T he Supreme Court term that began on October 3, 2016, was notably different from recent terms at the High Court. Perhaps most conspicuously, the October 2016 term was the first term in three decades to begin without Justice Antonin Scalia on the Court. And, with the appointment and confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in April 2017, the October 2016 term was also notable in that it marked the first term since 2010 in which a new Justice joined the High Court. Court observers have suggested that the lack of a fully staffed Supreme Court for the bulk of the last term likely had an impact on the Court's work. The Court issued seventy written opinions during the October 2016 term and heard oral arguments in sixty-four cases. These numbers constitute the lightest docket for the Court since at least the Civil War era. Notwithstanding the volume and nature of the docket for its most recent term, the October 2016 term featured consideration of numerous cases on matters of potential significance to Congress's work, especially in several discrete areas of law. Of note, of the seventy opinions issued during the last term, more than 10% were on matters related to intellectual property law. While a full discussion of every ruling from the last Supreme Court term is beyond the scope of this report, Table 1 provides brief summaries of the Court's written opinions issued during the October 2016 term. The bulk of this report highlights four particularly notable cases the Court heard and ruled on during the October 2016 term: (1) Matal v. Tam , which examines the interplay between the First Amendment and trademark law; (2) Sessions v. Morales -Santana , a case exploring the relationship between immigration law and the Court's Equal Protection jurisprudence; (3)  Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer , the latest chapter in the Court's Free Exercise jurisprudence; and (4) Ziglar v. Abbasi , a case limiting the types of damages claims that can be asserted against federal officers for alleged constitutional violations under the Bivens doctrine. Each case is addressed in a separate section below, which (1) provides background information on the case; (2) summarizes the arguments that were presented to the Court; (3) explains the Court's ultimate ruling; and (4) examines the implications that the Court's ruling could have for Congress, including broader ramifications for jurisprudence in a given area of law. According to the Supreme Court's opinion in Tam , a federal law prohibiting the registration of trademarks that "may disparage" any "persons, living or dead" violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. In Morales-Santana , however, the Court ruled that a gender-based distinction in the derivative citizenship rules—under which persons born abroad to a U.S. parent may have U.S. citizenship automatically conferred at birth—violated equal protection requirements. Religious Freedom: Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer

In its final decision of the term, the Supreme Court decided Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer , a case examining the constitutionality of a state policy that prohibited the distribution of public funds to religious entities. Federal Courts and Civil Rights: Ziglar v. Abbasi

In Ziglar v. Abbasi , a consolidated case in which only two-thirds of the bench participated, the Supreme Court, using language that may curb a wide range of damages lawsuits against government actors, ruled 4-2 against extending the judicially created Bivens remedy to certain claims brought by unlawfully present aliens challenging their detention following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The Supreme Court term that began on October 3, 2016, was notably different from recent terms at the High Court. It was the first term (1) in thirty years to begin without Justice Antonin Scalia on the Court; (2) since 1987 to commence with a Court made up of fewer than nine active Justices; and (3) since 2010 in which a new member (Justice Neil Gorsuch) joined the High Court. Court observers have suggested that the lack of a fully staffed Supreme Court for the bulk of the last term likely had an impact on the Court's work both with regard to the volume of cases that the Court heard and the nature of those cases. The Court issued seventy written opinions during the October 2016 term and heard oral arguments in sixty-four cases, numbers that constitute the lightest docket for the Court since at least the Civil War era. Moreover, unlike in recent terms where the Court issued opinions on matters related to abortion and affirmative action, the Court's docket for the October 2016 term had comparatively very few high-profile issues.
Nonetheless, the October 2016 term featured a number of cases on matters of potential significance to Congress's work, especially with respect to discrete areas of law. In particular, the Court issued several notable opinions in the areas of intellectual property law, criminal law and procedure, and redistricting. While a full discussion of every ruling from the October 2016 term is beyond the scope of this report, Table 1 provides brief summaries of the written opinions issued by the Court during the last term. Instead, this report focuses its discussion on four particularly notable cases the Court ruled on during the October 2016 term: (1) Matal v. Tam; (2) Sessions v. Morales-Santana; (3) Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer; and (4) Ziglar v. Abbasi.
In Matal v. Tam, a dispute at the intersection of First Amendment and trademark law, the Court concluded that a federal law prohibiting the registration of trademarks that "may disparage" any "persons, living or dead" violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. In a case with potentially significant implications for immigration law, the Supreme Court, in Sessions v. Morales-Santana, ruled that a gender-based distinction in the derivative citizenship rules—under which persons born abroad to a U.S. parent may have U.S. citizenship automatically conferred at birth—violated equal protection requirements. In one of the most closely watched cases of the term, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, the Court invalidated on free exercise grounds a state grant policy that strictly prohibited the distribution of public funds to religious entities on free exercise grounds. Finally, in Ziglar v. Abbasi, the Supreme Court ruled against extending the judicially created Bivens remedy to certain unlawfully present aliens challenging their detention during investigations following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. The discussion of each of these cases (1) provides background information on the case being discussed; (2) summarizes the arguments that were presented to the Court; (3) explains the Court's ultimate ruling; and (4) examines the potential implications that the Court's ruling could have for Congress, including the ramifications for the jurisprudence in a given area of law.