Supreme Court Of The United States: What To Watch As The Court Begins A High-Stakes New Term

The nine justices of the United States Supreme Court returned to the bench on Monday morning and immediately confronted what may be the most consequential array of legal questions the court has agreed to hear since it overturned Roe v Wade four years ago, a docket that reaches into the grocery store, the classroom, the ballot box, the neighbourhood gun shop, and the pipeline of fossil fuels driving a warming planet.

The start of the Supreme Court’s new term brought cases involving climate change, US President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, and the Second Amendment among the most high-profile disputes the justices will hear in the coming months.

With 29 live cases already accepted for argument and more expected to be added as the term progresses, the court’s new sitting carries the weight of a nation sharply divided over nearly every question it has chosen to answer. 

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The court’s conservative supermajority, cemented across US President Donald Trump’s two administrations, will not simply be managing its docket. It will be managing American law.

Supreme Court Of The United States: Can Cities Sue Oil Companies For Costs Of Climate Change?

The first question the justices heard on the first morning of their new term was also among the furthest-reaching. The Supreme Court kicked off its term with arguments in a dispute between Boulder and two energy companies, Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil, with the question before the court being a technical one: whether federal law prevents Boulder County from suing energy companies in state court and claiming that the sale and allegedly deceptive marketing of fossil fuels violates state law.

Following a playbook that helped defeat Big Tobacco, Boulder County and the city of Boulder sued Suncor and ExxonMobil under Colorado law, including nuisance, trespass, civil conspiracy, and deceptive trade practices. The Trump administration filed a rare unsolicited brief in September 2025 urging the court to take up the case, with the government arguing the Clean Air Act precludes state law suits against the fossil fuel industry related to climate change.

The stakes extend far beyond Colorado. Legal analysts said a win for the county could unleash a cascade of climate litigation from municipalities and states nationwide against energy companies. A ruling for Suncor and ExxonMobil, conversely, would effectively immunise the fossil fuel industry from accountability under state tort law for the local costs of global warming, a legal shield that would have consequences from Miami Beach to coastal Louisiana.

Corey Riday-White, legal director at the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports the Boulder lawsuit, told NPR that local governments bear real, measurable costs from climate-driven disasters, and that those costs have an author. The energy companies counter that greenhouse gas emissions are an inherently global, interstate phenomenon that cannot be governed piecemeal through the courts of individual states.

Supreme Court Of The United States: Will Court Rewrite Second Amendment On Assault Weapons?

Few cases on the docket carry greater political voltage than Viramontes v. Cook County and its consolidated companion Grant v. Higgins, in which the justices will hear a direct challenge to the constitutionality of bans on AR-15-style and other semiautomatic rifles. State-level bans on semiautomatic weapons are currently in place in about a dozen states, following a federal ban that expired in 2004.

The case touches on one of the country’s most contentious debates: whether the government can ban AR-15-style rifles. On November 2, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a Cook County, Illinois, law prohibiting the possession, sale, and transfer of certain assault weapons, including AR-15- and AK-47-style rifles.