Next Monday, October 5, the Supreme Court hears the first arguments of its new term. On the line are claims brought by workers who saved in Intel's retirement plans, an Army veteran whose disability pay was cut, the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, and a community group on Guam.

None of the four cases asks who is right about what happened. Each turns, at least in part, on whether a lawsuit can go forward: what it must say, which court can take it, how early a challenge can come, and whether state law can govern it at all. In all four, the federal government's lawyers argue against the side that sued: for a party in two cases, and as a friend of the court in two.

The week

Monday, October 5: Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. Commissioners of Boulder County, No. 25-170, then Johnson v. United States Congress, No. 25-735.
Tuesday, October 6: Anderson v. Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee, No. 25-498.
Wednesday, October 7: Department of the Air Force v. Prutehi Guahan, No. 25-579.

Boulder and two oil companies

In 2018 Boulder's city and county sued Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil in Colorado state court, under Colorado law, for the local costs of a changing climate. They ask for money, not an order stopping any oil or gas operation. Colorado's Supreme Court let the claims proceed on May 12, 2025, over a two-justice dissent.

The companies ask "Whether federal law precludes state-law claims seeking relief for injuries allegedly caused by the effects of interstate and international greenhouse-gas emissions on the global climate." The Court added a question of its own: "Whether this Court has statutory and Article III jurisdiction to hear this case." Nothing has been tried, and Boulder argues it is too early for the justices to act. If the Court finds it has no jurisdiction, it will not answer the federal-law question at all.

By the companies' count, nearly 60 state and local governments have filed similar suits. Boulder says the policy objections belong to Congress, and notes that "legislation providing petitioners the immunity they seek is pending in Congress". The federal government, which will argue for 10 of the companies' 30 minutes, asks in its brief: "Can one city wield one State's law to dictate how the rest of the world must address a global problem with global effects?"

A veteran and the door to federal court

A federal law, 38 U.S.C. § 5313, caps the disability pay of a veteran imprisoned more than 60 days for a felony at the amount paid for a 10 percent rating. The veteran in this case says the Department of Veterans Affairs rated his service-connected post-traumatic stress disorder at 80 percent. Without a lawyer, he sued in federal district court, arguing the cap is unconstitutional. The appeals court never reached that question: it held that the claim belongs in the department's own appeals system, not in district court.

In 1974, in Johnson v. Robison, the Supreme Court held that district courts could hear such challenges. The question now is whether the Veterans' Judicial Review Act of 1988 took that away.

Both sides agree that ordinary disputes over a benefits decision go through the department's system; the fight is over challenges to a law itself. One sharp disagreement is about the Board of Veterans' Appeals. The veteran says the Board "cannot decide constitutional challenges to statutes", so sending him there would mean years of waiting on a body that cannot rule. The government says the Board can, and "has previously considered and rejected challenges to Section 5313".

Intel's retirement funds

The plans are Intel's 401(k) and a company-funded retirement plan, and the suit dates to 2015. The workers allege that the committees running the plans built their own default funds, put about a third of each into hedge funds, private equity and similar assets, far more than competing funds did, and fell behind.

The lower courts dismissed the case because the workers had not named a "meaningful benchmark": a better-performing fund with similar objectives, risks and potential rewards. The Court will decide whether a suit built on a fund's underperformance must allege one. The Eighth and Ninth Circuits require it; the Sixth has refused.

The committees' brief (Intel itself is not a party): "That duty is a duty of process, not performance." It says that after the 2008 crash the funds were set up to reduce swings and large losses, and that participants were told the funds "would not compare favorably with equity-heavy funds during bull markets". The United States, with Labor Department lawyers on its brief, agrees that a plaintiff "must measure the fund's performance against a meaningful benchmark".

The workers call the rule "a solution in search of a problem" that ignores even the benchmarks Intel's own fiduciaries identified. The committees answer that letting such suits through costs savers too, because plans can pass litigation costs on to them.

The ruling will not set what a retirement fund must earn. It sets how much a saver must show before a suit gets past its first stage.

Detonations on a Guam beach

Since 1982 the Air Force has held a hazardous-waste permit to destroy old munitions by open detonation at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam's northern coast. It applied to renew in 2021. Guam's environmental agency has not decided, and the old permit stays in force in the meantime.

Prutehi Guahan, whose members include CHamoru families and landowners near the range, sued, arguing that the National Environmental Policy Act required the Air Force to study the effects and the alternatives first. Its brief puts the range about 50 yards from the Pacific, above an aquifer that supplies drinking water to over 80 percent of the island's people, and says the application calls for detonating about 30,000 pounds of munitions a year.

The Court will decide whether the application is "final agency action" that can be challenged now, and whether the environmental review law applies when the hazardous-waste law has a review of its own. The government cites an Environmental Protection Agency rule that such permits "are not subject to the environmental impact statement provisions", and says the Air Force has not been asked for such a study on any renewal since 1982. The group points to 2023 amendments under which another law displaces the review only if it says so or clearly conflicts.

The questions reach beyond Guam: the government says the same agency has authorized nearly all states, the District of Columbia and Guam to run these programs.

The week after

On October 13, Beaird v. United States, No. 25-5343, asks whether a 1993 decision, Stinson v. United States, still correctly states how much deference courts owe the commentary to the federal Sentencing Guidelines. The government supports vacating the judgment below, and the Court invited a lawyer, Anthony J. Dick, to argue that Stinson still does. On October 14, Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459, asks whether a video company's newsletter subscriber is a protected "consumer" under the Video Privacy Protection Act.

How to follow it

Live: arguments start at 10 a.m. Washington time. The Court live-streams the audio on its website and posts the recording and a transcript the same day.
In person: seats go through an online lottery, which the Court calls a pilot, or first come, first seated.

What the record does not say

How any case comes out. An argument decides nothing, and this record predicts nothing.
Whether the facts are true. The fund, benefits and Guam figures come from the parties' briefs, untested at trial.
Which bill Boulder means. Hugin did not identify or read the legislation its brief mentions.
Everything filed. Hugin read parts of the merits briefs, not the replies, the lower-court opinions or most of the 100-plus friend-of-the-court briefs.
Who will argue. The Court's hearing list for the session was not found today.