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. Justice Scalia, who died midway through the previous term, had a significant influence on the law in his nearly thirty-year career on the bench, and his colleagues noted his absence in several tributes to the late Justice in the year that followed. Moreover, because Justice Scalia's eventual successor was not seated until the end of the October 2016 term, the Court's most recent term was the first since 1987 to commence with a Court composed of fewer than nine active Justices. 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. Beyond the volume of the Court's workload, the overall nature of cases on its docket appeared relatively less high profile than in prior terms. During the 2014 and 2015 terms, for example, the Supreme Court issued major rulings on often-contentious issues like same-sex marriage, affirmative action, and abortion. A number of legal commentators have noted that, in contrast, the October 2016 term simply did not include any cases that would tend to generate a comparable level of interest from the general public , notwithstanding potential opportunities for the High Court to rule on such cases. Perhaps because of the recent composition of the Court and the nature of its docket, the latest term witnessed the issuance of a notable number of unanimous opinions. In fact, all of the Justices agreed on the final judgment of the Court in 59% of the opinions issued during the October 2016 term, a feat surpassed only one other time during the Roberts Court era—the October 2013 term (when the Court unanimously agreed on a final judgment in 66% of cases). 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. The Court also considered cases involving criminal law and procedure, including several cases touching on racial bias issues in the criminal justice system. And the Court rendered three potentially important rulings related to the legal standards for determining whether race impermissibly predominates a state legislature's redistricting decisions. 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. Matal v. Tam (formerly Lee v. Tam ) involved a dispute at the intersection of First Amendment and trademark 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. While Tam involved the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO's) refusal to register the mark "THE SLANTS" on the grounds that it may be disparaging to Asian Americans, the decision has broader implications for trademark law as well as the Court's free speech jurisprudence. The Lanham Act specifies the various requirements for registering a trademark. Section 2(a) prohibits the registration of a mark that "[c]onsists of or comprises immoral, deceptive, or scandalous matter; or matter which may disparage or falsely suggest a connection with persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute." To make this determination, the PTO considered the content of the trademark, "the likely meaning of the matter in question," and, if the meaning of the mark "is found to refer to identifiable persons, whether that meaning may be disparaging to a substantial composite of the referenced group." The circumstances underlying the Tam litigation began in 2006, when Simon Tam started an Asian American dance-rock band called "The Slants," a name he selected in an attempt to reclaim or reappropriate Asian stereotypes. In 2011, Tam sought to register the mark "THE SLANTS," but the PTO denied the application on disparagement grounds. Tam appealed the PTO's rejection to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit). While a three-judge panel affirmed the PTO's disparagement determination and rejected Tam's constitutional challenge on First Amendment grounds as "foreclosed by our precedent," the court sitting en banc subsequently held, "[t]he government regulation at issue amounts to viewpoint discrimination, and under the strict scrutiny review appropriate for government regulation of message or viewpoint, we conclude that the disparagement proscription of § 2(a) is unconstitutional." In so holding, the court explicitly overruled long-standing circuit precedent. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard arguments on January 18, 2017. The sole question before the Court was whether the disparagement provision is facially invalid under the First Amendment. The PTO raised three arguments in defense of the disparagement clause: (1) trademarks are not private speech, but are instead the speech of the government (i.e., government speech) that the Court has recognized can favor a particular viewpoint; (2) trademarks are government-subsidized speech for which the government can make content-based distinctions; and (3) the disparagement clause "simply defines the criteria for participation in the government's voluntary trademark-registration program" for which it "has significant discretion" to determine the criteria for inclusion. In the alternative, the PTO argued that, if trademarks are not government speech, they are merely commercial speech. For his part, Tam argued that the disparagement clause violates the First Amendment "because it imposes a significant viewpoint-based burden on speech." To Tam, the clause "permits the registration of marks that express a positive or neutral view of a person, but bars the registration of marks that express a negative view." Furthermore, Tam asserted that "[t]he denial of registration is a serious burden" because those trademark applicants whose viewpoint is not approved by the PTO are denied the benefits of trademark registration. The Supreme Court's opinion in Tam , authored by Justice Alito, held that the disparagement provision violates the Free Speech Clause because "[i]t offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend." Elaborating on this point in a later part of his opinion, Justice Alito (on behalf of four Justices) remarked that the disparagement clause "evenhandedly prohibits disparagement of all groups. It applies equally to marks that damn Democrats and Republicans, capitalists and socialists, and those arrayed on both sides of every possible issue." However, Justice Alito concluded, "in the sense relevant here, that is viewpoint discrimination: Giving offense is a viewpoint." In concluding that the disparagement provision violated the First Amendment, the Court held that it was "far-fetched to suggest that the content of a registered mark is government speech," which is exempt from free speech scrutiny under the First Amendment. The Court observed that "[t]he Federal Government does not dream up these marks, and it does not edit marks submitted for registration." Comparing trademarks to monuments donated to a public park (the subject of Pleasant Grove City v. Summum ) and specialty license plates (the subject of Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. ), both of which have been held to be government speech, the Court held that trademarks constitute private speech because (1) they do not have a history of use by the government to convey messages to the public; (2) the government does not maintain direct control over the messages conveyed; and (3) the public does not "associate[] the contents of trademarks with the Federal Government." Finally, pointing to a variety of registered trademarks communicating a range of viewpoints and opinions, the Court noted that, if trademarks are considered government speech, "the Federal Government is babbling prodigiously and incoherently. It is saying many unseemly things. It is expressing contradictory views. It is unashamedly endorsing a vast array of commercial products and services.