Blockbuster End Expected for the Courts’ 2024–2025 Term
The 2024–2025 Supreme Court term is poised for a blockbuster ending. The 5 cases below, each involving fundamental First or Fourteenth Amendment issues, await decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court within the next 60 days. There is likely good reason to anticipate that some positive decisions may be forthcoming.
U.S. v. Skrmetti
The Main Issue: Whether Tennessee law prohibiting the performance of transgender medical treatments on minors is consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Amicus Brief joined by The Family Foundation can be found here.
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
The Main Issue: A Texas law requiring age verification to access pornographic websites was challenged under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, under a claim that the required age verification process impermissibly burdened adults’ access to “speech.” Now, the main issue before the Court is whether this free-speech case should be evaluated under the Court’s rational-basis test, which favors the Texas law, or under the Court’s strict-scrutiny test, which disfavors this law.
The Amicus Brief joined by the Family Foundation can be found here.
Mahmoud v. Taylor
The Main Issue: Whether “public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out[].”
The Amicus Brief joined by The Family Foundation can be found here.
Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin
The Main Issue: While Wisconsin officials generally provided a tax exemption to religious organizations, it specifically excluded a Catholic entity that performed functions that the state viewed as secular. Now, the main issue before the Court is: Whether “a state violates the First Amendment’s [Free Exercise and Establishment] Clauses by denying a religious organization an otherwise-available tax exemption because the organization does not meet the state’s criteria for religious behavior[].”
Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond
The Main Issue: “Whether a state violates the Free Exercise Clause by excluding privately run religious schools from the state’s charter-school program solely because the schools are religious, or whether a state can justify such an exclusion by invoking anti-establishment interests that go further than the Establishment Clause requires.”