If there’s one thing everyone can agree on about the Supreme Court, it’s that the current term is a blockbuster. The top court is back to a full bench of nine judges, and ready to rule on what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described as a “momentous” series of cases.
The article is part of the Fortune 2018 Crystal Ball, our predictions for the year ahead. Find the whole list here.
Here are three predictions on how the justices will rule:
Unions
The Supreme Court will strike another blow to the power of unions by ruling—in a case known as Janus—that government workers may opt out of mandatory dues collection.
Partisan gerrymandering
The court’s key swing-vote, Anthony Kennedy has a flair for the dramatic. Fortune will go on a limb to predict he will cast the deciding vote in a 5-4 ruling in Gill v. Whitford that will declare the redrawing of election districts for political purposes to be unconstitutional.
Cell phone privacy
The Supreme Court may just be the least tech-savvy institution in America, but the Justices in recent years are coming to recognize the privacy threats of ubiquitous smartphone use. In Carpenter v. United States, Fortune predicts the court will require cops to get a warrant if they to determine a suspect’s location based on his or her phone records.
A version of this article appears in the Dec. 1, 2017 issue of Fortune as part of the Fortune 2018 Crystal Ball package. Click here to see our full list of predictions.
