From the right to own semiautomatic rifles to the rules governing voter registration, the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court term will see the justices tackle a broad swath of constitutional and access to justice issues.

Among the cases granted review for the term starting Oct. 5, will be when parents can challenge state laws governing shelters for runaway youths seeking gender-affirming care.

Other cases will consider when federal prisoners can sue officials for alleged constitutional violations and when death row inmates can raise new claims after an earlier federal habeas petition.

Together, the cases will test not only the scope of constitutional protections, but also who can turn to the courts to enforce them.

Semiautomatic Rifles

Gun rights are back at the Supreme Court with a pair of challenges to semiautomatic weapons bans. The consolidated cases, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, focus on prohibitions on the possession of semiautomatic rifles, including AR-15s, imposed by Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois.

The high court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of semiautomatic weapons bans for the first time. The cases will test how the court's landmark 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen applies to restrictions on particular types of firearms.

In June, the court ruled that a Hawaii law barring licensed concealed-carry permit holders from bringing firearms onto private property open to the public without the owner's express permission was unconstitutional. In a ruling the same month, the court struck down a federal ban on firearm possession by unlawful users of controlled substances

The dispute now before the court, however, falls under a distinct line of Second Amendment doctrine — one looking at what kind of weapons are permitted — for which legal experts say there is scarce precedent.

The 2016 ruling in Caetano v. Massachusetts, in which the court unanimously threw out the conviction of a Massachusetts woman prosecuted for carrying a stun gun for self-defense, provides limited guidance: It came down before Bruen, which radically altered the test for determining the constitutionality of gun restrictions.

Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, a seminal 2008 ruling that recognized a right to possess a firearm inside the home for self-protection, discussed how handguns are weapons "in common use" for purposes like self-defense.

In Viramontes and Grant, the court will signal how far it's willing to go in dictating what kind of weapons the Second Amendment permits regular people to possess.

The ruling could reach well beyond AR-15s.

Eric Ruben, a professor at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, said the court has never clearly established how judges should determine which categories of weapons the Second Amendment protects. The framework it develops could eventually affect challenges to restrictions on everything from machine guns and .50-caliber rifles to knives and large-capacity magazines.

"There are lots of open questions with respect to categories of weapons, and that is another reason why this case is so important," Ruben said.

Hayley Lawrence, the executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, told Law360 that the court's willingness to determine which weapons get protection will animate the case.

In June 2025, when the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Maryland's semiautomatic rifle ban in Snope v. Brown, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that there was a "strong argument" that AR-15s are "in common use" across the country.

The petitioners in Grant, a mix of private citizens and gun rights advocates, argued that Connecticut's laws prohibit the possession and sale of semiautomatic rifles that are commonly owned by Americans, such as the AR-15, which has been available to civilians since 1964. Its fully automatic relative, the M-16, has been adopted by the U.S. military.

Unlike fully automatic weapons, which fire continuously as long as the trigger is held, semiautomatic guns fire one round per trigger pull. In the petition, the plaintiffs criticized the term "assault weapons," which they described as a political slogan designed to exploit confusion in the broader American public over the differences between these two types of firearms.

"This court should intervene to stop lower courts from watering down the right to keep and bear arms," the plaintiffs said in their petition.

The petitioners in Viramontes mounted a similar challenge to a Cook County ordinance that prohibits certain semiautomatic rifles. The ban includes AR-15s.

One of the arguments likely to emerge during oral arguments, which are set for Dec. 2, is that states and local governments can restrict the possession of military-adjacent weapons, and they have done so in the past, Lawrence said.

Under the two-step test established in the Bruen decision, the court will first determine whether commonly used weapons fall within the scope of the Second Amendment. If they do, Connecticut and Cook County will have to defend their bans by showing that governments restricted weapons that were commonly used around the time the Second Amendment and the 14th Amendment were ratified, 1791 and 1868, respectively.

Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller also discussed a historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of "dangerous and unusual" weapons. AR-15-style weapons have been used in several mass shootings that occurred in the U.S. in the past two decades.

