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On Monday the US Supreme Court returns for a new term, where they'll have a laundry list of cases on their plate from the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

The 5th Circuit, populated with a majority of judges appointed by Republicans, six by former President Donald Trump, has established itself as a stalwart bastion of conservatism, propelling several high-profile cases to the Supreme Court's docket. This encompassing wave includes cases dissecting federal regulatory power, the second amendment, regulation of social media, and possibly even revisiting the issue of abortion, Bloomberg reports.

5th Circuit Trump-appointed Judges such as James Ho, Cory Wilson, and Stuart Kyle Duncan, are all notoriously conservative, and their decisions that have sparked significant debates – such as the upholding of a Texas law permitting private enforcement of a six-week abortion ban and the repeated blockage of Democratic immigration initiatives.

Judge James Ho in 2022.Photographer: Michelle McLoughlin/Reuters

Ho, for example, has called abortion a "moral tragedy," and has written that "if there is too much money in politics, it’s because there’s too much government."

In 2019, the 5th Circuit struck down a key provision of Obama's Affordable Care Act, which was later rejected by the pre-Trump Supreme Court.

That said, even the newly 'conservatized' (for various values) US Supreme Court has also rejected several 5th Circuit positions – more recently partially rejecting their positions in seven of nine cases, including over President Joe Biden's deportation policies and a Native American adoption law.

Notable upcoming challenges will include a case which tests the limits of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen v. New York decision, which held that the Second Amendment requires any restrictions to have a "historical analogue" which fit within America's tradition of firearms regulation – something the 5th Circuit's Judge Cory Wilson said the government hadn't successfully proven in the case of people bound by domestic violence restraining orders.

The Supremes will also contend with federal regulation, such as the CFPB, which Wilson opined was in violation of the constitutional clause requiring congressional appropriation for government spending – the first such ruling from an appeals court that has invoked the appropriations clause as a restriction for funding an agency vs. simply arguing against executive branch overreach.

"Some of the 5th Circuit’s decisions that will be reviewed this term may well be affirmed," said  Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown Law Center. "Not every one of them was delivered from Crazytown. But it would be shocking if at least some of those decisions are not reversed."