A petition for certiorari, or cert petition, is a legal brief filed in the Supreme Court asking the justices to review (and ultimately overturn) a lower court ruling. In a typical term, the justices receive over 8,000 cert petitions and grant between 60 and 80 of these. The justices typically decide whether to grant or reject a petition at approximately two dozen private conferences, which generally take place on either Thursday or Friday, depending on the time of year; they then usually release a list of orders from that conference, including an announcement of which petitions for review have been granted or denied, the following Monday. All of the cases which have so far been granted for the October 2025-26 term can be found here.
View this list sorted by case name.
Petitions Relisted for the Next Conference (9)
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 24-1015 | Does 1-2 v. Hochul | (1) Whether compliance with state laws directly contrary to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s requirement to provide a reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs may serve as an undue hardship justifying an employer’s noncompliance with Title VII; and (2) whether a state law that requires employers to deny without any consideration all requests by employees for a religious accommodation, contrary to Title VII’s religious nondiscrimination provision, is preempted by Title VII and the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. |
| 24-1099 | Smith v. Scott | (1) Whether, viewing the facts from the officers’ perspective at the time, the officers acted reasonably under the Fourth Amendment by using bodyweight pressure to restrain a potentially armed and actively resisting individual only until handcuffing could be accomplished; and (2) whether the panel erred in denying qualified immunity where no case clearly established that pre-handcuffing bodyweight pressure violates the Fourth Amendment. |
| 24-7351 | Pitchford v. Cain | (1) Whether clearly established federal law requires reversal of a state appellate court’s denial of relief from a capital prosecutor’s discriminatory exercise of four peremptory strikes against Black venire members wherein the trial court, for each of the four strikes, failed to determine “the plausibility of the reason in light of all evidence with a bearing on it” under Miller-El v. Dretke; (2) whether Mississippi Supreme Court precedent, which deems waived on direct review arguments of pretext not stated in the trial record, defies this court’s clearly established federal law under Batson v. Kentucky; and (3) whether a finding of waiver on a trial record possessing Batson objections, defense counsel's efforts to argue the objection, and the trial court’s express assurance the issues were preserved constitutes an unreasonable determination of facts. |
| 25-51 | Klein v. Martin | Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit violated the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s deferential standard by overturning a state-court decision based on the supposed lack of “nuance” and “exhaustiveness” in the court’s written opinion, rather than the reasonableness of its legal conclusion. |
| 25-159 | Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission | Whether in private condemnations under the Natural Gas Act, just compensation should be determined by reference to state law. |
| 25-180 | Doe v. Dynamic Physical Therapy, LLC | Whether a state procedural law that immunizes a healthcare provider from liability during a public health emergency may override a federal substantive claim based on the Americans with Disability Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, effectively denying the corresponding remedy authorized by these federal statutes by forcing plaintiffs to meet a heightened standard to prove federal claims than provided for in the federal statutes. |
| 25-183 | Crowther v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia | Whether Title IX provides employees of federally funded educational institutions a private right of action to sue for sex discrimination in employment. |
| 25-364 | Trump v. Washington | Whether Executive Order No. 14,160 complies on its face with the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment and with 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), which codifies that clause. |
| 25-365 | Trump v. Barbara | Whether Executive Order No. 14,160 complies on its face with the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment and with 8 U.S.C. § 1401(a), which codifies that clause. |
Petitions We’re Watching for the Next Conference (17)
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 25-331 | Scullark v. Iowa | Whether the Fourth Amendment categorically permits warrantless searches of bags carried by arrestees at the time of arrest but inaccessible to them at the time of search. |
| 25-284 | Little v. Llano County | Whether book-removal decisions motivated by a desire to censor particular viewpoints are subject to scrutiny under the free speech clause of the First Amendment. |
| 25-274 | Allen v. Milligan | (1) Whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C § 10301, requires Alabama to segregate a conceded community of interest to combine Black voters from that community with Black voters elsewhere to form a majority-black district; (2) whether §2 can require Alabama to intentionally create a second majority-minority district without violating the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; (3) whether §2 creates a privately enforceable right; and (4) whether Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by declining to draw a race-based plan. |
