The Supreme Court has stacked its 2026, 27 docket with a roster of cases that will force the justices to confront some of the most contested constitutional questions in American life, from whether states and counties can ban AR-15-style rifles, to whether a Catholic preschool can be locked out of a public program for being Catholic, to whether parents have any say when a state helps a runaway child pursue gender-transition treatment.
Arguments begin in October. Decisions are expected through the spring and early summer of 2027. And the cases the court has already agreed to hear suggest that the justices who shaped the most consequential term in recent memory are far from finished.
The outgoing term produced landmark rulings on birthright citizenship, presidential removal authority, and transgender athletes in women's sports. As Just the News reported, the new term may be just as consequential, and the granted cases cut across nearly every fault line in American politics.
The headline case, or cases, involve semiautomatic rifle bans. The court granted review in a challenge brought by Cutberto Viramontes against Cook County, Illinois, over the county's ban on semiautomatic rifles. It also took up a separate challenge to Connecticut's ban, enacted after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
The grants did not come out of nowhere. Three justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, signaled interest in the AR-15 question last year. Justice Brett Kavanaugh went further, writing that the constitutionality of AR-15 bans was a question the court would need to answer "soon, in the next Term or two."
That term has arrived.
The court did pass on challenges to large-capacity magazine restrictions, which means the cases will focus narrowly on the rifles themselves. But the constitutional stakes are enormous. Millions of Americans own AR-15-platform firearms, and the outcome will determine whether blue-state legislatures can effectively criminalize possession of the most popular rifle in the country.
The court's recent trajectory on the Second Amendment makes the grants especially significant. Days before the AR-15 cases were announced, the justices struck down a Hawaii law that barred concealed-carry permit holders from bringing firearms onto private property without explicit permission from the property owner. That decision extended the court's post-Bruen expansion of gun rights, a trend that has already drawn sharp criticism from the court's liberal wing.
Two cases test the boundaries of religious freedom in everyday American life.
In St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a Catholic preschool in Littleton, Colorado, was excluded from the state's universal preschool program. Colorado operates the program as a public benefit, but the state barred St. Mary for failing to comply with anti-discrimination requirements, requirements the parish says conflict with Catholic teaching.
The case raises a question the court has circled for years: whether a state can offer a benefit to everyone and then strip it from a religious institution that operates according to its faith. The 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith set the framework for these disputes, and the court has been chipping away at that precedent for more than a decade.
The second religious liberty case is more intimate in scale but no less important in principle. In Grand v. City of University Heights, a homeowner in University Heights, Ohio, alleges the city required a permit before he could host a neighborhood prayer group in his own home. If the facts are as alleged, the case presents a stark picture: a local government treating a living-room Bible study as a regulated land use.
In International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson, the court will examine Washington state laws that permit licensed youth shelters to provide mental-health services, including gender-transition-related care, to runaway minors without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents.
The case sits at the intersection of parental rights and the growing national debate over how states handle gender-questioning youth. Washington's framework allows a child who has run away from home to receive treatment that may have permanent physical consequences, all while the child's parents are kept in the dark.
The court's willingness to take the case follows its recent ruling on transgender athletes, in which the justices upheld protections for female athletes and left roughly half the states scrambling to respond. Whether the justices will extend that momentum into the medical-treatment arena remains to be seen, but the grant itself signals that at least four justices believe the question is ripe.
Election integrity lands on the docket through Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, a case challenging Arizona's voter-registration proof-of-citizenship requirement and its rules for purging noncitizens from voter rolls.
Arizona has been at the center of voting-law battles for years. The case will test whether states can require documentary proof of citizenship at the registration stage, a measure supporters say is basic election hygiene and opponents call a barrier to eligible voters. The RNC brought the challenge, and the outcome could set a template for similar laws nationwide.
Separately, the court has asked the Trump administration to weigh in on Pennsylvania cases involving mail-in ballot date-writing requirements. The justices have not yet agreed to hear those disputes, but the invitation to the administration suggests interest.
The court also granted review in a Florida case examining whether non-unanimous jury recommendations can support a death sentence. The case name was not disclosed in the grant announcement, but the issue implicates the Sixth Amendment's jury-trial guarantee and could reshape capital sentencing in states that do not require unanimity.
In Nielsen v. Watanabe, the justices will revisit the scope of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, the 1971 decision that created a damages remedy for federal prisoners whose constitutional rights are violated. The court has steadily narrowed Bivens over the past decade, and this case could tighten the limits further.
Several cases touch on federal authority and institutional power. In Wassily v. Blanche, the court will examine the intersection of noncitizen asylum status and adjustment to lawful permanent residency, a statutory question with real-world consequences for immigration processing.
And in Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission, the justices will consider just-compensation requirements under the Natural Gas Act, a case that tests how far the federal government can go in taking private property for energy infrastructure without full payment.
The broader trajectory of the court's approach to executive power and the administrative state has already rattled Washington. As Justice Gorsuch signaled in a recent ruling, the court's willingness to challenge the foundations of the regulatory bureaucracy is not a one-term project.
Two commercial cases round out the docket. In Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, the court will decide how much clarity a court order must have before a party can be held in civil contempt, a procedural question with implications for every major antitrust and tech-regulation dispute in the pipeline.
In RiseandShine Corp. v. PepsiCo, the justices will address how courts should evaluate the "inherent strength" of a trademark, a question that matters to every business that builds a brand.
The outgoing term was already one for the history books. The court's birthright citizenship ruling reshaped the immigration debate. Its decisions on presidential removal authority and executive enforcement power expanded the boundaries of what the administration can do, and what it cannot.
The New York Post noted that the final day of the outgoing term alone carried four major decisions, including rulings with direct implications for campaign finance and cultural policy. The political fallout from those cases is still unfolding.
Now the court has loaded the next term with cases that go even deeper. AR-15 bans. Religious exclusion from public programs. Government-facilitated gender treatment of children without parental knowledge. Proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration. Death-penalty jury rules. Federal prisoner rights. Energy-infrastructure takings.
Additional petitions remain pending, which means the docket could grow further before October. But what the court has already granted is enough to guarantee that the 2026, 27 term will be watched as closely as any in a generation.
The justices are heading into summer recess. The rest of the country should pay attention to what they plan to do when they come back.