"That's where the state's argument comes in, which is: Even if they are popular, they are dangerous and unusual in how lethal they are. Which is exactly why the states and localities have banned them in the first place," Lawrence said.

Proof of Citizenship in Voting

On Dec. 8, the Supreme Court will return to a yearslong Arizona voter registration fight that could determine how far states can go in requiring people to prove their citizenship to vote.

In Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, the justices will consider two distinct questions: whether the state can require people using its state voter registration form to provide documentary proof of citizenship, and whether it can systematically remove suspected noncitizens from voter rolls within 90 days before a federal election.

The first question is the latest chapter in a dispute that reached the Supreme Court more than a decade ago. In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, the court ruled in 2013 that Arizona could not require people registering through a federal form to provide documentary proof of citizenship.

Arizona subsequently developed a dual registration system under which voters who register using the federal form without providing documentary proof of citizenship can vote in federal elections, but not state elections. People who satisfy the state's requirements, meanwhile, are allowed to register for both federal and state elections.

The dispute now before the justices arose after Arizona enacted new requirements for its state registration form despite a 2018 federal consent decree in which state officials had agreed not to require documentary proof of citizenship.

That has placed before the court a potentially broader question about how much a court-approved agreement entered by state officials can constrain a legislature that subsequently enacts a law that conflicts with it.

Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and an election law expert, said a decision confined to Arizona's particular agreement might have little effect elsewhere. But a broader ruling limiting the ability of consent decrees to bind states could have ramifications for civil rights litigation well beyond voting.

"If they decide that they're not sticky, it's going to reduce the incentive for a lot of plaintiffs to bother with a consent decree," Levitt said.

The second issue concerns what is referred to as the National Voter Registration Act's 90-day "quiet period." Federal law generally requires states to complete systematic programs for removing ineligible voters from their rolls at least 90 days before a federal election. Its purpose, Levitt said, is to prevent large-scale removal programs close to an election from mistakenly sweeping eligible voters off the rolls without giving them enough time to correct the error.

The Supreme Court will decide whether that restriction also applies when a state's systematic program is aimed specifically at removing noncitizens.

A ruling by the Supreme Court adopting Arizona's position could give states greater latitude to conduct large-scale voter roll maintenance immediately before federal elections that focus on citizenship status.

But the case does not determine whether states may remove noncitizens from their voter rolls at all, Levitt stressed. The disputed provision permits systematic list maintenance outside the 90-day window.

"Really, the only question is, can they do it at the last minute?" he said.

A Clash Between Religious Liberty and LGBTQ rights

St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, which will be argued Nov. 3, centers on whether Colorado can require religious schools participating in the state-funded universal preschool program to comply with nondiscrimination rules protecting LGBTQ children and families.

The dispute revives a long-standing clash over the contours of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The Catholic schools argue that Colorado is discriminating against them by denying them access to a public benefit because of their religious beliefs, including their practice of admitting only children that align with the Catholic Church's views on gender, marriage and sexuality.

Petitioners Daniel and Lisa Sheley, whose children attend a Catholic school in Littleton, Colorado, argue that the state's nondiscrimination mandate bars Catholic schools from participating in its pre-K program "unless they are willing to compromise their religious beliefs."

In their petition, they point to exemptions from the mandate, including a "catchall" provision allowing schools to limit enrollment to historically disadvantaged groups, such as children of color, LGBTQ children, low-income families and children with disabilities. The schools argue those exceptions undermine Colorado's justification for applying those rules to them.

The officials overseeing the preschool program argue that religious schools are welcome to participate, provided they comply with the same nondiscrimination requirements that apply to other providers.

Caroline Mala Corbin, a constitutional law professor at the University of Miami School of Law, said the case hinges on the tensions between a religious school's right to maintain its admissions policies in accordance with its beliefs, even if that means excluding certain students, and its eligibility for taxpayer funding.

