Short answer: The U.S. Supreme Court opened its October 2026 term on Monday, October 5, 2026, with two one-hour oral arguments. The first was Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County (No. 25-170), which asks whether federal law bars Boulder, Colorado’s state-law lawsuit seeking climate-change damages from Suncor and ExxonMobil. The second was Johnson v. United States Congress (No. 25-735), which asks whether a federal district court can hear a constitutional challenge to a law that limits disability benefits for certain incarcerated veterans.
Justice Samuel Alito did not take part in the Suncor argument, so eight justices heard it; he had announced the week before that he would no longer participate in that case. He returned to the bench for the veterans’ benefits argument.
Source: Supreme Court of the United States: Day Call, Monday, October 5, 2026 (PDF). Additional detail: SCOTUSblog: Opening the book on the October Term 2026.
Image: Panorama of United States Supreme Court Building at Dusk by Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.