The Supreme Court has twenty argued cases left to decide before its self-imposed end-of-June deadline, and the remaining lineup reads like a checklist of the most contested legal and constitutional questions in American life. Birthright citizenship. Presidential firing power. Transgender athletes. Mail ballots. The independence of the Federal Reserve. Each one carries real consequences for the Trump administration's agenda, and for the country.
The next batch of opinions is expected Thursday, The Hill reported, and the pace is exactly on par with this time last term. But the weight of what remains is anything but ordinary.
For conservative readers who have waited years for the Court to take up foundational questions about executive authority, immigration enforcement, and election integrity, the next two weeks could deliver answers, or at least force the legal establishment to confront arguments it has long avoided.
On Day 1 of his presidency, President Trump signed an executive order restricting birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to parents in the country unlawfully. The order has never gone into effect. Every judge who has considered its legality has found it violates the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship guarantee.
Trump himself acknowledged the headwinds late last month, writing on Truth Social:
"that is probably why our Country will lose the Birthright Citizenship Case."
That kind of candor from a sitting president about a pending Supreme Court case is unusual. But the legal reality is stark: no lower court has sided with the administration on this question, and the justices will now decide whether the 14th Amendment means what the judiciary has consistently said it means, or whether the executive branch has room to narrow its reach.
The outcome matters far beyond the courtroom. If the order stands, it would reshape the legal framework around citizenship in ways not seen since the amendment's ratification. If it falls, the administration will have spent political capital on an order that never took effect.
A separate immigration case asks whether the Trump administration can terminate Temporary Protected Status designations for more than a dozen countries, and whether courts can even review those decisions. The Department of Homeland Security has already terminated TPS for 13 of the 17 countries that held designations when Trump retook the White House. The remaining statuses are set to expire later this year.
DHS argues its decisions on Haiti's and Syria's TPS designations are unreviewable, accusing the Biden administration of abusing the program. That framing puts two questions before the Court at once: Did the prior administration stretch TPS beyond its statutory purpose? And can the current administration reverse course without judicial second-guessing?
For the hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals whose legal status depends on TPS, the ruling could effectively end the litigation. For the administration, a win would confirm broad executive discretion over immigration categories that critics say were never meant to become permanent residency programs.
The Court has already shown a willingness to wade into politically charged territory this term. The TPS case may test how far that willingness extends when immigration enforcement is on the line.
Perhaps the most structurally significant case on the remaining docket involves presidential firing power over independent agency heads. Trump fired Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, setting up a direct challenge to Humphrey's Executor v. United States, the 1935 ruling that held Congress could shield certain executive branch officials with firing protections.
For nine decades, that precedent has allowed independent agencies, from the FTC to the SEC to the NLRB, to operate with a degree of insulation from the White House. If the Court overturns it, the president's authority to remove agency heads at will would expand dramatically.
The implications are enormous. Independent agencies have accumulated vast regulatory power over American businesses, consumers, and markets. Whether that power should answer directly to the elected president, or remain buffered by congressional statute, is a question conservatives have pressed for years. The Court now appears ready to answer it.
Justice Clarence Thomas has separately urged the Court to revisit longstanding legal doctrines he views as lacking constitutional foundation. The potential overturning of Humphrey's Executor fits squarely within that broader project of re-examining precedents that may have outlived their justification.
But the Court has already signaled that the Federal Reserve may not fall under the same analysis. In an unsigned ruling last year, the justices wrote:
"The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States."
That language suggests the Court may carve out the Fed even if it dismantles firing protections for other agencies. The distinction matters because Trump fired Federal Reserve board of governors member Lisa Cook last year. Cook denies wrongdoing and has not been criminally charged. Trump says he has a fireable offense and points to mortgage fraud accusations. Cook argues the allegations do not amount to valid cause.
The justices could resolve the dispute outright or give Cook at least a temporary victory by ruling she should have been granted a hearing to contest the accusations. Either way, the Fed case will define the outer boundary of whatever new rule the Court establishes on presidential removal power.
The Court will also rule on transgender athlete laws in Idaho and West Virginia, cases brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and transgender athletes under the 14th Amendment and Title IX, the federal law protecting against sex discrimination in federally funded schools. Roughly two dozen states have enacted similar bans, and the Court's decision will determine whether those laws survive.
West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey told The Hill last week that he expects a lopsided outcome:
"I think 8-1 or 7-2 is more likely."
If McCuskey is right, the ruling would send a clear signal that state legislatures have wide latitude to define sex-based categories in school athletics. That would be a significant defeat for the ACLU's legal strategy and a validation of the commonsense position held by most Americans: that biological sex matters in competitive sports.
The Court has not shied from high-profile rulings this term. Its recent 8-1 ruling backing FCC fines against major telecom companies showed the justices are willing to deliver decisive outcomes even in politically sensitive regulatory cases.
The final major case involves whether states may accept mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. Fourteen states currently count ballots that show up after polls close. The Republican National Committee and the Trump administration argue that federal law defines the "election" as taking place the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and that ballots arriving afterward should not be counted.
At oral arguments, Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised a practical concern, asking whether a June decision would cause problems for fall contests:
"If you were to prevail here and, say, our decision was issued in June,"
Paul Clement, representing the RNC, responded directly:
"I don't think so. I think this issue, because it really sort of just deals with the state and the receipt of the ballots, I think June would give them plenty of time."
The stakes are real. California's recent primary took days for enough ballots to be counted to project runoff winners. Late-arriving mail ballots have become a flashpoint in election integrity debates, and the Court's ruling could reshape how fourteen states conduct their elections before voters head to the polls in November.
Some Democrats have responded to the Court's direction this term by floating structural changes. Senator Raphael Warnock, for example, has suggested expanding the Court and imposing term limits, proposals that tell you more about the left's confidence in its legal arguments than about any genuine constitutional principle.
The Court's remaining docket touches executive power, immigration enforcement, agency independence, the definition of sex in federal law, and the basic mechanics of how Americans vote. These are not peripheral questions. They go to the structure of the government and the rights of citizens.
The Court has also weighed in recently on capital punishment and federal court intervention, underscoring the breadth of its current workload. But the cases still pending may prove the most consequential of the entire term.
For the Trump administration, the outcomes will determine whether key elements of its agenda survive legal challenge or die in the courts. For the country, they will settle, at least for now, fundamental disputes that have festered for years.
Twenty cases. Two weeks. The justices have the facts, the briefs, and the arguments. What they do with them will shape American law long after this term ends.
