2026-2027 Supreme Court Term Preview

5-4

The hosts provide a comprehensive preview of the upcoming 2026-2027 Supreme Court term, analyzing several high-stakes cases. They examine ho

Key takeaways

• The case Viramonte v. Cook threatens the constitutionality of state-level AR-15 bans.
• St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy tests whether religious schools can bypass non-discrimination laws for taxpayer-funded preschools.

Main topics

• Supreme Court Term Preview
• Second Amendment Rights

Notable quotes

The cases on the docket don't all point in a single direction... Nevertheless, most of the issues the court will be weighing in on... reflect longstanding conservative agenda items.

Conclusion

The episode highlights a period of significant judicial uncertainty wh

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) Hey, everyone. This is Allie from Prologue Projects. On this week's episode of 5 to 4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are taking a look at the Supreme Court's upcoming term. As you'll hear, the cases on the docket don't all point in a single direction or reflect a cohesive political goal, like, for instance, the expansion of executive power. Nevertheless, most of the issues the court will be weighing in on, the Second Amendment, trans rights, voting rights, reflect longstanding conservative agenda items. Showing the Right is quietly advancing its project through the court, while Trump gets all the media attention. This is 5 to 4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks. Speaker 4 (0:49) Welcome to 5 to 4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have shit all over our civil rights, like a high rocks competitor shitting all over herself. I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael. Hey, everybody. And Speaker 3 (1:04) Rhiannon. Hi. So what is this? I've seen this linked in several boys chats, you know, on text. And every time I'm like, I'm not clicking that. I Speaker 2 (1:13) got you. Step aside, boys. I have the full story here. So you don't want to hate on somebody so dedicated to the craft, dedicated to the mission, dedicated to this kind of, you know, physical Speaker 4 (1:24) feat, Speaker 2 (1:24) let's say. Should Speaker 4 (1:25) go without saying in better shape than us. Absolutely. Speaker 2 (1:29) I'm criticizing for my couch eating fettuccine Alfredo. OK, so this athlete does, in fact, is she doing this high rocks, you Speaker 4 (1:36) know, fitness race? Which is like it's like a multistage endurance race kind of thing, right? Speaker 2 (1:40) Yes, you're going to do some burpees. You're going to lift some stuff. You jump on things and then you run a long time. You know, it's one of those guys. And so she does, in fact, shit herself. She shits herself a lot. It keeps coming. It's visible. And it's also getting on the track. It's getting on stuff. Oh, no. Speaker 4 (2:02) This is the difference, I think, between this and the sort of. standard marathon runner shits themselves narrative. So I guess marathon runners occasionally just poop their pants because God didn't intend for any of this. That's something we all accept. It's sort of like sometimes it happens. Yeah. The difference here, as I understand it, Rhi, is that this race involves like shared equipment. Yes. Speaker 2 (2:26) Yes. That she's now dragging shit all over. And so, you know, I think she, again. God bless her and congratulations. I think that she actually finishes in one of the top spots and she's like, hey, a win's a win. You Speaker 4 (2:39) better finish in one of the top spots after that. I Speaker 2 (2:41) did this through everything, right? Meanwhile, other people in the race, in the competition are like, hey, this stuff's covered in shit. I'm actually not going to touch it. And they got disqualified. Speaker 4 (2:54) Right. No. And she Speaker 2 (2:56) didn't get disqualified for getting shit all over everything. Speaker 4 (3:00) Which actually makes it like. good strategy right if those are the rules then like the smart thing to do is to just like just burn all your Speaker 3 (3:09) energy early shit all over everything right and everybody behind you gets disqualified you're the only one who finishes eat a full Speaker 4 (3:16) pizza four hours before the race and just take off Speaker 2 (3:21) take off and Speaker 4 (3:22) get it get ahead of everybody and then just let it rip yeah Speaker 2 (3:26) yeah So I guess now like she's lost a brand deal or something like that. Like there have been some consequences. Maybe a win isn't quite just a win, but Speaker 1 (3:36) Nike Speaker 4 (3:38) no longer wants to be a salesman. This is also one of those things, though, where I do believe she has committed a relatively horrible crime. But does she deserve what is coming in terms of Internet scorn and abuse? Hard to know. We'll see. Yeah. You know, it's like a ray gun situation where it's like, I don't I wouldn't describe myself as a supporter of her. But surely you can agree that the reaction was disproportionate. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's a closer call here where she sort of. Speaker 4 (4:13) She shit on stuff. Speaker 2 (4:16) Maybe Speaker 4 (4:16) in order to keep society working once every decade, someone who shits on shared gym equipment needs to be publicly shamed across the globe. You know? All right. Term preview episode, folks. It might have felt like the last Supreme Court term never ended and that you got no respite at all. But actually you did. You might you might not be aware that the Supreme Court has not technically. been in like full session for a few months now. We are approaching the first Monday of October, and that means a new Supreme Court term. And that means a bunch of horrific new cases that you're about to learn about over the course of the next nine months, whether you like it or not. So we are here to cushion the blow, give you a little slice of what's coming one by one. And Michael, I'm going to hand it off to you for the first case here. Speaker 3 (5:06) Yeah. And