and possibly criminal child who can go to prison after killing someone later? That outcome is desirable to those who protest at abortion clinics. To have someone they can hate and hate and hate and hate.
Anti-abortion protesters would love Hellstrom’s Hive:
The government spies soon learn the hive has progressed to using sexual “stumps,” both male and female—”the stump of a human body from about the waist to the knees” — as a method of harvesting “wild” genes or maintaining certain breeding lines when the individuals are no longer trustworthy members of the hive.
Reducing women to a reproductive organ to produce slave labor matches what the anti-abortion crowd demands.
All this while Demofascists threaten to destroy the Supreme Court as we know it. They promise to politicize the Court, because, like spoiled children, they aren’t always getting their way. The Supreme Court is supposed to be apolitical, a feature that Demofascists view as an impediment to their quest for absolute power.
No one threatened to destroy the SCOTUS you wackjob crackpot.
Its part of the DSA platform and has been espoused by multiple people running this term.
Pack the Court to approve laws abolishing all sorts of things, then abolish the Court, along with the Senate and Executive.
It’s not a secret. Why would you lie?
Abolish? Read that online huh? You believe everything you read?
Right on the DSA website you insincere wackjob!
Insincere? Are you gonna cry now?
What DSA website? Wouldn’t expect an idiot like yourself to actually prove something, like a link.
Umm, the DSA did. Don’t get out much do ya?
Got proof? Didn’t think you had the brains to prove it.
May our Supreme Court Justices be blessed with wisdom and courage.
Esquire? Really? You clown.
Ugh, our proof of how bad our educational system is doing these days is up and already posting his nasty, moronic and childish replies to decent people like Attorney Benisch. Looks like another day of being forced to see comments from child that can’t create a name.
HullBobby,
Right?
The annony is a perfect example of the decline of not only public education but of so-called higher education.
And illiberal parents who fail to parent with their failure to launch children.
I cannot imagine being a Gen Z, 30 something, still dependent on my parents for nearly everything.
Additional evidence of Gen Z failed schooling.
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Gen Z demands millennials retire so they can grab corporate jobs for themselves – ‘How do y’all expect us to live?’
“Y’all need to retire so we can have some jobs open for us,” Gen Z TikToker @yokoagainagain complained in a now-deleted viral video. “How do y’all expect us to live?” she raged. “Y’all come at us for having to get lower-paying jobs at fast-food restaurants… It’s because millennials are taking all the jobs that we went to school for.”
@ogjaydotjay
Please just let Millenniaps live. We are so tired. #millennial #genz #retirement #millennials
♬ original sound – TheFinePrintbyJJ
Another Gen Z creator, Kaleb (@ys0ser10us on TikTok), echoed the sentiment in a clip captioned “Pls retire.”
“How is Gen Z supposed to climb the corporate ladder if boomers and millennials won’t retire?” he asked.
Unsurprisingly, millennials — who are currently between 30 and 45 and decades away from Social Security — hit back with pure fury.
“If I could retire right now, I guarantee right hand to God, you can have my job,” one millennial TikToker shot back. “If you went to school like I did and got a degree in nursing, you could take it.”
“The oldest millennials are 45 — wtf are we supposed to be retiring on?” one stunned viewer replied. Another asked if Gen Z “legit thinks 33 is retirement age.”
https://nypost.com/2026/09/27/lifestyle/gen-z-tells-millennials-to-retire-so-they-can-get-jobs-pls-retire/