| 25-273 | Allen v. Singleton | (1) Whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C § 10301, requires Alabama to segregate a conceded community of interest to combine Black voters from that community with Black voters elsewhere to form a majority-black district; (2) whether §2 can require Alabama to intentionally create a second majority-minority district without violating the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; (3) whether §2 creates a privately enforceable right; and (4) whether Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by declining to draw a race-based plan. |
| 25-256 | Hilsenrath v. Chathams School District Board of Education | (1) Whether a public school violates the establishment clause by assigning content that proselytizes for, extols, and gives favored treatment to Islam (or any other religion) that conflicts with the religious beliefs of parents and their children; (2) whether, given the “complementary purposes” of the religion clauses, the protection that the establishment clause provides to parents and their children in public schools under Edwards and Lee is coextensive with the protection the free exercise clause provides them under Mahmoud and, therefore, prohibits public schools from assigning, without notice, content that conflicts with their religious beliefs. |
| 25-253 | Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe | Whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10301, is enforceable by private plaintiffs through 42 U.S.C. § 1983, an implied right of action, or both. |
| 25-243 | Allen v. Caster | (1) Whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires Alabama to create a new majority-Black district; (2) whether creating a new majority-Black district would violate the 14th or 15th Amendments; and (3) whether Section 2 creates a privately enforceable right. |
| 25-239 | Huber v. Westar Foods | (1) Whether in an employment action in which the plaintiff alleges the defendant engaged in unlawful intentional discrimination or retaliation, if the defendant moves for summary judgment, if a plaintiff who lacks “direct evidence” of retaliatory intent is required “to establish retaliatory intent ... through the three-part McDonnell Douglas burden shifting framework,” including establishing a prima facie case and demonstrating that the defendant’s proffered explanation was a pretext; and (2) whether under the McDonnell Douglas burden shifting framework, if the defendant seeking summary judgment has articulated its claimed legitimate reason for the disputed employment action, if the plaintiff is nonetheless still required to establish a prima facie case of unlawful motive. |
| 25-234 | State Board of Election Commissioners v. Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP | Whether private parties may sue to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10301. |
| 25-228 | Solomon v. Flipps Media | Whether information can be “personally identifiable” if it is “reasonably . . . foreseeabl[e]” to the person sending the information that it will be used to identify someone’s video choices, or whether information can be “personally identifiable” only if an “ordinary person” could use it to identify someone’s video choices. |
| 25-198 | Duncan v. Bonta | (1) Whether a ban on the possession of exceedingly common ammunition feeding devices violates the Second Amendment; and (2) whether a law dispossessing citizens, without compensation, of property that they lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the takings clause. |
| 25-197 | T. M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Corp. | Whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which prevents parties who lose in state courts from challenging injuries caused by state-court judgments, can be triggered by a state-court decision that remains subject to further review in state court. |
| 25-153 | Gator’s Custom Guns v. Washington | Whether ammunition feeding devices with the capacity to hold more than 10 rounds are “Arms” presumptively entitled to constitutional protection under the plain text of the Second Amendment. |
| 25-133 | Miller v. McDonald | (1) Whether a law that categorically disallows religious exemptions but permits secular exemptions and other comparable secular activity violates the Free Exercise Clause as applied to the Amish parents and schools at issue; and (2) whether Employment Division v. Smith should be reconsidered. |
| 25-126 | Kane v. City of New York | Whether strict scrutiny applies to a discretionary religious-accommodation scheme that turns on whether individuals follow organized religion and whether their personal religious beliefs differ from the beliefs of their religious leaders. |
| 25-115 | Miller v. James | (1) Whether Petitioners have standing to advance their constitutional challenge to the actions of the Attorney General when they have alleged a chilling effect on their First Amendment rights and reputational harm; and (2) whether the Attorney General’s “terrorist” and “terrorist group” designations are opinions protected by the First Amendment and thus immune from New York’s defamation law. |
