The Supreme Court is beginning its new term, welcoming the public back to the courtroom and hearing arguments for the first time since issuing a landmark ruling stripping away women's constitutional protections for abortion.
Monday's session also is the first time new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's first Black female justice, will participate in arguments. And the public is back for the first time since the court closed in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The court's overturning of the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade abortion decision is still reverberating in legal fights over state abortion bans and other restrictions. But a new stack of high-profile cases awaits the justices. Several cases the court has agreed to hear involve race or elections or both, and the court has also agreed to hear a dispute that returns the issue of free speech and LGBTQ rights to the court.
Also hanging over the justices is some unfinished business from last term: the leak of a
