3 Key Supreme Court Cases To Watch In Early 2026

Authored by Sam Dorman and Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court will resume oral arguments the week of Jan. 12, taking on cases dealing with girls’ athletics, gun laws, and the president’s attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve.

Here are the top cases to watch.

1. Girls’ Sports

The Supreme Court on Jan. 13 will hear arguments in two cases—West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox—that focus on West Virginia’s and Idaho’s laws barring males from competing in female sports. The eventual ruling is expected to tackle key questions about how federal law and the Constitution treat sex and gender.

Both states faced hurdles in federal appeals courts, which held that their laws classified individuals based on their sex and “transgender status.” They also indicated that those types of classifications violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which generally directs states to apply the law equally to everyone regardless of particular characteristics.

While courts have sometimes allowed states to treat certain groups of people differently, legal classifications based on sex and other characteristics have also been rejected. That’s because when courts determine whether to uphold a state law, they weigh certain factors, such as whether the state has an important enough interest in using certain characteristics to classify individuals.

In both West Virginia’s and Idaho’s cases, the states have acknowledged that they classify people based on sex but that doing so is justified—specifically because they further important government interests in protecting equality in sports.

“On average, men are faster, stronger, bigger, more muscular, and have more explosive power than women,” Idaho told the Supreme Court. “For female athletes to compete safely and excel, they deserve sex-specific teams.”

West Virginia’s case has also led the Supreme Court to wrestle with a similar issue: whether athletics laws violate Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. That law, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational institutions, was cited by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit when it ruled against West Virginia in 2024.

That decision was wrong, West Virginia told the Supreme Court, because Title IX was focused on unequal treatment between the sexes rather than eliminating all sex-based distinctions.

U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) speaks following the passage of the “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” outside the U.S. Capitol on April 20, 2023. The Supreme Court on Jan. 13 will hear arguments in two cases that focus on West Virginia’s and Idaho’s laws barring males from competing in female sports. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Heather Jackson, whose male child was barred from participating in girls’ cross country and track teams, argued that West Virginia’s law was unreasonable. Part of Jackson’s argument is that puberty-delaying drugs have prevented her child from developing physiological, athletic advantages over girls.

Meanwhile, the student challenging Idaho’s law has attempted to withdraw from the dispute while pledging not to participate in women’s sports. The Supreme Court has deferred deciding on this attempt until after oral argument.

Beyond sex-based distinctions, the appeals courts raised a separate question about whether Idaho’s and West Virginia’s laws classify individuals based on “transgender status.” In other words, do the states target individuals based on that purported status rather than solely based on their sex?

So far, the Supreme Court hasn’t offered a definitive ruling on this issue, but multiple justices suggested in June that someone’s “transgender status” shouldn’t receive extra protection under the Constitution. Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett both said, among other things, that “transgender status” lacked the type of immutable characteristic held by other protected classes, such as race.

2. Hawaii’s Gun Law

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Jan. 20 in Wolford v. Lopez, which challenges Hawaii’s restrictions on concealed carry but also invites the court to clarify the role of American history in upholding gun laws.

In a landmark ruling in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas said that state laws should be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Since then, lower courts have tried applying the decision in that case, known as New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, to state laws such as Hawaii’s. The Hawaii law prohibited concealed-carry permit holders from carrying weapons in privately owned public spaces unless given “express authorization of the owner, lessee, operator, or manager of the private property.”

When the Ninth Circuit reviewed the law, it said those restrictions fell “well within the historical tradition.” The appeals court pointed to a New Jersey law from 1771 and a Louisiana law from 1865 that it said were “dead ringers” for Hawaii’s restrictions.

A man carries a gun before a hearing where four gun control bills passed the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Virginia state Capitol in Richmond, Va., on Jan. 13, 2020. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Jan. 20 in a case challenging Hawaii’s concealed-carry restrictions that also asks the justices to clarify how history should factor into gun laws. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Those two were relevant because one was enacted just before the Second Amendment’s ratification, while the other came just before ratification of the 14th Amendment, which extends the Second Amendment to states.

Jason Wolford, a Hawaii resident who sued with other plaintiffs, is asking the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit’s decision on the basis that it erred in analyzing the older laws. More specifically, his attorneys argued that historic laws couldn’t merely be similar to the one passed by Hawaii.

Instead, the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen required that the laws needed to serve similar purposes, the petition says.

Louisiana’s law was too different from Hawaii’s, Wolford said, because it not only focused on land that was barred to the public but also came as part of the state’s “black codes” intended to deprive former slaves of civil rights. He also argued that the New Jersey law was intended to control poaching on enclosed lands and was therefore different from Hawaii’s law.

Hawaii, meanwhile, described its law as following numerous founding-era and Reconstruction-era laws in vindicating the rights of property owners to exclude certain people from their property.

3. Trump’s Fed Firing

On Jan. 21, the Supreme Court will examine the president’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve. The case, Trump v. Cook, follows another case heard in December over the president’s ability to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission.

Both cases focus on laws Congress passed restricting the president’s ability to fire officials. Trump v. Cook is a bit different, however, in that it focuses more on the purported cause Trump cited in firing Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook.

Lisa Cook, member of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve, departs the Federal Reserve Board headquarters in Washington on Oct. 9, 2025. On Jan. 21, the Supreme Court will examine the president’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

The issue arose after Trump sent a letter in August accusing Cook of mortgage fraud.

Cook and Trump have differed over whether alleged fraud was the type of “cause” that Congress allowed the president to use as a basis for firing board members. While the Federal Reserve Act allows presidents to fire members “for cause,” it doesn’t offer much indication as to what that means. Trump, meanwhile, has argued that courts shouldn’t be able to second-guess his determination that a sufficient cause existed for firing someone such as Cook.

Many of the arguments surround how much protection Cook deserves under the Fifth Amendment, which says people can’t “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

A federal judge in Washington reinstated Cook on the basis that she had a property interest in her position but wasn’t given due process before losing her job. That due process, the judge said, should include some kind of meaningful notice and an opportunity to be heard.

Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, telling the justices that tenure-protected officers didn’t have a property right to their positions and that reinstatement was outside of judges’ authority.