Normally, by this point in the Supreme Court term, we’re all acutely aware of the big cases that remain, steeling ourselves for the late June opinion drop so we can find out what rights we no longer have.
Those big cases are all still there, still poised to wreck us, but this year things have been obscured by President Donald Trump’s near-constant running to the highest court for emergency relief because lower courts keep ruling against him.
On this holiday weekend, let’s step back, breathe, and remind ourselves of the horrors that await.
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton: A bunch of tradcaths will decide how hard it should be to look at porn
In 2023, Texas passed an age-verification law that required websites where “more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors” to verify that the person accessing the material is at least 18.
You can already see the problem here. What does “material harmful to minors” mean? Who decides? A lower court judge found the law unconstitutional, but it was reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. So, the law has been in effect since March of last year, with the main practical effect being that Texans can’t access Pornhub unless they use a VPN to hide their location.
The plaintiffs, a group of adult entertainment websites, argue that the age-verification law violates the First Amendment because, while it is theoretically aimed only at restricting access to minors, the hoops of age verification will limit adult access to legal adult speech.
During oral arguments in January, the usual SCOTUS suspects fretted about teens and technology and pornography, but it isn’t clear how the justices will come down. The vagueness of Texas’ law could restrict minors from accessing information about reproductive health or LGBTQ+ issues. And given that conservatives already believe that the mere existence of queer characters in books sexualizes children, it’s not fearmongering to assume that, if this law is upheld, we’ll see more conservative states passing similar laws.
Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc.: A bunch of tradcaths will decide whether some preventive care is too sexy
The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover several preventive care services at no cost. Some of those services make conservatives very sad, however, because they make it less likely you will die from having sex.
So, a motley combo of individuals and Christian businesses sued in Texas to invalidate all preventive care services, saying it violated their religious freedom to require coverage for things like HIV prevention drugs, HPV vaccines, and contraception. They made sure to get the case in front of Judge Reed O’Connor, who has made a career out of trying to kill Obamacare.
Along with the religious freedom argument, the plaintiffs also argued that the Preventive Services Task Force, which is responsible for making care recommendations, violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.
O’Connor performed as expected, giving the plaintiffs a win on both arguments. He issued a nationwide injunction—which conservatives used to love until it started being applied to Trump—blocking all preventive care requirements since the start of the ACA in 2010.
Only the Appointments Clause argument is before the Supreme Court, and it appeared during oral arguments in April that the court was inclined to find the structure of the task force was constitutional. But it also asked for additional briefing following the oral arguments, so who can say?
No matter the result here, it won’t be the end of conservative attacks on the ACA.
Mahmoud v. Taylor: A bunch of tradcaths will decide whether your children can read books about dogs that go to Pride parades
This might have been the worst oral argument of the year.
Several conservative parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, objected to the school district’s inclusion of LGBTQ+ books in the English Language Arts curriculum. Previously, parents were able to opt their children out of reading books like “Pride Puppy,” a terrifying and obscene alphabet book about … tracking down a lost dog at a Pride parade. The horror.
When the district decided not to allow parents to opt their children out of learning about the existence of LGBTQ+ people, the parents sued. During oral arguments, Justice Neil Gorsuch claimed to have read “Pride Puppy,” describing it as “the one where [students] are supposed to look for the leather and things—and bondage.”
He went on to ask the school district’s lawyer to confirm that the students were also supposed to be looking for a sex worker within the pages of “Pride Puppy.” Reader, there are no sex workers in “Pride Puppy.”
Gorsuch sounded ridiculous here, flailing through whatever gay stereotypes his brain coughed up, but his underlying worldview—that any positive discussion of LGBTQ+ issues or people is somehow inherently sexual, designed to entrap innocent children—is one widely shared by conservatives.
Justice Samuel Alito spent most of his argument complaining that it’s unfair that the books chosen by the district show that same-sex marriage is a good thing.
It looks pretty likely that there are at least five votes to allow parents to opt out of any instruction, no matter how anodyne, about LGBTQ+ people. And after that? More Florida-style “Don’t Say Gay” book bans across the country.
U.S. v. Skrmetti: A bunch of tradcaths will decide whether transgender minors can get health care
Several states have passed laws banning gender-affirming health care for minors, with Tennessee’s ban being the first to make it to the Supreme Court. The law prohibits the administration of puberty blockers, hormone therapies, and gender-affirming surgeries to minors—well, only trans minors.
It’s precisely this carveout that makes clear that Tennessee’s law discriminates on the basis of sex. Puberty blockers, for example, cannot be prescribed for a child experiencing gender dysphoria, but they can be prescribed to a cisgender child to treat precocious puberty. That’s a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
When this case started during the Biden administration, the Department of Justice joined the lawsuit thanks to a law allowing the government to intervene in certain equal protection cases. When the Supreme Court took up the case, it took up only the government’s petition for review on the equal protection question.
In February, the Trump administration reversed course and told the court that it does not believe Tennessee’s law violates the Constitution, making the literal opposite argument from what the government made at oral argument in December 2024.
The Trump administration asked the court to decide the case regardless—because of course it did. You really couldn’t ask for a much better group of hardcore anti-trans justices eager to enshrine discrimination into law.
And from the sound of the oral argumentit seems likely that that’s exactly what will happen.
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