The most important day of the Supreme Court term was Election Day, when Donald Trump won the presidency and Republicans control of the Senate.
The election results will affect the court for years to come in terms of who sits on it, which cases it chooses to decide and how it chooses to decide them. The results could also have more immediate effects on the rest of the court’s term, which started in October and usually issues its final decisions by July.
Here are some things to watch for at the high court in 2025:
TikTok gets a speedy hearing
The justices will kick off the year with a Jan. 10 hearing over the fate of TikTok — specifically over whether there’s a winning First Amendment argument against a federal law that would ban the popular app’s U.S. operations unless its Chinese parent company sells it.
A federal appeals court approved the law, and the justices quickly agreed to consider whether the ban can go forward as a Jan. 19 deadline looms. All eyes will be on Washington for the oral argument nine days prior to that deadline to see what a majority of the justices are thinking ahead of what should be a speedy ruling.
Whatever the court decides, another question is whether the Trump administration will take a more TikTok-friendly approach, as the president-elect recently met with the company’s CEO. Trump will be inaugurated Jan. 20, the day after the law could take effect, putting a spotlight on the political dimension on top of the legal.
Trans rights and other cases in flux
Continuing along that political theme, Trump’s election could also affect cases that have already been argued but not yet decided. Perhaps the biggest case of the term thus far is United States v. Skrmetti, over the constitutionality of banning gender-affirming care for minors.
The case has “United States” in its caption because the federal government under President Joe Biden appealed Tennessee’s ban to the justices. The incoming administration could take a different view, raising the question of whether the justices will still decide the matter, argued in early December.
We’ll be watching to see how the political turnover affects not only trans rights but appeals over ghost guns, the environment and more.
Retirements coming?
Yet another consequence of the election is on the court’s membership. Trump already nominated half of the court’s six-justice GOP-appointed supermajority in his first term. By the time his second term ends, he could appoint more than half the entire nine-justice court.
Trump’s election puts the focus on Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court’s two oldest GOP appointees. They might not want to quit just yet, but all justices these days know that the way to protect their legacies is to time their retirements so that a president of the same party who appointed them can nominate their successor.
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