A look back at the Supreme Court in 2025

The past year was a significant one for the U.S. Supreme Court, with notable decisions related to the First Amendment, nationwide injunctions, and the 14th Amendment.

The court concluded its October Term 2024 on June 30, 2025 with Goldey v. Fields, a per curiam decision regarding Eighth Amendment protections for inmates making excessive force claims against prison officials. In the preceding six months, a series of major decisions defined the term that began on Oct. 7, 2024.

In Trump v. CASA the court considered whether lower federal courts may issue universal injunctions blocking executive actions nationwide. The case arose after President Donald Trump issued an executive order redefining birthright citizenship, which a federal district court enjoined on a nationwide basis. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that the district court exceeded the authority Congress has granted federal courts by issuing a universal injunction. The court did not address the constitutionality of the executive order under the 14th Amendment, an issue that remains pending.

In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s state law prohibiting medical professionals from providing hormone therapy or puberty-delaying drugs to transgender minors did not violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause . Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion rejected arguments that the state law discriminated on the basis of sex and transgender status.

The Supreme Court also ruled in City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency that the EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act when issuing general permitting requirements. This case involved the EPA’s use of “end-result” permit requirements that compel a permittee to generally regulate the quality of the water in the body of water into which it discharges pollutants. A divided court said that the EPA, and not the permittee, had the responsibility to determine specific steps a permittee must meet water quality standards.

The free speech case of Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton considered a Texas statute requiring commercial websites publishing sexually explicit content to verify online users were at least 18 years old. In a 6-3 decision, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the law was subject to intermediate scrutiny under the First Amendment because it only incidentally burdened adults’ protected speech. In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the law imposed a direct, content-based regulation of speech and therefore required strict scrutiny.

In another First Amendment decision, Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, the Supreme Court considered an Oklahoma supreme court decision about a Catholic virtual charter school. The state argued that religiously affiliated charter schools were not allowed to receive public funds under state and federal laws. The state supreme court, in a 6-2 ruling, agreed that such funding violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and state laws. With Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing, an equally divided Supreme Court affirmed the lower-court judgment.

Religious liberty questions also arose in a case about tax exemptions. In Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Comm’n, a Wisconsin law exempted religious organizations from paying unemployment taxes if they “operated primarily for religious purposes” and were “operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches.” The Wisconsin supreme court denied a tax break for the Catholic Charities Bureau because the group offered charitable services to non-Catholics and the court believed the bureau wasn’t primarily religious. A unanimous Supreme Court overturned that decision on First Amendment grounds.

The decision in Bondi v. VanDerStock was the latest ruling from the Court on issues related to firearms. In this case, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) adopted a rule interpreting the Gun Control Act of 1968 to cover weapon parts kits, also known as “ghost guns.” The respondents challenged the rule’s redefinitions of a “frame or receiver” and a “firearm,” and claimed that the Gun Control Act could not be read to extend to weapon parts kits or unfinished frames or receivers. While two lower courts agreed with the respondents, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, reversed those rulings, finding that the rule was consistent with Gun Control Act’s intentions.

In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, who claimed she was the victim of discrimination when she interviewed for a management position that was later given to an LGBTQ+ woman. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit applied a “background circumstances” rule, which places a heightened burden for Title VII claims that the “defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.” In her unanimous opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the background circumstances rule was “not consistent with Title VII’s text or our case law construing the statute.”

And in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Montgomery County (Alabama) Board of Education introduced “LGBTQ+-inclusive” texts into its public school curriculum. Certain parents sought to have their children excused from instruction involving those books. Initially, parents were notified when the “LGBTQ+inclusive” storybooks would be taught and allowing their children to be excused from the instruction. The board later ended that policy when it received many opt-out requests. The parents filed a lawsuit, asserting the board’s no-opt-out policy infringed on their religious free exercise rights. The District Court denied relief, and a divided Fourth Circuit affirmed. Justice Samuel Alito, in a 6-3 decision, wrote that the parents challenging the board’s policy were likely to succeed on their claim the board’s policies unconstitutionally burdened their religious exercise. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Court’s decision “constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators.”

In addition to the cases given full briefings and arguments, several rulings from the Supreme Court’s Emergency Docket were noteworthy.

In A.A.R.P v. Trump, , the court temporarily blocked the removal of a class of Venezuelan men held in immigration custody and remanded the case to lower courts.

In Department of Education v. California, a divided Supreme Court vacated a district court’s order to federal government to reinstate millions in federal grants that had been terminated by the Trump administration. And in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, the Court stayed a district court's nationwide injunction barring the executive branch from planning and initiating large-scale federal workforce reductions.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.