The Supreme Court returns Monday for a term packed with cases that could reshape gun rights, immigration enforcement, religious liberty, election law, climate regulation and the power of the presidency.

The docket is anything but sleepy. It is a collision course.

At stake are questions that Washington has spent years trying to settle through agencies, executive orders and lower-court injunctions. Now the nine justices will have the last word on several of them — or at least decide which constitutional lines the government may not cross.

The Supreme Court’s official granted-cases list and argument calendar show the term opening October 5 with a docket that reaches deep into the country’s biggest political fights. More cases will be added as the year continues, but the stakes are already unmistakable.

The Court still has a six-justice conservative majority. That does not guarantee a conservative victory in every dispute, and anyone who followed the last term knows better than to count votes before oral argument.

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But it does mean the Constitution’s text, history and separation of powers will receive serious attention instead of automatic deference to the administrative state.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will again be central to that debate. Both men have pressed the Court to follow constitutional limits even when the political class prefers a more convenient answer.

Their influence will matter in cases involving the Second Amendment, executive authority and the reach of federal regulators.

Gun rights could produce one of the term’s biggest rulings.

The justices are expected to decide whether state restrictions on commonly owned semiautomatic firearms can survive the Second Amendment. The constitutional question is straightforward even if the lower courts have tried to make it complicated: can a government ban arms widely possessed by law-abiding Americans while claiming the right to keep and bear arms remains intact?

The Court’s modern Second Amendment cases require governments to justify firearm restrictions through the nation’s historical tradition. That standard was supposed to end the practice of treating a constitutional right like a policy preference.

This term could determine whether lower courts actually have to obey it when the firearm at issue is politically unpopular.

Immigration is another major front — and one with immediate consequences for President Trump.

SCOTUSblog reports that the Court agreed October 1 to hear a dispute over mandatory detention for certain noncitizens arrested inside the United States. The Trump administration argues that federal law requires those detainees to remain in custody without bond hearings.

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Most federal appeals courts to address the question have read the statute differently, while the Fifth and Eighth Circuits have sided with the government’s interpretation.

That split cannot stand forever. Immigration law should not mean one thing in Texas and another in California.

The Court is also dealing with the administration’s authority to remove migrants to third countries while legal challenges proceed. These cases will test whether a president elected to enforce immigration law can carry out that mandate without a single district judge turning every contested policy into a nationwide shutdown.

That institutional question matters beyond immigration. President Trump’s use of executive authority, control over the federal workforce and efforts to rein in independent agencies all raise the same basic issue: who runs the executive branch — the elected president or permanent bureaucracies insulated from voters?

The Constitution gives executive power to the president. Washington has spent decades building arrangements designed to blur that line.

This Court may finally decide how much of that machinery can survive.

Climate litigation will bring another test of judicial restraint.

PBS NewsHour’s term preview identifies climate regulation alongside immigration and gun rights as one of the docket’s central themes. One dispute asks whether local governments can use state-law lawsuits to seek damages from energy companies for alleged climate harms — litigation that could become regulation by another name if courts allow municipalities to impose national energy policy through damages awards.

There are real policy debates to be had about energy and the environment. But trillion-dollar questions affecting every family’s power bill should be decided through accountable lawmaking, not creative lawsuits designed to bypass Congress.

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Religious liberty and election rules are on the horizon too. Those cases rarely stay confined to the parties named on the docket.

A ruling about zoning can define whether churches receive equal treatment. A ruling about voting procedure can determine how much authority states retain to secure their own elections.

NPR’s preview says the term will feature major tests involving religion, guns, immigration and climate change, while emergency appeals continue to reach the justices. That last point matters.

Increasingly, the Court is asked to intervene before a case completes years of ordinary litigation because lower-court orders are already changing national policy.

Critics call that emergency docket too powerful when they dislike the result. The better question is why lower courts keep issuing sweeping orders that force the Supreme Court to act quickly.

The justices will therefore be deciding more than the merits of individual disputes. They will also be defining when one lower-court judge may freeze a national policy while the executive branch appeals.

Conservatives should be hopeful, but not complacent. A six-three majority is an opportunity, not an automatic result.

The justices will be judged by whether they enforce the Constitution consistently — protecting individual rights, preserving the separation of powers and refusing to let judges or agencies assume authority the people never gave them.

This term gives them plenty of chances to do exactly that.

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