Supremacy Claus — Democracy Docket’s List of (Mostly Naughty) Supreme Court Cases Coming in 2026

Coming up with a New Year’s Resolution can be hard. 

That’s because it’s hard to be candid with yourself, as a good resolution demands. You have to identify both a personal shortcoming and a realistic remedy – a double dose of self honesty. I’m embarrassed to admit how much time I spend each year trying to come up with one for myself.

So, I think it’s a kindness to gently offer resolution ideas to those in need of them. And while I don’t know if the conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are desperate for recommendations, I have one for them: Try exercising a bit of (judicial) humility this year. 

With that fanciful wish hereby resolved, here is a list of Supreme Court cases we here at Democracy Docket will be keeping our gimlet eyes peeled for in 2026 — those with the greatest potential for reshaping American democracy and our nation’s constitutional order in the coming year, whether for good or for ill (mostly for ill). 

– Jim Saksa, reporter

Decisions we’re eagerly anxiously awaiting:

Callais v. Landry

Enacted in 1965 to finally codify the 15th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has consistently stopped states from enacting racist electoral laws and diluting minority votes, leading Congress to reauthorize it multiple times. 

So, naturally, the Supreme Court now seems poised to invalidate the VRA’s most powerful remaining provision, Section 2. The justices might decide that remedying racially gerrymandered maps by creating majority-minority districts is actually racial discrimination forbidden by the 14th and 15th Amendments. Or they might take a different tack by substituting their unelected opinion on the extent of racism’s ongoing influence in American politics for the judgment of Congress. 

After oral argument in October, the question seemed to be only how, not whether, the court’s conservative majority will eviscerate Section 2 and finish the complete defanging of the VRA it began in 2013 when it struck down the law’s “preclearance” provisions in Shelby County v. Holder.

There’s still a sliver of hope, though: The justices sounded just as eager to axe Section 2 during oral arguments in 2023’s Allen v. Milligan, before shocking observers with a 5-4 decision to uphold it.

Slaughter v. Trump

Upon taking office a second time, Trump went on a firing spree, telling the leaders of various federal commissions to take a hike. The problem is, Congress set up these regulators as independent agencies, empowering the president to appoint (with Senate confirmation) commissioners or directors to fixed terms while limiting the ability to fire them without cause. This isn’t some novel experiment in governance — the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed this arrangement 90 years ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S.

Like the titular William Humphrey, Rebecca Slaughter was fired from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on policy grounds (i.e. she’s a Democrat), and not for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance,” as Congress intended. 

And so, the Trump administration is asking the court to set aside nearly a century of precedent that underpins the structure of dozens of federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and — perhaps (see below!) — the Federal Reserve System. 

Or, as Justice Sonya Sotomayor summarized at oral arguments in December: “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of the government.”

By granting that wish, Sotomayor’s conservative colleagues would necessarily consider themselves wiser than the many justices who upheld independent agencies before them, the many congresses who created these agencies, and the presidents who signed them into law. But you can’t spell “hubristic conceit” without SCOTUS.  

Republican National Committee v. Wetzel

When is a vote? 

That’s the real question at the heart of this challenge of a Mississippi law that provides a five-day grace period for late-arriving ballots mailed by Election Day. 

Do you vote when you cast a ballot? What if you mail it? Or do you only vote once that ballot is in an election official’s hands? But have you really cast a vote if no one has counted it yet? 

Sixteen states (plus some territories, like Washington, D.C.) say you cast your vote when you submit it, whether that’s in person at a polling place or when you drop it into the mail. So they allow late-arriving ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted if they arrive a few days later. Why would it matter if election officials haven’t yet received a mail ballot by Election Day, they ask, when officials won’t even start counting them until the day after? 

The court agreed to hear this case on appeal of a 5th Circuit decision that held that ballots must be received by Election Day, giving mail voting advocates some hope the justices will resolve the circuit split in their favor. 

But if the justices agree with the RNC, it could lead to large numbers of voters being disenfranchised because of mail delays beyond their control. It could also put at risk laws allowing for early voting, along with laws protecting tardy ballots from military and overseas voters. 

Trump v. Barbara

Many legal observers were shocked when the court agreed to hear this case challenging Trump’s attempt to unilaterally limit the constitutional right to citizenship granted to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil. After all, several lower courts across the country all agreed that Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented parents or parents on temporary visas was a clear violation of the 14th Amendment (and federal immigration law, too). 

But I think it only highlights how political the Supreme Court has been under Roberts’ leadership. I suspect the justices will deliver a 9-0 decision — maybe even an unsigned per curiam — excoriating Trump’s hamfisted attempt to codify xenophobia. Even if one or two of the court’s ideological extremists, like Justice Clarence Thomas or Justice Samuel Alito, somehow conjure up a loophole from “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” the resounding victory will spur a flurry of media coverage touting the judiciary’s rebuke of the president, providing Roberts et. al. cover for all their other prostrations before Trump. 

Illinois v. Trump

As Trump began ordering U.S. soldiers to occupy American cities, states rushed to court for injunctions. But federal judges have largely moved cautiously to block the administration’s deployment of troops domestically and federalization of National Guard units at the margins. 

After Trump ordered Illinois and Texas National Guard units to Chicago, a district court blocked the move, saying the White House failed to meet the standards of the heretofore obscure authorizing statute it invoked, 10 U.S.C. 12406. That measure okays such deployments to quell a “rebellion,” preventing the president from executing laws with “regular forces.” And midwestern moms telling Border Security agents to just go buzz off already didn’t quite cut it, the district court judge said. The 7th Circuit stayed part of that temporary restraining order, though, blocking the deployment but allowing the federalization. 

That wasn’t enough, though, for Trump and his lawyers, who then asked the Supreme Court to stay the injunctions in an emergency appeal. The court agreed to at least consider it, landing this case on its shadow docket. 

In his brief before the court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the president has broad, unreviewable authority to fill the streets of American cities with guardsmen over the local governor’s objections. That doesn’t sound like what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote their famous note complaining how George III “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” 

The decision, however, will likely rest on a question of statutory interpretation raised by Georgetown Law’s Marty Lederman: What did Congress mean when it wrote “regular forces?” 

If the court agrees with Lederman, who says the “regular forces” refers to active-duty military, it would disrupt almost all of Trump’s attempts to play with national guardsmen like G.I. Joes. 

Lisa Cook v. Trump

If, as expected, a majority does overturn Humphrey’s Executor in Slaughter, they will be creating quite the conundrum for themselves. When the six conservative justices allowed Trump to fire members of the NLRB and the MSPB with a shadow docket order in May, they realized that blowing up the congressionally-created concept of independent agencies might “necessarily implicate the constitutionality” of the Federal Reserve’s own for-cause removal protections. 

“We disagree,” they wrote. “The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”

Trump’s decision to fire Cook will likely force the Supreme Court to explain why that distinction isn’t simply a reflection of the fact that the Fed is largely seen as good for business by wealthy conservatives while independent regulatory agencies are mostly seen as bad for business by wealthy conservatives. 

Oral arguments are scheduled for January 21. 

*Ashley Cleaves, Maya Bodinson, Adeline Tolle, Yunior Rivas, Matt Cohen, and Jacob Knutson contributed to this report.