The Supreme Court’s fall term opens Monday with a number of cases that could have a significant impact on religious freedoms. In the last few years, the Supreme Court has hesitated to make specific rulings on many controversial cases due to precedent, leaving the door open for those issues to fester in the lower courts and eventually make their way to the highest court in the land for consideration.

“I can’t recall a time in the last 20 years that there were this many key issues ready for a decision,” said Mark Rienzi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, on a recent press call. Becket has represented a number of influential religious liberty cases, including those involving the Little Sisters of the Poor.