| 25-77 | Foote v. Ludlow School Committee | Whether a public school violates parents’ constitutional rights when, without parental knowledge or consent, the school encourages a student to transition to a new “gender” or participates in that process. |
Featured Petitions (29)
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 25-573 | Trump v. Carroll | (1) Whether Federal Rule of Evidence 415 overrides Rule 403’s requirement to balance the probative value of temporally remote propensity evidence against its prejudicial effect before such evidence can be admitted?; (2) Whether Federal Rule of Evidence 413(d) authorizes the admission of temporally remote propensity evidence that the defendant committed the “crime” of “sexual assault” when the alleged prior act did not constitute a crime or a sexual assault?; and (3) Whether Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(2) permits the admission of “modus operandi” or “corroboration” evidence of prior “bad acts” without establishing a non-propensity purpose of the evidence, such as identity, absence of mistake, or another enumerated exception in Rule 404(b)(2)? |
| 25-521 | Google LLC v. Epic Games | (1) Whether under the Rule of Reason, a three-step, burden-shifting framework, an antitrust plaintiff is required to prove that less restrictive alternatives could accomplish the procompetitive benefits of the challenged conduct or whether there is no such requirement; (2) whether a court may impose a duty on an antitrust defendant to deal directly with its competitors without first determining that such court-mandated dealings will remedy the consequences of conduct found to violate the antitrust laws; and (3) whether the court must assess a private plaintiff’s Article III standing with respect to each proposed remedy before awarding injunctive relief. |
| 25-514 | Microchip Technology Incorporated v. Schuman | Whether, in a case involving a release of claims under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a plan sponsor’s alleged breach of fiduciary duty may prevent the enforcement of an otherwise knowing and voluntary release, where the releasing parties were aware of the facts underlying the alleged breach when they signed the release. |
| 25-487 | Hathon v. Michigan | Whether the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is a self-executing stand-alone claim that permits property owners to sue a state directly for just compensation when the state otherwise mandates reliance on an inadequate statutory remedy. |
| 25-453 | Bannon v. U.S. | (1) Whether “willfully” in 2 U.S.C. § 192 – which states that anyone who is “summoned … by the authority of either House of Congress” and “willfully makes default” on the subpoena has committed a crime – requires the government to prove the defendant knew his conduct was unlawful; and (2) whether the proper composition of a congressional committee bears on its “authority” to issue a subpoena for purposes of 2 U.S.C. § 192. |
| 25-379 | Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Schmidt | (1) Whether the appellate court erred in using TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez to evaluate standing in this case, which involves the denial of public records; (2) whether TransUnion overruled this Court’s cases establishing the standing inquiry for public records cases; and (3) whether the appellate court erred by finding that the Foundation does not have standing to redress the denial of public records under the National Voter Registration Act. |
| 25-361 | Asante v. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services | Whether a state’s Medicaid program violates 42 C.F.R. § 431.52(b)’s equal-payment requirement by denying supplemental payments to out-of-state hospitals, thereby paying in-state hospitals more than out-of-state hospitals that furnish the same services to the state’s Medicaid patients. |
| 25-327 | Express Scripts v. California | Whether a remand order appealed under 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d), like the orders at issue in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, is subject to an automatic stay pending appeal. |
| 25-248 | District of Columbia v. R.W. | (1) Whether a court assessing the existence of reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment may exclude a fact known to the officer, or instead must assess all the evidence when weighing the totality of the circumstances; and (2) whether, under the totality-of-the-circumstances test, the officer in this case had reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. |
| 25-238 | Viramontes v. Cook County | Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles. |
| 25-233 | Miller v. Civil Rights Department | (1) Whether the free speech clause’s protection against compelled participation in a ceremony only applies where third parties would view that participation as expressing endorsement of the ceremony; (2) whether proving a lack of general applicability under the free exercise clause requires showing unfettered discretion or categorical exemptions for identical secular conduct; and (3) whether Employment Division v. Smith should be overruled. |
| 25-170 | Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County | Whether federal law precludes state-law claims seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate. |
