State Court Cases to Look for in 2025

State courts are poised to issue major rulings in 2025 on issues including abortion, criminal justice, voting rights, education, and more. Here are some of the cases we’ll be watching this year. 

Abortion 

Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that there is no federal constitutional right to abortion, reproductive rights cases have been among the highest profile litigation to weave their way through state courts. This year brings a new crop of cases. 

One of the most interesting is Kaul v. Urmanski, which asks the Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide whether a 176-year-old law bans abortion. (Should the court find that it does, another case — Planned Parenthood v. Urmanski — will determine whether such a ban would violate the state constitution.) The case could echo last year’s Arizona decision upholding an 1864 law banning abortion, which set off what the New York Times called “a political earthquake.”

A looming Wisconsin Supreme Court election adds intrigue. The state’s progressive majority — and, perhaps, the outcome of this case — is at stake in the April race.

Several other pending abortion cases are notable because they involve novel legal theories. For example, a group of religious women claim that Indiana’s near-total abortion ban substantially burdens their religious exercise. And women in Wyoming argue that a ban violates a 2011 GOP-backed amendment, passed to limit the reach of the Affordable Care Act, protecting the right to make one’s “own health care decisions.” The Wyoming plaintiffs prevailed at the trial level, and the Indiana trial court enjoined the abortion ban in advance of a decision on the merits. 

An abortion-related case in Texas tests the bounds the power of states to project laws across their own borders. In Texas v. Margaret Daley Carpenter, the state attorney general sued a New York doctor for remotely prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texans. As University of California Davis School of Law professor Mary Ziegler details in a recent State Court Report piece, the case pits Texas’s stated “interests in protecting unborn life” against New York’s “constitutional protections for reproductive liberty and equality.” 

Finally, a challenge to Georgia’s six-week abortion ban is headed to the state supreme court. In Georgia v. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the plaintiffs argue that Georgia’s law violates state due process, equal protection, and inherent rights clauses. A lower court struck down the ban; the state supreme court stayed that decision pending appeal. 

Criminal justice

This month, the Michigan Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in several cases urging it to expand protections against life-without-parole sentences for youth. These cases are part of an accelerating trend among state supreme courts to shield children and “emerging adults” — young people who have recently turned 18 — from the harshest prison sentences, even when the federal Constitution would allow them. 

The Michigan high court will also consider the constitutionality of mandatory life-without-parole sentences for so-called felony murder — a conviction for a death caused during the commission of a felony, even if the defendant didn’t mean to kill. Last fall, Pennsylvania’s supreme court heard arguments in a similar case, Commonwealth v. Lee. A ruling by either state that such sentences violate their respective constitutions would break new ground. 

Voting rights and redistricting 

The Washington Supreme Court is considering a dispute over how state election officials review voter signatures on mail ballots, while appeals are expected in challenges to voter ID requirements and restrictions on voter registration activities in Missouri. Among other issues, the cases raise questions over the level of scrutiny that courts should apply to laws that burden the right to vote — which can determine whether such laws are upheld, as Brennan Center senior counsel Eliza Sweren-Becker has previously written. 

State supreme courts are set to consider whether alleged partisan gerrymandering and racially discriminatory map drawing violate state constitutions. In South Carolina, a lawsuit is asking the supreme court to declare the 2022 congressional map unconstitutional because it was drawn to favor Republicans. And in Black Voters Matter v. Byrd, voting rights groups claim that Florida’s congressional map was designed to harm Black voters.

Education

Multiple state supreme courts are set to define the right to an adequate public education — a right that exists in some form in every state constitution. 

The New Hampshire Supreme Court will decide whether the base amount the state spends per student — $4,100 — is enough to meet its state constitutional obligations. A lower court calculated that the state must spend at least $7,356 per child.

The North Carolina Supreme Court is expected to overturn a 2022 ruling that state courts can order the legislature to allocate funds to meet its educational obligations. The court’s decision to rehear the case after two new justices joined the court in 2023 raises questions about respect for precedent — especially in a state where judges are elected and court majorities can regularly shift. 

Gun rights 

State courts also continue to grapple with the proper application of U.S. Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. This month, the Washington Supreme Court will consider whether the state’s ban on large-capacity magazines is unconstitutional. In defense of the ban, the state argues that such weapons are military-style accessories, not constitutionally protected arms, and that gun rights are subject to reasonable regulation pursuant to the state’s police power — including public safety measures to curb mass shootings.

Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot is the managing editor of State Court Report and a senior counsel in the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. 

Suggested Citation: Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot, State Court Cases to Look for in 2025, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Jan. 16, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/state-court-cases-look-2025