"There are some religious schools who maintain that their religion requires them to discriminate, and they argue that it's discrimination against them if they don't get the money and be allowed to discriminate," Mala Corbin told Law360.

The dispute, Mala Corbin said, takes place in a legal landscape that has changed significantly in recent years. Traditionally, providing taxpayer money to religious schools was found to be in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause, which forbids the government from establishing a national religion or favoring one religion over others. In 1990's Employment Division v. Smith, the court also held that neutral, "generally applicable" laws ordinarily do not violate religious freedom simply because they burden religious practices.

But more recent decisions increasingly chipped away at establishment clause jurisprudence in favor of a stronger assertion of religious rights under another provision in the First Amendment: the free exercise clause.

In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer, the Supreme Court held in 2017 that denying a Christian church a grant meant for redesigning a playground solely because of its religious status was impermissible under the clause. In 2020, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the court held that a state offering scholarships for private education cannot exclude religious schools and their students just because the schools are religious.

In 2022's Carson v. Makin, the court held that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a tuition assistance program because they provided religious education.

"It is not yet the rule that the government must provide religious schools taxpayer money, even if they want to discriminate against other members of society," Mala Corbin said.

The Bivens Doctrine on the Line

After the Civil War, Congress created a legal process allowing private citizens, particularly formerly enslaved people, to hold state officials accountable for violating their constitutional rights. Known as constitutional tort claims, these lawsuits allow people to seek damages for injuries caused by state government officials' unconstitutional conduct.

In 1971, ruling in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the Supreme Court recognized a similar right to sue federal officers for damages over certain constitutional violations. In Bivens, the plaintiff alleged that federal narcotics agents entered and searched his apartment and arrested him without a warrant or probable cause, violating his Fourth Amendment rights.

The court extended the doctrine to other contexts only twice. In its 1980 ruling in Carlson v. Green, the court allowed a damages claim against federal prison officials accused of deliberate indifference to a prisoner's serious medical needs.

On Nov. 9, the court will revisit the Bivens doctrine when it hears arguments in Nielsen v. Watanabe, a case brought by an inmate held at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu who alleged that a prison nurse was deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs after he was assaulted by rival gang members, leaving him with a fractured tailbone.

The question is how closely Watanabe's allegations must resemble those in Carlson for his claim to proceed under the Bivens framework.

"Inadequate medical care comes in a variety of different factual settings," James Pfander, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law who specializes in federal courts and constitutional litigation, told Law360. "The diseases will differ. The nature of the inadequate care may differ, and so one question that litigators have faced is whether every difference creates a new context that therefore requires some skepticism about the availability of a Bivens action."

Pfander said the Supreme Court's interest in Watanabe's case reflects the court's broader approach of limiting the reach of the Bivens doctrine. In the last four decades, the justices have steadily narrowed the circumstances in which lawsuits can invoke it while stopping short of formally overruling it.

"The Supreme Court has made clear in its recent cases that it's not inclined to recognize any such new context for litigation, and there have been some suggestions by the justices that the entire doctrine should be revisited, and perhaps the Bivens decision should be overruled," Pfander said.

Alexander Reinert, a professor at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, said the court could restrict the doctrine without formally overruling it by holding that prisoners may bring damages claims only when their circumstances are essentially identical to those in Carlson.

Such a ruling would have consequences beyond Watanabe's case, Reinert said, because Bivens and Carlson continue to provide avenues for constitutional damages claims in lower courts.

"It's still a meaningful remedy in some cases that lower courts are practiced in adjudicating, and so to do away with it entirely would really have significant implications," Reinert said.

Ability to Challenge Transgender-Affirming Policies in Court

Another notable case, International Partners for Ethical Care Inc. v. Ferguson, weighs the autonomy of gender-nonconforming youths against the right of parents to make decisions about their children's upbringing and medical care.

The case, however, does not ask the court to reach the merits of that tension. Rather, it will focus on a narrower issue of standing — whether the plaintiffs have a real stake in the case that allows them to sue in the first place.

