The Supreme Court's Biggest 2024 Decisions

The Supreme Court is to pronounce key decisions in 2024, on issues ranging from gun control to presidential immunity. The justices will also decide on the court's first abortion case since they overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Here are some of the key cases:

United States v. Rahimi

The story of Zackey Rahimi pushes gun rights to the very edge of what courts will tolerate. The justices are to decide whether a federal law prohibiting people who are under a domestic violence civil restraining order from possessing firearms is constitutional under the Second Amendment.

An alleged small-time Texas marijuana and cocaine dealer, he was assaulting his girlfriend when he fired a shot at an onlooker, according to a solicitor general petition to the Supreme Court.

His girlfriend fled in the commotion and he phoned her and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone about what happened. In February 2020, a Texas state court granted her a restraining order, which prevented him from owning a handgun.

He signed the documents to surrender his gun but incidents involving firearms only increased. In November 2020, he threatened another woman with a gun, and was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

After someone who had bought drugs from him "started talking trash" on social media, the solicitor general petition states, Rahimi went to the man's home and fired an AR-15 rifle into it.

The next day, after colliding with another vehicle, he got out of his car, shot at the other driver, fled, returned to the scene, fired more shots at the other car, and fled again. Three days later, Rahimi fired a gun in the air in a residential neighborhood in the presence of young children.

A few weeks after that, a truck flashed its headlights at Rahimi to caution him against speeding. In response, Rahimi slammed his brakes, cut across the highway, followed the truck off an exit, and fired multiple shots at another car that had been traveling behind the truck. Finally, in early January, 2021, Rahimi pulled out a gun and fired multiple shots in the air after a friend's credit card was declined at a fast-food restaurant, the solicitor general states.

To the seeming disbelief of Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, Rahimi won his right to gun ownership after a Texas federal appeal court struck down a 1994 law that prohibits people under restraining order from owning a gun.

In oral arguments on November 3, Coney Barrett appeared to have barely disguised contempt for Rahimi, whatever her view of the second amendment arguments. When Justice Clarence Thomas asked Rahimi's lawyers how criminal danger can be determined by a civil restraining order, Coney Barrett pulled out a copy of Rahimi's restraining order and read from it.

She said Rahimi was instructed to stay at least 200 feet away from his girlfriend and child because of the physical risk he posed to their safety.

Chief Justice John Roberts also seemed highly skeptical of Rahimi's second amendment pleadings.

"You don't have any doubt that your client's a dangerous person, do you?" Roberts asked Rahimi's attorney, Matthew Wright.

"Your Honor, I would want to know what 'dangerous person' means at the moment," Wright replied.

"Well, it means someone who's shooting, you know, at people. That's a good start," Roberts said, which prompted laughter in the court.

The Supreme Court will give its ruling in 2024 in what could affect hundreds of thousands of people under restraining order and their alleged victims.

Cargill v. Garland

This is a case that will decide how far a government agency can extend its powers and could have major implications for several branches of government.

The Supreme Court will rule whether a government agency can ban bump stocks, which are attached to a semi-automatic to enable it to fire bullets more rapidly.

The case is a challenge to a regulation issued after America's deadliest mass shooting, in which 60 people were killed and over 850 were injured at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The shooter, Stephen Paddock, had used semi-automatic rifles equipped with bump stocks while firing at the music festival from his hotel room.

Amid public outrage, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) issued a rule concluding that bump stocks are machine guns and ordered that anyone who owned one should destroy it or drop it at a nearby ATF office to avoid facing criminal penalties.

That order is now being challenged by Michael Cargill, an army veteran and Texas gun shop owner, with a decision expected in 2024.

According to New York University constitutional law professor Peter Shane, Cargill could help bring clarity to gun ownership after the confusion caused by 2022's decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the Supreme Court urged lower courts to ensure that gun laws are "consistent with the nation's historical tradition."

Justice Clarence Thomas's decision for the majority in Bruen caused major confusion, especially as it urged lower courts to look to historic precedent without defining that precedent. His ruling struck down New York's 1911 Sullivan Act, which required a person applying for a concealed pistol permit to show "special cause" for doing so.

Thomas wrote that, for a gun law to be constitutional, "the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the nation's historical tradition"—a phrase that has been interpreted in many ways by the lower courts.

United States v. Donald J. Trump

The Supreme Court has been asked to rule in 2024 on whether Donald Trump has presidential immunity from his election fraud case in Washington D.C.

The case is not being brought by Trump but by prosecutor, Jack Smith, who wants to deprive Trump of a circuitous, and lengthy, route through the appeals system by going straight to the Supreme Court.

Late on December 10, he filed a petition to the court. A few hours later on December 11, the court replied that it would make an expedited decision on whether to take the case and gave Trump's lawyers until December 20 to reply to Smith's request.

That's a sign that the court is eager to take the case. Its next conference, in which it decides which cases to take, won't be until early January.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, told Newsweek that Smith wants a decision soon.

"In addition to neutralizing Trump's tactics, Smith is forcing the Supreme Court to show its cards sooner rather than later," Gillers said.

On December 23, the Supreme Court said it would not fast track the case. Gillers believes the court will likely accept it after it goes before the Washington, D.C Court of Appeals in January.

The court will also likely accept a case to decide whether Trump can be banned from state ballots as an "insurrectionist" as defined by Section 3 of the 14th amendment.

This follows decisions by the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State to remove him from state ballots because of his alleged support for the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

On December 13, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about the right to distribute an abortion pill in America. A decision will likely be reached in summer 2024 in a case that tests the Federal Drug Administration's authority to regulate. This marks the Supreme Court's first abortion case since the justices overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

In 2022, an association of anti-abortion organizations and doctors, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the FDA had overstepped its authority when it approved in 2000 the abortion pill, mifepristone, which is one of two drugs generally used in medical abortions, which make up the majority of abortions in the U.S.

In April, a Texas federal judge suspended the FDA's approval of mifepristone and ordered it to pull it off the market. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in August that the FDA should significantly restrict access to mifepristone. The FDA and Danco Laboratories, which manufactures mifepristone, then asked the Supreme Court to decide the case.

The Supreme court paused lower-court rulings while it hears the case, so mifepristone remains widely available in the U.S.

Danco Laboratories warned in its briefs to the Supreme Court, that the case could destabilize "the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries by questioning when scientific studies—accepted by FDA—are sufficient".

Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, Missouri

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dec. 6, 2023, on whether internal office transfers are a form of discrimination, even if the transfers cause minimum disruption to the life of the person concerned.

Petitioner Jatonya Muldrow of the St. Louis Police Department argued that her transfer out of the Department's Intelligence Division was discriminatory.

The federal district court dismissed Muldrow's claim, finding she had failed to establish proof of harm. The decision was later affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.

The Court is to determine whether a forced job transfer violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act if it has not been established that the transfer caused a significant disadvantage.

Many of the judges' questions seemed to favor Muldrow's case.

"When you treat someone worse than another person because of race or sex, that's kind of the end of it," Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said. "And there isn't a further inquiry into how badly you treated somebody worse."

Update 12/31/23 08:55 a.m ET: This article was updated to include the latest legal position in the Donald Trump Supreme Court challenge.