The Supreme Court began its end-of-term opinion season May 14, with 35 decided cases pending on executive power, birthright citizenship, and transgender sports.
The Supreme Court entered its end-of-term opinion season Thursday, with 35 argued cases awaiting decision and a weekly release cadence expected to run through late June [1]. The Court issued at least one opinion on May 14, signaling the start of the sprint that practitioners and government-affairs teams have been tracking for months [1]. The pending docket spans executive power, administrative law, civil rights, and election procedures, making this one of the more consequential end-of-term periods in recent memory.
The cases still undecided include *Trump v. Slaughter*, which asks whether the president holds constitutional authority to remove the heads of independent federal agencies [1]. Also pending are cases addressing birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, transgender athletes' participation in school sports, grace periods for mail-in ballots, and the structural independence of the Federal Reserve [1]. Each of these cases arose from lower-court conflicts that produced circuit splits or direct constitutional questions requiring the Court's resolution [2]. The Court heard arguments on all 35 cases during the current term and has not yet scheduled additional argument sessions, confirming the June close is firm.
The procedural posture is straightforward. The Court operates on a self-imposed, informal schedule under which opinions in argued cases are released before the term ends, typically in late June [2]. Justices assign and circulate opinions internally after argument; once a majority opinion, any concurrences, and any dissents are finalized, the Court releases them on designated opinion days, generally Thursday mornings [1]. No single case controls the sequencing, and the Court does not pre-announce which decisions will drop on a given day.
The substantive stakes are significant across multiple practice areas. A ruling in *Trump v. Slaughter* that expands presidential removal authority would alter the legal footing of the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and potentially the Federal Reserve [1]. A decision on birthright citizenship would resolve whether executive action can narrow a Fourteenth Amendment guarantee without a constitutional amendment [1]. The transgender-athlete ruling will set the framework for Title IX enforcement in secondary and collegiate sports [1]. Election-law practitioners are watching the mail-in ballot grace-period case for its implications on state-federal conflicts over ballot deadlines [1].
Decisions are expected on a rolling basis each week through the end of June [1]. Litigation Logic will report each ruling as it is released [2].