The Supreme Court has saved its heaviest lifting for last. With 20 opinions still outstanding as the 2025, 26 term draws to a close, the justices are sitting on cases that touch presidential power over independent agencies, the future of the Federal Reserve's independence, campaign finance law, birthright citizenship, election rules, transgender athletes in school sports, and the legal fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants living under Temporary Protected Status.
The remaining docket reads less like a cleanup list and more like a blueprint for the next decade of federal law. And looming behind all of it: persistent speculation about whether Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas might step down while a Republican president and a GOP Senate can still choose their replacements.
As Just the News reported, the court has already issued dozens of opinions this term, but the cases still pending carry outsized consequences for executive authority, individual rights, and the structure of the administrative state itself.
Two of the most closely watched cases pit the Trump administration against the bureaucratic establishment's long-held assumption that independent agency heads are insulated from presidential removal.
In Trump v. Slaughter, the administration argues that restrictions on removing commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission unconstitutionally limit the president's executive authority. The case arose after President Trump removed Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic FTC commissioner. Slaughter contends that federal law permits removal only for specified causes. A ruling for the administration could reshape the independence of agencies including the National Labor Relations Board, and, by extension, every so-called independent commission in Washington.
The companion case, Trump v. Cook, raises the stakes even higher. Trump fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in August 2025. Lower courts blocked the removal, and the Supreme Court took the case on an expedited basis. The Federal Reserve Act provides that members of the Board of Governors may be removed only "for cause." Cook disputed allegations that she had misrepresented her residency on a mortgage application years before her appointment.
Together, these two cases could determine whether the president has the constitutional authority to fire officials at agencies that Congress designed to operate at arm's length from the White House. For conservatives who have long argued that an unaccountable administrative state undermines self-government, the rulings could mark a generational shift, or a bitter disappointment.
Legal scholars have described NRSC v. FEC as potentially the most significant campaign finance ruling since Citizens United v. FEC in 2010. The case, originally championed by then-Sen. JD Vance, challenges Federal Election Commission regulations that cap the amount political parties can spend in coordination with their own candidates.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee and its House counterpart argue the caps violate the First Amendment. The FEC maintains that coordinated-spending limits help prevent circumvention of contribution restrictions and reduce the risk of corruption.
The outcome could fundamentally alter how parties fund campaigns heading into the November midterm elections, a fact not lost on operatives in either party.
Watson v. Republican National Committee takes aim at a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted if postmarked by Election Day and received within five business days afterward. Republican leaders argue the grace period violates federal statutes establishing a single national Election Day. Debates over mail-ballot deadlines have been a flashpoint in election litigation since 2020, and a ruling here could reshape ballot-counting disputes far beyond Mississippi.
For voters who watched drawn-out ballot counts erode public confidence in recent cycles, the case is personal. A clear ruling from the high court, one way or the other, would at least settle the legal question before November.
The court is also weighing two cases on transgender participation in women's school athletics. Little v. Hecox involves an Idaho law banning transgender athletes from competing on women's sports teams. West Virginia v. B.P.J. raises similar questions from that state. Both cases have drawn amicus briefs from multiple states.
These are the first cases in which the Supreme Court will address head-on whether Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause permit states to define eligibility for women's sports based on biological sex. The packed end-of-term schedule means both rulings will land in the middle of a national debate that has already reshaped school board meetings, state legislatures, and athletic conferences across the country.
On Inauguration Day 2025, President Trump signed an executive order purporting to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully present or on temporary visas. The order was immediately challenged, and Trump v. Barbara was argued on April 1, 2026, with the president himself attending oral argument.
The constitutional question turns on the 14th Amendment's phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." That language has long been understood to cover virtually all children born on U.S. soil, a reading anchored in the Supreme Court's own 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Several justices pressed Solicitor General D. John Sauer on how the executive branch could unilaterally reinterpret a constitutional provision.
Whatever the court decides, the ruling will define the boundaries of executive power over citizenship, and send a signal about whether the political branches can revisit settled constitutional understandings through executive action alone. The court's willingness to issue dramatic, high-stakes rulings this term suggests the justices are not looking to punt.
Two consolidated cases argued in late April, Mullin v. Dahlia Doe and Trump v. Miot, ask whether federal courts can review the administration's decision to end Temporary Protected Status for certain nationalities. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem terminated TPS designations for Haitian and Syrian nationals, concluding that conditions in those countries had changed sufficiently to justify removal.
The numbers are significant: roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and 6,100 Syrian nationals currently living in the United States are directly affected. If the court adopts a broad position on judicial review of TPS decisions, future rulings could touch more than a million immigrants living under the program.
For those who believe immigration enforcement must start with the rule of law, the case is straightforward: if conditions have changed, the executive branch should have the authority to act. For opponents, the question is whether courts retain any check on that discretion.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the court confronts the government's now-defunct "metering" policy, under which Customs and Border Protection officers physically turned away asylum seekers at ports of entry and required them to wait on the Mexican side of the border before being permitted to present themselves for inspection. The Ninth Circuit declared the policy unlawful, and the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling.
The legal question is narrow but consequential: whether asylum seekers who reached a port of entry but had not physically crossed onto U.S. soil have "arrived in the United States" within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The answer could define the government's authority to manage the flow of asylum claims at the border for years to come.
Behind the pending opinions, the question that has consumed Washington's legal class all spring is whether either of the court's two oldest conservative justices will step down. Alito, 76, has a memoir due out in October, around the start of the next term. Sources described as close to Alito have told reporters he is not planning to step down. Thomas, who turns 78 later this month, has indicated in various settings that he has no plans to retire.
Some Republicans have urged both men to step down while a sympathetic administration and a GOP-controlled Senate can confirm replacements. The logic is straightforward: with midterm elections in November, Senate control could shift, and with it the ability to fill any vacancy. The ideological balance of the court, and the durability of every ruling issued this term, depends on who sits in those chairs next.
Trump has indicated he is prepared to fill vacancies if they arise. Whether either justice gives him the chance remains, for now, a matter of speculation rather than fact.
The court's remaining 20 opinions will arrive in a rush over the coming weeks. Each one carries the potential to reshape federal authority, redefine constitutional rights, or alter the landscape for the November elections. The ideological divisions among the justices have been on full display this term, and the hardest calls are still ahead.
For conservatives, the stakes are plain. The administrative state's claim to independence, the boundaries of executive power, the integrity of Election Day, the meaning of biological sex in federal law, and the government's authority to enforce immigration law, all of it now rests with nine justices and a handful of weeks on the calendar.
Washington built the bureaucratic fortress over decades. Whether the court chips away at the walls or reinforces them is about to become a matter of settled law, at least until the next term begins.
