The Gavel: Drama builds for big Supreme Court decisions

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Anticipation is growing as the Supreme Court leaves many of its biggest decisions to the end. 

Imminent rulings include President Trump’s birthright citizenship order, his firing power, transgender athlete bans, mail-in ballots, campaign finance, deportation protections and more. 

The justices’ self-imposed deadline to finish their work by the end of June is fast approaching on Tuesday. 

In this final stretch, the court’s unwritten traditions leave plenty of clues as to what may come. None of these are hard-and-fast rules. They are tea leaves, nothing more.  

The next opinions are expected Thursday beginning at 10 a.m. EDT. Here’s our tipsheet: 

Expect to hear a lot more from Roberts, Alito and Kavanaugh 

The justices split up the majority opinions from the term roughly evenly. So, expect most justices to end up with six, and a few with seven. 

Based on what’s in so far, three conservative justices have some catching up to do: 

CURRENT MAJORITY OPINION COUNT 

Justice Neil Gorsuch: 7 

Justice Clarence Thomas: 6 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: 6 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett: 6 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: 6 

Justice Elena Kagan: 5   

Chief Justice John Roberts: 3 

Justice Samuel Alito: 3 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh: 3 

It suggests Roberts, Alito and Kavanaugh are still working on several more majority opinions behind the scenes.  

Others — like Gorsuch and Jackson — may already be done. 

Potential authors for the big cases 

For each month’s argument session, the justices similarly split up the majority opinions  evenly.  

Let’s look at the October arguments, for example, as all the decisions are now in hand. There were 10 cases. The justices each handled one majority opinion, and Jackson picked up a second one to complete the slate. 

Based on the opinions so far, here’s look at which justices could be writing the big cases still pending: 

December (Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh): Two cases are left; both are major ones. The first involves President Trump’s bid to expand his firing power at independent agencies and the other is a GOP-backed challenge to a campaign finance law. 

January (Roberts, Alito, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett): All four cases that remain from January’s session are politically charged. One is a constitutional challenge to a Hawaii gun law, two involve transgender athlete bans and the final case is Trump’s firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook.  

March (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Barrett): Three cases remain. In March, the court heard arguments on Trump’s birthright citizenship order, whether states can accept late-arriving mail ballots and if a now-rescinded asylum policy was legal. 

April (Alito, Kagan, Kavanaugh): Three decisions are left. In April, the justices heard arguments on Trump’s bid to curtail temporary deportation protections for certain countries, the constitutionality of geofence warrants and Roundup’s bid to end state-court lawsuits over its weedkiller labeling. 

Multiple big decisions in one day aren’t unprecedented 

Last year, the Supreme Court handed down several major decisions on the final opinion day. 

In a matter of minutes, the justices clawed back federal judges’ ability to issue nationwide inunctions, upheld Texas’ age-verification law for online porn, ruled parents could opt out their children from instruction that uses books with LGBTQ themes and upheld a multibillion dollar internet subsidy program. 

In 2024, the final stretch was also a rush. 

On the penultimate day, the court clawed back federal agencies’ power, invalidated the use of a charge levied against scores of Jan. 6 defendants and ruled cities can ticket homeless people for camping in public.  

One day before that, the court ruled in a high-profile abortion case, blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Good Neighbor” rule and halted Purdue Pharma’s massive opioid bankruptcy deal.  

Will the justices go into July? 

After that rush, the court’s work wasn’t done. The justices went into the first day of July to hand down their landmark ruling granting Trump broad criminal immunity. 

It was one of two times in recent memory the justices broke their self-imposed deadline to hand down........

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