Supreme Court returns to work with an eye on a post-election storm

The Supreme Court returns to its bench Monday with an agenda that includes cases on guns, pornography and transgender medical care, as the justices brace for a slew of last-minute election fights and a new presidential administration that could drag the court deeper into politics.

The Supreme Court returns to its bench Monday with an agenda that includes cases on guns, pornography and transgender medical care, as the justices brace for a slew of last-minute election fights and a new presidential administration that could drag the court deeper into politics. Of the 40 appeals the high court has agreed to decide so far, only a handful are the kind of screaming political controversies that dominated its caseload in recent years. While the lineup may allow the justices to keep their heads down for now, there are signs the relative calm may be short-lived. A contested election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump could thrust the 6-3 conservative majority into a political maelstrom at a moment when polls show trust in the court near record lows. A new president could reshuffle the cases already granted. And Trump is all but guaranteed to resurface at the Supreme Court in coming weeks to clarify the sweeping criminal immunity the court bestowed on him in July. All of that will be on the minds of the nine justices when they take their seats Monday for their first oral arguments of a new term that will run until next summer. “As matters stand now, this feels like the court is keeping its powder dry in case the election explodes,” Carter Phillips, a veteran Supreme Court litigator, told CNN early last week. “Not a lot of cases and very few high-profile ones.” On Tuesday, the court will hear arguments in one of its biggest pending disputes. Advocacy groups and manufacturers are challenging a Biden administration regulation on “ghost guns,” mail-order kits that allow people to build untraceable weapons at home.