3 Supreme Court Cases To Watch in June 2025
Plus: The glorious return of drive-in movie season.
The clock is ticking for the U.S. Supreme Court. It's the second week of June and the justices always try to wrap up their term before the calendar hits July. As of this writing, there are still 28 cases pending. Which means that a ton of big decisions will be dropping in the next few weeks. So, what's headed our way? Here are three noteworthy cases that I'm on the lookout for.
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1. Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
This case involves a Texas law requiring websites that contain "pornographic material" to verify that the site's users are at least 18 years old. The law's stated goal is to prevent minors from viewing porn. But as the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade group, points out, there is no way to screen out minors online without also vetting the ages of adults, and Texas' intrusive age-verification process unavoidably—and unconstitutionally—burdens the free speech rights of those adults.
The state's age-verification requirement "imposes a clear burden," the Free Speech Coalition told the Supreme Court, "forcing adult users to incur severe privacy and security risks—which the statute leaves largely unaddressed—before they can access constitutionally protected speech."
The specific legal question here is about what level of judicial review the Texas law should face. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, the age-verification law should be judged under "rational-basis review," which is the most deferential—meaning, it is the most pro-government—form of judicial review. It is no exaggeration to say that when the government encounters rational-basis review, the government stands an excellent chance of winning the case.
However, cases involving fundamental rights such as freedom of speech are normally judged under a very different standard. That standard, known as "strict scrutiny," is the most searching form of judicial review. Under strict scrutiny, the government must, first, prove that its law serves a compelling government intent, and, second, prove that the law is the least restrictive means available of advancing that interest. If the government fails to satisfy either of those two prongs, the law is struck down.
In other words, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton asks whether the 5th Circuit got it wrong by deferring to the state under rational-basis review when the 5th Circuit should have instead given the state a far more rigorous exam under strict scrutiny.
If that sounds like so much legalese, please believe me when I say that the stakes are high. If the First Amendment gets watered down from "strict scrutiny" to "rational-basis" in this case, then the First Amendment will be watered down in many future cases, too. A win for Texas means a loss for freedom of speech.
2. Martin v. United States
The FBI raided Tina Martin's home in 2017. Still reeling from an exploding flash grenade, she found herself held at gunpoint, unable to reach or comfort her understandably terrified seven-year-old son, who was in another room.
To make matters worse, it was a wrong-house raid. The feds were supposed to be at a different house on a different block looking for a different person. They wrecked Martin's home and traumatized her family because the officers never even bothered to make sure they were at the correct location.
However, when Martin filed a civil suit seeking damages, the federal court said she was barred from filing suit under the terms of the Federal Tort Claims Act. So, the legal question now before the Supreme Court is whether Martin should have been able to sue.
In short, this case is about holding the government accountable for its misdeeds. And make no mistake, the government is actively trying to dodge accountability for the entirely avoidable damage that it caused.
As Reason's Billy Binion has noted, the Justice Department's arguments against accountability include the claim, apparently made with a straight face before SCOTUS, that it would have been too much to ask for those federal officers to pause in the driveway and check the address on the mailbox before storming the house. "That sort of decision is filled with policy tradeoffs because checking the house number at the end of the driveway," Assistant to the Solicitor General Frederick Liu told the justices, "means exposing the agents to potential lines of fire from the windows."
If you listen to the audio recording of that oral argument, you can hear Justice Neil Gorsuch scoff out the word "really" in apparent disbelief while Liu made the above statement. Gorsuch then asked the government lawyer: "How about making sure you're on the right street? Is that…you know, asking too much?"
To require the government to make amends for its misconduct should never be asking too much. A win for Tina Martin in this case is a win for greater government accountability overall.
3. Trump v. CASA
This is the case arising from President Donald Trump's executive order purporting to abolish birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and temporary legal visitors, such as people holding a work visa. As I've previously argued, Trump's position is unconstitutional under the text, history, and original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the Supreme Court rules on the merits of Trump's order, he deserves to lose 9–0.
But this case is not exactly about the legality of that presidential decree. Rather, it is about whether federal district judges may issue nationwide injunctions that entirely block such presidential decrees from going into effect while the litigation against them plays out in court.
Judging by last month's oral arguments, there is a chance that Trump will secure some kind of win on the nationwide injunctions issue. "Which is not exactly a surprise," as I wrote at the time, because several justices "are already on record as critics of the practice." It is possible that those critical justices will craft a technical ruling that avoids the birthright citizenship debate while at the same time using that debate as the opportunity to reach the result that they already wanted to reach on nationwide injunctions.
But it is also possible that the Court will not be able to reach any kind of consensus. For its part, the Trump administration has made the sweeping claim that nationwide injunctions are always unconstitutional. Are there actually five justices on the Court willing to go that far? Maybe. But then again, maybe several justices would prefer to limit the practice without abolishing it outright. We may end up with a fractured opinion that ultimately settles little.
The Supreme Court is currently scheduled to release its next batch of opinions on Thursday, June 12. We'll see what we get.
Odds & Ends: The Glorious Return of Drive-In Movie Season
One of the upsides of living in upstate New York is that there's a historic drive-in movie theater operating just a short distance away. The Hi-Way Drive-In first opened its gates in 1951 and recently kicked off its 2025 season. Attendees get to enjoy a nice mix of new releases and repertory favorites on the drive-in's four (count 'em!) huge outdoor screens. You're most likely to find me hanging around when there's a double-feature of horror classics on the bill, such as the memorable night a few years back when I caught George Romero's Dawn of the Dead followed by Romero's Day of the Dead.
A bucket of fresh popcorn, a cool night breeze, and a horde of shambling zombies. What's not to love?
