What This Year's U.S. Supreme Court Term Means for State Courts 

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A big part of understanding state courts and constitutions is grappling with how they interact with federal law. This year’s blockbuster Supreme Court term, which concluded last week, has serious implications for how state courts do their work and whether and how they can fill federal rights gaps. Here are some of the highlights.

In several cases, the Court limited federal rights or remedies in a manner that will almost certainly shift rights battles to the states.

Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections hasn’t received as much attention as some other end-of-term cases, but it holds major significance for federal civil rights protections. In Landor, the Court further cut back on the availability of damages remedies for certain civil rights violations. Damon Landor, a Rastafarian inmate, claimed that guards forcibly shaved his head in knowing violation of his religious beliefs. Such conduct is prohibited by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), which provides religious freedom protections for incarcerated people. 

But the Court held that under statutes like RLUIPA, which impose legal requirements on state institutions as a condition of receiving federal funds, individual employees can’t be held liable unless they’ve consented to be sued. The result is sharply limited remedies when rights under RLUIPA are violated. Landor also leaves vulnerable many other statutory protections rooted in Congress’s spending power. 

This is an area, however, where state law can help fill the gap. Many states already offer stronger protections for religious liberties than the U.S. Constitution, under either their individual constitutions or state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, which exist in some form in 29 states. But these protections don’t always translate to damages remedies. For example, while federal law provides for a cause of action when state officials violate the U.S. Constitution, only eight states have a similar law for violations of state constitutions. (Some courts have also recognized the availability of damages remedies even absent a statute.) The remedies vacuum created by Landor introduces new urgency for robust state protections.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia v. B.P.J., the Court ruled that neither Title IX nor the federal Equal Protection Clause bars states from blocking transgender female students from playing on female sports teams. This ruling comes on the heels of the Court’s decision last term in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld a state ban on gender-affirming care for minors. 

As in Skrmetti, the Court punted on the question of whether discrimination against transgender individuals triggers any heightened review under the Constitution. However, whereas in Skrmetti the Court ruled that the challenged laws didn’t classify by sex or transgender status, in B.P.J. it recognized a classification but concluded that the sports bans survived even so-called intermediate scrutiny. The Court’s B.P.J. ruling may herald weaker federal civil rights protections overall: In a partial dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the decision had weakened the standard for evaluating sex classifications more broadly.

B.P.J. highlights the limited federal protections for transgender people, but state courts remain able to interpret their state constitutions to provide more robust protections. In Montana, for example, the state supreme court applied strict scrutiny — the most stringent form of review — to uphold a preliminary injunction blocking a state ban on gender-affirming care for minors. A lower court in Kansas also temporarily blocked a state ban, and state supreme courts in North Dakota and Ohio are currently hearing challenges. Other states have rejected such claims. 

I’ve already written about the aftermath of Louisiana v. Callais, the Court’s April ruling that rewrote (and effectively eviscerated) key portions of the Voting Rights Act. With no federal limits on partisan gerrymandering and vanishingly few remaining federal protections against discriminatory maps, Callais thrusts state courts to the center of battles over redistricting. We’re already seeing a post-Callais surge in state redistricting litigation. 

Another set of post-Callais legal battles relates to campaigns for state constitutional amendments, as several Democratic-controlled states are seeking to amend their constitutions to make it easier to gerrymander. Just last week, the Colorado Supreme Court blocked five redistricting ballot initiatives that proponents were seeking to put on the November ballot. 

Finally, the Supreme Court also issued rulings that limited state laws or foreclosed state litigation. One highlight is Wolford v. Lopez, in which the Court struck down under the Second Amendment a Hawaii law that barred the concealed carry of handguns on private property that is open to the public without the property owner’s express permission. 

Under our federal system, the Second Amendment trumps contrary state law, but state courts still have a role to play. Notably, the Hawaii Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms and has sharply criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence and its use of originalist methods. For those critical of the Supreme Court’s recent approach to constitutional interpretation, states can model a different path.

Alicia Bannon is editor in chief for State Court Report. She is also director of the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Suggested Citation: Alicia Bannon, The Interaction Between State Courts and Federal Law, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (July 8, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/interaction-between-state-courts-and-federal-law