There are the 'two looming disasters' expected in the next Supreme Court term: analysis

As the Supreme Court readies to kick off its new term next week, there are two particular issues that are "looming disasters," according to a report in Vox.

And though there is also a lot of uncertainty as to "whether the Court will strike down President Donald Trump’s ever-shifting tariffs," Vox reports, "There’s less mystery about how the Court will handle two other groups of cases, which concern election law and LGBTQ issues."

One of the three Supreme Court liberal justices, Elena Kagan, wrote in her dissenting opinion in 2021 that SCOTUS “has treated no statute worse” than the Voting Rights Act — the landmark 1965 law that banned race discrimination in elections.

And as Trump pushes Republicans to gerrymander their states to keep Democrats out of power, the court's majority conservative justices, Vox says, are "widely expected" to abolish the Voting Rights Act’s longstanding safeguards against racial gerrymandering.

"A decision abolishing those safeguards is likely to devastate Black representation in red states where voting is racially polarized — meaning that Black people overwhelmingly vote for Democrats while white voters similarly favor Republicans," Vox explains.

The other "big loser" as Vox deems it of the upcoming SCOTUS session is likely to be the LGBTQ community as the court seems poised to strike down bans on controversial conversion therapy, dangerous and discredited practices that attempt to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Although about half of U.S. states have laws restricting conversion therapy, Vox explains, and despite the fact that "“every major medical, psychiatric, psychological, and professional mental health organization opposes the use of conversion therapy," the case in question raises "a difficult First Amendment question," Vox says.

"Justices will, at least, need to wrestle with how to distinguish speech by a lawyer or doctor from speech by a therapist," they explain.

According to Vox, the court is also predicted to uphold state laws requiring student athletes to play on a sex-segregated team that aligns with their sex assigned at birth.

"And, of course, the Court is dominated by conservative Republicans who, in United States v. Skrmetti (2025), recently held that states may prohibit minors from receiving gender-affirming health care. So trans advocates face a difficult uphill climb," Vox explains.