Katelynn Richardson
The Supreme Court’s coming term will include cases on child sex change bans, guns and porn.
The 2024-2025 term will kick off when the justices hear their first case on Oct. 7. To date, 28 petitions have been granted, with more cases to be added to the docket in the coming weeks.
Below are a few of the most significant cases slated for decisions this term.
Biden Administration’s ‘Ghost Guns’ Rule
One of the first cases to come before the court will be a challenge to the Biden administration’s “ghost guns” rule. Oral arguments for Garland v. Vanderstok are scheduled for Oct. 8.
Under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “Frame or Receiver” rule issued in 2022, the definition of firearm was expanded to encompass parts kits “readily convertible to functional weapons,” subjecting them to the same regulation as traditional guns.
The high court’s majority stepped in twice in response to emergency applications to keep the rule in place after it was blocked by lower courts.
The Fifth Circuit found in November 2023 that the ATF’s rule “flouts clear statutory text and exceeds the legislatively-imposed limits on agency authority in the name of public policy.” But the Biden administration argues that the lower court’s ruling poses an “acute threat to public safety.”
“Under the Fifth Circuit’s interpretation, anyone could buy a kit online and assemble a fully functional gun in minutes— no background check, records, or serial number required,” the government wrote in its petition. “The result would be a flood of untraceable ghost guns into our Nation’s communities, endangering the public and thwarting law-enforcement efforts to solve violent crimes.”
San Francisco’s EPA Challenge
There’s one case on the docket this term where interests of one of the country’s most liberal cities and energy trade groups align.
San Francisco sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after the agency issued a permit under the Clean Water Act (CWA) that failed to prescribe clear limits for wastewater discharge. The vague requirements leave the city open to “‘crushing consequences’ of the CWA’s enforcement machinery without prior notice of what the Act requires,” the city’s attorneys argued.
“These generic water quality terms expose San Francisco and numerous permit holders nationwide to enforcement actions while failing to tell them how much they need to limit or treat their discharges to comply with the Act,” the city argued in its petition.
An amicus brief joined by groups like the American Petroleum Institute and American Gas Association argues many businesses “now cannot know whether they are complying with their permits.”
Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 16.
Tennessee’s Ban On Transgender Procedures For Minors
Tennessee’s law banning procedures like cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and sex change surgeries for children, one of 25 similar state laws across the country, is at the center of another case on the docket this term.
The Biden administration argues Tennessee’s ban violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They claim the procedures it restricts are “safe, effective, and can be medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria in transgender adolescents.”
However, unsealed documents from another case challenging Alabama’s similar ban revealed in June that the supposedly “evidence-based” medical standards created by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which are cited by the Biden administration, had been influenced by outside political pressure.
Tennessee argues the medical interventions it bans “carry serious and potentially irreversible side effects, including infertility, diminished bone density, sexual dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.”
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Tennessee to enforce its ban in a Sept. 2023 ruling, where the majority wrote that transgender people are not a “politically powerless” group.
Texas’ Porn Age Verification Law
Under a Texas law passed in 2023, websites that distribute “sexual material harmful to minors” must confirm their users are over 18 years of age. Nineteen other states, including Utah, Virginia and Arkansas, have also passed age verification laws.
The Supreme Court agreed in July to review a Fifth Circuit ruling allowing Texas’ law to take effect.
A trade group representing online pornography distributors, the Free Speech Coalition, argues Texas’ law “imposes significant burdens on adults’ access to constitutionally protected expression” as a result of trying to keep minors off the websites.
“Of central relevance here, it requires every user, including adults, to submit personally identifying information to access sensitive, intimate content over a medium—the Internet—that poses unique security and privacy concerns,” the coalition wrote in its petition.
Texas notes its law does not prohibit pornography but simply requires an industry that “makes billions of dollars from trafficking in obscenity to take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that those who access the material are adults.”
FDA’s Refusal To Approve Flavored E-Cigarettes
The Supreme Court agreed to review a Fifth Circuit decision that found the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it denied applications to market flavored vape products.
In a 10-6 en banc ruling, Judge Andrew Oldham wrote that the FDA had sent manufacturers on a “wild goose chase.”
“After telling manufacturers that their marketing plans were ‘critical’ to their applications, FDA candidly admitted that it did not read a single word of the one million plans,” the opinion states.
The FDA maintains that the products pose “serious risks to youth.” In a brief, it wrote that applicants had “failed to prove that authorizing their flavored products would be appropriate for the protection of the public health.”
Featured Image: Screen Capture/Supreme Court of the United States
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