The case, which will be argued Dec. 7, stems from two 2023 Washington laws governing what happens when a runaway minor seeks refuge at a licensed youth shelter. Previously, shelters generally had to notify a child's parents within 72 hours, unless there was a risk of abuse or neglect.

Under the amended laws, a shelter must instead contact the state's Department of Children, Youth, and Families if the minor is seeking certain protected health care services, including gender-affirming treatment. The department must then make a "good-faith attempt" to notify the parents and offer services aimed at resolving family conflicts and reuniting them.

Five sets of Washington parents whose children have shown signs of gender dysphoria, along with two advocacy organizations, sued state officials in August 2023 to argue that the laws infringe on their due process rights under the 14th Amendment to make medical decisions for their minor children, including refusing treatment they oppose, as well as their right to custody.

To establish standing, the parents must show that they have suffered a concrete injury or face an imminent threat of a future one, that the challenged laws caused the injury, and that a favorable court ruling could redress it.

In their lawsuit, the parents argue that the laws could allow their children to leave home, obtain services without their involvement and remain separated from them. They also say the prospect already has affected how they raise and communicate with their children. One family's child had previously run away.

Washington argues that the parents' alleged present harms stem from their own decisions about how to interact with their children, while the prospect of a child running away and seeking services under the laws is too speculative to establish standing.

In May 2024, a federal judge in Tacoma, Washington, ruled the parents did not meet the bar for standing. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal.

Scott Skinner-Thompson, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said the case should be viewed in the context of other challenges to laws intended to protect LGBTQ people, including cases brought before those laws were even enforced.

"The principle of standing exists so that we have injured parties, and actual stories, and actual facts," he said.

Skinner-Thompson said allowing such challenges to protections for LGBTQ people to proceed even when there is no clear harm results in what he referred to as "procedural erasure" — the people the laws are intended to protect are absent from litigation that could affect their rights.

"These laws are designed to protect LGBTQ people, whether it's a ban on conversion therapy, a public accommodation law, or this law trying to provide space for queer kids who may not feel safe at home. But their presence in the cases is erased."

When Death Row Prisoners Can Bring a Second Habeas Petition

In Guerrero v. Johnson, the Supreme Court will consider when a death row prisoner may bring a new constitutional claim in a second federal habeas petition, despite the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a law that sharply restricts successive challenges to criminal convictions and sentences.

The case, up for arguments Nov. 4, turns on the meaning of an exception in the law that allows for subsequent claims that rely on a new rule of constitutional law that was "previously unavailable."

Dexter Johnson, who was sentenced to death in Texas, sought to argue that he is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be executed under the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia. Although that ruling predated Johnson's first federal habeas petition, he argued that the diagnostic standards in use at the time left his claim with no possibility of success. Subsequent changes to those standards, he argued, made the claim viable.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit allowed Johnson's claim to proceed, applying its interpretation that a claim can be "previously unavailable" if it had no possibility of merit when the prisoner filed an earlier petition.

Texas argues that the exception does not apply when a prisoner could have raised the claim earlier, regardless of its prospects for success. The dispute reflects a divide among federal appeals courts over how to interpret the statute.

Brandon Garrett, a habeas corpus scholar and professor at Duke University School of Law, told Law360 in an email that one of the challenges courts face in deciding habeas corpus cases is that the AEDPA provision addressing successive petitions is "worded in a highly confusing way."

"Those statutory terms simply do not map well onto the types of constitutional claims that recur in death penalty cases," he said.

Christina Frohock, a law professor at the University of Miami, said the dispute comes down to whether a claim must have been legally impossible to raise earlier or whether it was effectively unavailable because it had no chance of succeeding.

"The Fifth Circuit interpreted that word 'unavailable' to mean practically unavailable, as opposed to technically unavailable," she said. "Practically unavailable is, well, you could bring the claim, but there was no possibility of merit on the claim. It was just an unwinnable claim."

–Editing by Orlando Lorenzo and Alex Hubbard.

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