After the Supreme Court on Monday released several more decisions in landmark cases, ranging from gun rights to voting laws to Fourth Amendment protections, a handful of cases remain undecided.
With this term of the Supreme Court coming to an end, only three major decisions are still pending.
The cases address birthright citizenship, transgender participation in women’s sports, and campaign finance.
Here’s what to know about the pending cases.
Birthright Citizenship
Perhaps the most consequential case yet to be decided probes whether President Donald Trump violated the Constitution and federal law by issuing an executive order restricting birthright citizenship.
The court heard oral arguments on April 1 for Trump v. Barbara, which centers on the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause.
That clause reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
Trump has said that the country’s current birthright citizenship policy was created to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children, not to children born to temporary visitors.
Multiple federal courts disagreed, pointing to the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. In that landmark decision, the Supreme Court said the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to a Chinese man whose parents were permanently domiciled in the United States.
The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the court’s reasoning lent itself to citizenship for the children of temporary visitors or illegal immigrants.
The Justice Department argued that the precedent had been misconstrued and that the 14th Amendment required a domicile or some kind of allegiance on the part of parents.
Overall, the justices seemed skeptical of the administration’s arguments, but a decision in the landmark case is still pending.
Transgender Athletes
Another aspect of the 14th Amendment, known as the equal protection clause, came before the court when it considered West Virginia’s and Idaho’s laws banning male participation in female sports.
Two federal appeals courts ruled against the state laws, finding that they violated the equal protection clause by discriminating on the basis of sex and transgender status.
One of those courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, said that West Virginia’s law also violated Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational institutions.
The states argued that their laws classifying sports teams by sex did not constitute unlawful discrimination.
Oral argument in the cases, known as West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, took place in January. Overall, the justices seemed inclined to vote in favor of the states.
Coordinated Campaign Spending
In an election-related case, the court is set to determine whether Congress violated the First Amendment by restricting how much political parties could coordinate their spending with candidates.
The case, National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), focused on the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1972 and a later amendment to the law.
The Democratic National Committee, which intervened in the lawsuit, backed the amendment’s restrictions on how much political party committees such as the NRSC could accept and spend to influence an election.
It said the restrictions helped discourage quid pro quos in which donors give money with the expectation of being repaid somehow when the candidate took office.
During oral argument on Dec. 9, the NRSC argued the limits violated the First Amendment by interfering with free speech on political matters. Although the FEC was sued in this case, it sided with the NRSC before the Supreme Court.
