US Supreme Court weighs immigration detention, prediction markets and Ten Commandments cases

The US Supreme Court opens its new nine-month term next Monday, with a conservative 6-3 majority that has shifted American law rightward in recent years and a docket that could soon expand to include several politically charged disputes.

Arguments begin with a major case on whether oil companies such as ExxonMobil can be held financially liable for contributing to climate change. The justices are still deciding which other cases to take up and are expected to announce some of their choices this week. The court typically hears about 70 cases a term and has already agreed to roughly two dozen.

Mandatory detention

The Trump administration has asked the court to allow it to keep detaining people arrested under the president's immigration crackdown without giving them a chance to seek bond, even if they have lived in the United States for years.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year adopted an interpretation of immigration law under which non-citizens already living in the country, and not only those arriving at the border, count as "applicants for admission" subject to mandatory detention. Under federal law, applicants for admission are held without bond while their cases proceed in immigration courts. After the Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Justice Department, endorsed that reading, immigration judges employed by the department began ordering mandatory detention.

Kemal Hepsen, an immigration lawyer in Texas, said the issue has been fully aired in lower courts, with the administration losing nine of 11 decisions by federal appeals courts. "On the statutory question, there's nothing left to percolate, and the alternative is a country where whether you can get bond depends on which state ICE drives you to," he said.

Prediction markets

Another possible case concerns the regulation of prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which have grown rapidly. Appeals are pending involving Kalshi as well as Crypto.com and Robinhood, companies that have moved into the sector. The Trump administration has backed the platforms in the litigation, and Polymarket last year secured an investment from a venture capital firm backed by the president's son, Donald Trump Jr.

Operators describe their "event contracts" as a type of financial derivative that should be regulated exclusively by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency. A bipartisan coalition of states argues that the sports-related offerings amount to gambling and should fall under their sports betting laws. Federal appeals courts have split on the question. If the Supreme Court eventually rules that prediction markets are gambling, the platforms would face a patchwork of bans, taxes, licensing regimes and criminal statutes.

Daniel Wallach, a sports lawyer in Florida who has followed the litigation, said the stakes make it likely the court will step in at some point. "The stakeholder interest in this controversy encompasses 50 states, hundreds of Native American tribes, hundreds of casinos, multi-billion-dollar financial exchanges, online sports betting companies and the federal government," he said. "This probably is the most expansive and significant group of stakeholders that you could imagine for almost any case."

Ten Commandments

Several Texas families, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, have asked the Supreme Court to strike down the state's 2025 law requiring public elementary and high schools to display the biblical Ten Commandments in classrooms. They appealed after the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals found the law did not violate the First Amendment's prohibition on government establishment of religion or its protections for free exercise.

"Our nation's bedrock principle of separating church and state means that families and faith communities — not politicians — get to decide what role religion plays in children's lives," Chloe Kempf, a lawyer at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement.

The Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky law in the 1980 decision Stone v. Graham, but the current court has taken an expansive view of religious freedom. The 1980 ruling applied a legal framework the court discarded in a 2022 decision siding with a football coach at a public high school in Washington state who was suspended for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers with players after games.

Judge Kyle Duncan, writing for the 5th Circuit, said the Texas law "does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis or imams" and "punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason."

Republican-led states in the South have led the way in putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Louisiana passed such a requirement in 2024, followed by Arkansas, Texas and Alabama. Critics have portrayed the laws as part of what they see as rising Christian nationalism in the United States. The Louisiana measure has also drawn legal challenges, and the state wants the Supreme Court to weigh in on its law if the justices agree to hear arguments over the Texas one. The 5th Circuit in February let Louisiana's measure take effect but said it needed more information about how the mandate would be implemented before ruling on its constitutionality.