Abortion, Guns, Jan. 6 Highlight Top Supreme Court Cases in 2024

Major challenges concerning abortion, guns, and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack await US Supreme Court justices when they return to the bench in 2024.

The court, which completed its final arguments of 2023 in mid-December, has already heard consequential cases on issues ranging from taxes to social media to the so-called administrative state. All of those are expected to be decided by the end of June.

The justices also have agreed to hear 32 additional cases, and could add more in the early weeks of the new year.

Here’s a run-down of cases to watch.

Presidential Immunity

The justices could potentially add a pair of cases involving former President Donald Trump to their docket this term. Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to fast-track an appeal by Trump over whether he’s immune from suit for actions he took while still in office.

It was the first time the Supreme Court had been asked to formerly weigh in on one of the four pending state and federal criminal prosecutions against the former president.

A federal trial court found that Trump was not above the law and could be prosecuted for those actions. Smith said Trump’s appeal of that issue imperils the timing of the criminal trial, which is currently set for March 2024—before the presidential election in which Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination.

Smith asked the justices to skip over the intermediate appellate court and resolve the dispute now, saying “it is of imperative public importance” that only the US Supreme Court can resolve. But the justices denied the request Dec. 22, apparently wanting the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to weigh in first. That court has fast-tracked its consideration of the case, meaning the issue could percolate back up to the justices soon.

In a separate case, the Colorado Republican Party asked the justices to reinstate the ex-president’s name on the state’s primary ballot.

The Colorado Supreme Court said Trump was disqualified from being on the ballot because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks. Because the issue is also playing out in other states, a prompt resolution by the US Supreme Court is necessary, they argue.

Abortion Access

In addition, the justices on Dec. 13 added a pair of challenges to the most common form of abortion in the country—medication abortion.

In FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco Laboratories v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a group of anti-abortion doctors challenge a host of FDA actions making the drug mifepristone more easily accessible. Those include lengthening the time in which the drug can be used for early-stage abortions and dispensing with the requirement for in-person doctor visits to obtain the drug.

The dispute before the justices is likely to focus on whether the doctors have alleged a sufficient legal harm, or “injury,” to press their claims in federal court.

The federal government and Danco Laboratories, the maker of brand name version Mifeprex, say the doctors aren’t harmed by the FDA’s decisions because they don’t prescribe abortion drugs. But the doctors say they inevitably will have to treat patients who experience complications with the drug.

A broad view of “standing” allowing the doctors to proceed with their claims couldn’t only upend abortion access in states that have severely limited the practice, but could open more federal regulations up to legal challenges by those who disagree with those policies.

The justices also on Dec. 13 declined to review the doctors’ appeal upholding the FDA’s original approval of mifepristone, which took place more than two decades ago. The ruling will not remove the drug entirely from the marketplace but could still place severe limits on its use.

The cases haven’t been set for argument.

Capitol Attack

The same day, the justices agreed to consider whether Jan. 6 defendant Joseph Fischer can be charged under 2002 law passed following the Enron Corp. collapse and other business scandals.

In addition to the more than 200 cases in which the government is using the statute to punish Capitol rioters, the outcome could affect the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump’s related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Prosecutors have invoked the same law against the former president.

The issue for the justices in Fischer v. United States is whether a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that punishes anyone who “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding” can be applied to the Jan. 6 defendants, or whether its limited to the destruction of documents or other evidence that Congress had in mind when passing the law.

Though most, if not all, of the Jan. 6 defendants are also facing charges under other statutes, those often come with fewer penalties. The Enron-era law carries a sentence of up to 20 years.

But in a string of recent cases the justices have reined in what they see as the overcriminalization of federal law and unfettered prosecutorial discretion that allows prosecutors to stretch criminal laws to reach broader conduct.

Administrative State

A pair of closely watched challenges to the bedrock administrative law doctrine known as Chevron deference are scheduled to be among the first cases heard in the new year. Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo are scheduled for argument Jan. 17.

The plaintiffs take aim at a fishery management regulation that requires fishing vessels to pay the way of federal observers who oversee their operations. But the challenges sweep more broadly, implicating nearly every aspect of American life.

That’s because the plaintiffs have asked the justices to rethink their 1984 decision in Chevron v. NRDC, which applies to the hundreds of federal agencies that regulate everything from the environment to healthcare to the economy.

The unanimous Chevron decision told federal courts that they should defer to agencies and their experts on ambiguous statutory questions. The case has taken on outsized influence, providing Congress with the ability to delegate complex policy questions to subject matter experts and even spawning other deference doctrines.

Recently the doctrine has come under fire from those who say it abdicates the judiciary’s responsibility to say what the law is and empowers unelected bureaucrats who have grown too powerful.

The conservative-majority Supreme Court in recent terms has trimmed Chevron’s application, finding situations in which it simply doesn’t apply. Some issues are so “major” and have such substantial financial ramifications that Congress must clearly indicate that it intends for a federal agency to make the call, the justices have said in recent cases.

So despite the severe consequenses touted by both sides, it’s unclear what the practical implications of the cases will be.

Bump Stocks

The justices in the new year will also consider whether the federal government can ban devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire much like machine guns. The prohibition on so-called bump stocks was put in place by the Trump administration after the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert that killed 60 and injured hundreds.

It’s the second case the justices will consider this term that implicates what lawmakers can do to limit gun violence.

The justices in November signaled they’ll likely side with the federal government in upholding a law that punishes gun possession by those subject to a domestic violence restraining order, in United States v. Rahimi.

But the bump stock ban in Garland v. Cargill isn’t centered on the Second Amendment, like the question in Rahimi. Instead it focuses on a 1986 law that bars most fully automatic machine guns.

The question for the justices is whether a bump stock meets the statute’s definition of a weapon that can “automatically” discharge more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

The lower federal courts have split on that issue.