before we get into it, I want to say we're choosing mainly from cases from October, November, December. They've already been briefed. They've already been set for argument. There are cases they've accepted cert on that haven't been briefed or set for argument yet. Speaker 4 (5:20) And there will be cases that haven't made their way up to the court yet. Speaker 3 (5:24) As well as emergency applications and things like that. So there's just. There's going to be so much more than this, but we're going to start with this stuff. So first of all, we got Viramonte's V. Cook. This is the latest in a horrific line of Second Amendment challenges to gun laws. In particular, this is about AR-15 style rifles, semi-automatic weapons, what are colloquially called assault rifles. So Illinois, as well as Connecticut, California, New York, and about a dozen other states all ban these sorts of weapons. Speaker 2 (6:03) There Speaker 3 (6:04) is good reason to believe, and I believe some data suggesting that this has a good impact. It reduces the likelihood of mass shootings. It reduces the likelihood of school shootings. It has been a social good to have these bans in place. Speaker 3 (6:22) Cuberto Viramontes and Christopher Kaya are not happy that they're barred from owning AR-15 style weapons or AR-15 weapons themselves. And so they and some gun rights organizations have filed suit saying this is a violation of the Second Amendment. This is, of course, the latest case since Heller finding a Second Amendment right, individual right. to owning firearms. And then more recently, Bruin, which said that when you evaluate gun laws, you look into the history and tradition of gun regulation in this country in order to determine whether or not contemporary regulations are constitutional. This is concerning. This is concerning that the court is going to overturn yet more gun regulations. So this is a big one. It's one we're keeping an eye on and one that I think you should be worried about. Speaker 2 (7:18) Yeah, especially in a context of like when they're using this history and tradition evaluation. We know they're cherry picking history and tradition. Obviously. Yeah, that's right. I Speaker 4 (7:26) can't remember if I mentioned this in Heller or Brun or what, but. My analysis has always been the fact that an AR-15 is considered an arm in the sense that the Second Amendment says arms is basically a coincidence. It is so distant from what the founders thought of when they thought of arms, right? Right. A couple of well-trained operators right now could have wiped out the Continental Army and the militias, right? I mean, Speaker 3 (7:55) it's Speaker 4 (7:56) absurd to think these are the same thing. But I'm excited to move on. We've been talking about AR-15 bands for like a decade now. It's time to get into medium-range artillery. Speaker 3 (8:06) That's right. I want a constitutional right to own a drone that could drop a bomb on something. Speaker 2 (8:13) Oh, I was thinking like cannons, but. You guys went real intense with it. Sure. The Speaker 4 (8:18) fact that like drone use is banned in so many places, you could actually make it more constitutionally viable if you put weaponry on it. Attached a gun to Speaker 3 (8:27) it. Speaker 4 (8:28) Yes. Like, no, your honor, this isn't a civilian drone at all. This is actually a self-made predator drone. That's right. Speaker 2 (8:36) And therefore an arm and therefore protected by the Second Amendment. Speaker 4 (8:40) Yeah. So I believe I am free to go. All right. Next up. Another very big one, St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy. This is a challenge to Colorado's non-discrimination law in the context of religious schools and the state's universal preschool program. The state of Colorado has taxpayer-funded universal preschool, but maybe you're not eligible for those taxpayer funds if your school discriminates against LGBT children. and families, right? But of course, religious schools, not too happy about that. They want to suck on that government tip, but they don't want to owe anything to society. Speaker 2 (9:25) That's Speaker 4 (9:25) not what it's about. So they are challenging this. They are saying that constitutionally under the free exercise clause, they need an exemption. This is something we've talked about in many different contexts, right? The idea that a lot of modern free exercise jurisprudence is being done through a set of requests for exemptions from discrimination laws. Speaker 2 (9:51) And Speaker 4 (9:51) this traces back to 1990. There's this big case, Employment Division v. Smith. And in that case, Justice Scalia actually came to the conclusion that any generally applicable neutral law. is not going to violate free exercise. This is in the context of a couple of guys who were convicted of the use of peyote. And they said, hey, this is a religious thing, right? A Native American. This has religious connotations. So this should be protected free exercise. And the court said, no, the laws against that sort of drug use are neutral and they are generally applicable. They're not targeting your religion. They apply to everyone. Speaker 1 (10:35) So. Speaker 4 (10:36) We are going to uphold them. And that was then the rule. We then saw a bunch of narrowing of that rule. Conservatives hated it. First, you saw the passage of RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the early 90s. That's something that like Bill Clinton championed. This had a lot of cross-aisle appeal. That was able to like. basically get rid of that case in the federal context, but in the context of state laws, it still applies. So it's been narrowed even further by the court since then. If you want to get all legal nerdy, there's this doctrine called the most favored nation. And the idea is that a law can't prohibit religious activity if similar secular activity is allowed. So if you say, hey, this law is preventing me, a religious person, a religious organization from doing this thing I want to do under my religion. But it's allowing a secular person to