| 25-114 | La Anyane v. Georgia | (1) Whether Georgia's implied consent statute – under which a driver arrested for driving under the influence who refuses to consent to a blood draw has his driver’s license suspended for at least a year, with the refusal usable as evidence of guilt at a criminal trial – violates the unconstitutional conditions doctrine; and (2) whether Georgia's implied consent statute, due to substantial adverse consequences of refusal to consent, is impermissibly coercive so as to render consent involuntary. |
| 25-112 | Chatrie v. U.S. | (1) Whether the execution of a geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment; and (2) whether the exclusionary rule should apply to the evidence derived from a geofence warrant. |
| 25-107 | Gilliam v. Gerregano | Whether the messages paid for and chosen by car owners on personalized license plates, commonly known as “vanity” plates, are government speech. |
| 25-83 | Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties | Whether a federal court that initially exercises jurisdiction and stays a case pending arbitration maintains jurisdiction over a post-arbitration Section 9 or 10 application where jurisdiction would otherwise be lacking. |
| 25-50 | Fitzhugh v. Patton | Whether Article III permits a plaintiff with moot claims to continue a putative class action based on the possibility that a future motion to define the class might later confer standing on some undefined class. |
| 25-29 | Villarreal v. Alaniz | (1) Whether it obviously violates the First Amendment to arrest someone for asking government officials questions and publishing the information they volunteer; and (2) whether qualified immunity is unavailable to public officials who use a state statute in a way that obviously violates the First Amendment, or whether qualified immunity shields those officials. |
| 25-14 | Hierholzer v. Loeffler | Whether a small-business owner who was denied entry into the Small Business Administration's Section 8(a) Business Development Program for failing to prove “social disadvantage” has Article III standing to challenge a race-based presumption that excuses certain applicants from making that showing. |
| 25-2 | Reese v. U.S. | Whether the court should overrule Pinkerton v. United States, under which an individual may be convicted of crimes he did not commit – or even participate in – so long as they are the foreseeable result of a conspiracy he joined. |
| 25-1 | Skinner v. Louisiana | Whether Louisiana courts erred in refusing to apply Wearry v. Cain to an individual's Brady v. Maryland claims. |
| 24-1306 | Klee v. Int'l Union of Operating Engineers | Whether a public-sector union that invokes the aid of state officials to deduct union dues from a nonconsenting public-sector employee acts “under color of law” for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. |
| 24-1305 | Todd v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees | When a public-sector union gets the government to divert an employee’s pay by stating that he consented to join the union, is it a state actor such that the “clear and compelling evidence” First Amendment standard of Janus applies? |
| 24-1268 | Reed v. Goertz | Whether Article 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, as authoritatively construed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, violates due process by arbitrarily denying prisoners access to postconviction DNA testing, rendering illusory prisoners’ state-created right to prove their innocence through newly discovered evidence. |
| 24-1259 | Rush v. U.S. | Whether the Second Amendment secures the right to possess unregistered short-barreled rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes. |
| 24-1192 | Ovation Fund Management II, LLC v. Nossaman LLP | Whether a federal court overseeing an equity receivership has the power to enjoin and extinguish claims that belong to non-receivership entities against non-receivership third parties without the claimants’ consent. |
| 24-1095 | Koetter v. Manistee County Treasurer | (1) Whether the government violates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment or takings clause of the 5th Amendment by denying just compensation to property owners who miss a narrow and premature window to preserve their right to just compensation; and (2) whether, to the extent it authorizes Michigan’s confiscatory claim statute, the Supreme Court should overrule Nelson v. City of New York. |
| 24-994 | National Basketball Association v. Salazar | (1) Whether a consumer claiming that he was harmed by disclosure of his personal information must plead that his information was revealed to the public to establish standing under Article III of the Constitution, or instead the consumer need only plead that his information was disclosed to any third party without his consent; and (2) whether the Video Privacy Protection Act bars a business from disclosing information about consumers who do not subscribe to its audiovisual goods or services. |
| 24-969 | Community Financial Services Association of America, Limited v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau | Whether, in order to obtain judicial relief, a party challenging governmental action taken by an individual who remained in office against the president’s wishes due to an unconstitutional removal restriction must show that a hypothetical replacement officer would have taken a different action. |
Calls for the Views of the Solicitor General (14)
| Docket | Case Page | Issue(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 25-119 | Highland Capital Management, L.P. v. NexPoint Advisors, L.P. | (1) Whether a bankruptcy court can act as a gatekeeper to screen noncolorable lawsuits against nondebtor bankruptcy participants; and (2) whether a bankruptcy court can to a limited degree exculpate nondebtor bankruptcy participants from liability for conduct arising from the bankruptcy process. |
| 25-113 | Renteria v. New Mexico Office of the Superintendent of Insurance | (1) Under Employment Division v. Smith, whether state laws must always be deemed “neutral” unless plaintiffs prove officials acted against them with subjective religious animus and discriminatory motive; (2) under Smith, whether courts determining a law’s “general applicability” must disregard the law’s preference for secular over religious organizations on the grounds that secular and religious organizations are inherently motivated by different purposes and thus incomparable, or alternatively, whether courts must consider the law’s preference for secular over religious organizations so long as their activities pose a similar risk to the government’s asserted interest in the law; (3) whether hostile statements of government actors against religious adherents are sufficient to establish a First Amendment free exercise violation, or whether states may try to justify their hostility by satisfying strict scrutiny; and (4) Whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s exemption for individuals who participate in health care sharing ministries (HCSMs) preempts New Mexico’s determination that those individuals’ HCSMs may not operate in New Mexico until they forfeit their federal statuses as HCSMs under the ACA. |
| 24-1130 | Kingdom of Spain v. Blasket Renewable Investments LLC | (1) Whether 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(6) allows United States courts to assert jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign without determining whether the sovereign consented to arbitrate differences between itself and the plaintiff; and (2) whether, in suits to confirm foreign arbitral awards, forum non conveniens dismissal is categorically unavailable, unavailable in at least some suits, or depends on the facts of each case. |
| 24-1068 | Monsanto Company v. Durnell | Whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a state-law failure-to-warn claim when the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly concluded that the warning is not required and the warning cannot be added to a product without EPA approval. |
| 24-1062 | The Hertz Corporation v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. | Whether an unwritten pre-Code exception overrides the Bankruptcy Code’s express statutory text and allows creditors in solvent-debtor cases to recover amounts that the Code explicitly disallows. |
| 24-1030 | Parker-Hannifin Corporation v. Johnson | Whether pleading an imprudent-investment claim under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, based on how the investment’s returns compared to some performance benchmark, requires allegations showing that the benchmark is a sound basis for comparison for that investment. |
| 24-1016 | RiseandShine Corporation v. PepsiCo | Whether trademark strength is a question of fact in a likelihood-of-confusion analysis under 15 U.S.C. § 1114. |
| 24-1001 | Cotter Corporation v. Mazzocchio | Whether federal nuclear safety regulations preempt state tort standards of care in public liability actions. |
| 24-917 | Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC v. NTE Carolinas II, LLC | Whether a plaintiff can prevail on a monopolization claim under Section 2 of the Sherman Act by aggregating multiple distinct, independently lawful acts into an unlawful whole. |
| 24-909 | Agudas Chasidei Chabad of U.S. v. Russian Federation | Whether a “foreign state” lacks immunity from U.S. jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act if either U.S.-nexus test in 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a)(3) is met, or instead a “foreign state” loses its immunity only if the first U.S.-nexus test is met—i.e., if the expropriated property, or property exchanged for it, is found in the United States. |
| 24-889 | Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Amarin Pharma | (1) Whether, when a generic drug label fully carves out a patented use, allegations that the generic drugmaker calls its product a “generic version” and cites public information about the branded drug (e.g., sales) are enough to plead induced infringement of the patented use; and (2) whether a complaint states a claim for induced infringement of a patented method if it does not allege any instruction or other statement by the defendant that encourages, or even mentions, the patented use. |
| 24-856 | Cisco Systems v. Doe I | (1) Whether the Alien Tort Statute allows a judicially-implied private right of action for aiding and abetting; (2) whether, if ATS aiding-and-abetting claims are cognizable, mere knowledge rather than purpose suffices to show the requisite mens rea; and (3) whether the Torture Victim Protection Act allows a judicially-implied private right of action for aiding and abetting. |
| 24-620 | Pizarro v. The Home Depot | Whether, consistent with trust law, burden-shifting applies to the element of causation under 29 U.S.C. § 1109(a). |
| 22o161 | Nebraska v. Colorado | Whether, when one state breaches another's contract and there are "direct, immediate, grave and irreparable injur[ies] to [a state] and its citizens," the court should grant the harmed state leave to file a complaint in an original action. |