But most of the known litigants and lawyers in the transgender sports, coordinated political spending, and birthright citizenship cases are not here today. (I didn’t put it past President Donald Trump to show up today knowing that the birthright decision was coming, but it is not on his schedule.)

An exception is the U.S. solicitor general’s office, which customarily attends opinion announcements. Solicitor General D. John Sauer again leads several members of his office into the courtroom, as he did yesterday. Sauer argued Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case that is the most anticipated opinion yet to be announced.

Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris, who argued National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, for overturning the coordinated spending limits, is also here today. I’m not as sure about Hashim Mooppan, the other principal deputy solicitor general. He argued Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., as an amicus in support of the two states (Idaho and West Virginia) defending their laws barring transgender girls and women from female athletics.

There are a few other familiar faces. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s mother, Martha Kavanaugh; wife, Ashley Kavanaugh; and at least one of his daughters and possibly both, are in the justices’ guest box. Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife, Jane Roberts, also takes a seat in the box.

Predictions in the Press Room this morning lean toward Kavanaugh having perhaps the transgender sports cases and the political spending case and the chief justice having birthright citizenship. (Also, that France will defeat Sweden in the World Cup Round of 32 game this evening.)

It will mostly turn out to be a day of no surprises, though we’ll have to wait on the World Cup. And the day isn’t over yet.

When the court takes the bench for the last time this term, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch are absent. Alito was out yesterday. Some colleagues note that Gorsuch has a book event for his Heroes of 1776 children’s book (with co-author Janie Nitze) scheduled for today at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. There is a daylong schedule of events, though the book reading with the co-authors is not until this evening. Maybe they are traveling to Mount Vernon on horseback and had to get an early start.

Roberts announces that Kavanaugh has the opinion in West Virginia v. B.P.J. “and the consolidated case.” These are the transgender sports cases, and since the West Virginia and Idaho cases (Little v. Hecox) were argued separately, and the Idaho case had some thorny procedural side issues, there was some question whether there would be one opinion or two.

Kavanaugh begins with a discussion of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs.

“Title IX has transformed sports,” he says, only slightly varying his opening observation of his written opinion that the law “promoted equal opportunity for female student-athletes and has facilitated the extraordinary growth of women’s and girls’ sports over the last 54 years.”

He looks to his family members. Kavanaugh notably coached his daughters in basketball and supported their other athletic pursuits.

Kavanaugh goes into some detail outlining the main holdings, first that Title IX allows schools to provide separate women’s and men’s sports teams “defined by biological sex,” and that West Virginia (the only case of the two raising the Title IX issue) has permissibly maintained female sports for “biological females” consistent with the statute.

Both states’ cases raise the question of whether their laws violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, and Kavanaugh says they did not.

He emphasizes a point he made at oral argument, that competitive sports are “zero sum” and “allowing a biological male athlete to compete on a girls’ team necessarily displaces or disadvantages a female athlete—replacing her on the roster, knocking her out of the starting lineup, reducing her playing time, depriving her of a medal.”

Kavanaugh says female athletes no less than males care deeply about sports, spending hours training, fighting through injuries, and scrapping for playing time in the hopes of putting “a trophy on the shelf.”

He sounds a bit like the coach he has been when he talks about athletes learning to “win with class” and “lose with grace.”

The two states here, along with 25 others, the International Olympic Committee, the NCAA, and other sports bodies “have concluded at this time that women and girls should be allowed to compete for those life-changing opportunities on an equal playing field, without fear of physical injury from biological males or being forced to compete against biological males,” he says.

Kavanaugh eagerly makes “one last point.” Most of transgender student-athletes involved in these disputes are teenagers “who want to play sports.” “Their desire to compete warrants respect,” and they should not be ostracized or vilified, he says.

He notes that Justices Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch have filed concurring opinions, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor has filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Jackson has her own opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.)

The “concurring in part” is a mystery that is soon answered by Sotomayor herself, delivering her third dissent from the bench in the past week.

She says she agrees with the majority on Title IX but on “narrower grounds.” The dissent is focused on the equal-protection question for the West Virginia transgender athlete who has come forward as Becky Pepper-Jackson but is addressed in the opinions as B.P.J.

B.P.J. is a teenager who cares about family and math and science and likes to play Minecraft and Overwatch, Sotomayor says, going into some detail of her desire to compete in sports starting in 5th grade even as she dealt with gender dysphoria.

Sotomayor stresses that no court below has ruled on the question of whether transgender female athletes who, like B.P.J., did not go through male puberty have an athletic advantage.

The majority’s opinion “is unencumbered by fact or law,” she says.

The majority “extends sympathy to those it favors” – cisgender female, she says, while it “inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors.”

She concludes, after nearly 13 minutes, by saying that she along with Kagan and Jackson “respectfully dissent.”

The chief justice announces that Kavanaugh has the opinion in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC. Kavanaugh has a thorough, 10-minute summary of this case, which involves overruling a 2001 decision in Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, a case in which Thomas wrote a dissent that now “has been vindicated.”

With the transgender decision still sinking in and the birthright opinion looming, some in the courtroom seem to be less than rapt in attention for this case, no matter its importance for campaign finance. Ashley Kavanaugh begins looking up at the courtroom friezes as her husband goes on, and she is not the only one.

Kavanaugh wraps up by noting that Kagan has the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson.

Roberts then announces that he has the opinion in Trump v. Barbara. No one is surprised.

He begins with another Semiquincentennial Minute, discussing how the story of citizenship in the United States begins with English common law and that before the American Revolution, the colonists were considered subjects of the sovereign.

The king’s claim of allegiance of the people was based on protection, and with allegiance came the status of natural-born subject.

“This view crossed the Atlantic” with the colonists and was adopted “after the Revolution,” he says.

But this view of birthright citizenship was “put in doubt” by the court’s “odious decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford,” Robert adds.

“The court had overruled the common law, but the people—eventually—would overrule the court,” he continues, noting that it took more than a decade and such Civil War battles as "Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville” to finish the job.

To me, it appears that Roberts chokes up a little at the mention of these battles.

Roberts seizes the opportunity to cite Chief Justice John Marshall, in his 1812 opinion in Schooner Exchange v. McFadden on the scope of “jurisdiction.” He adds that the 1898 case ofUnited States v. Wong Kim Ark “confirms this rule” that children born here satisfy both elements of the citizenship clause: they are “born … in the United States” and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

He spends a few minutes picking apart the government’s arguments, before concluding that “we break no new ground today.” (The line is apparently not in the written opinion.)

Roberts explains that Jackson has a concurring opinion in which Sotomayor has joined in part. Kavanaugh has an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Thomas has a dissent joined by Gorsuch, while Alito and Gorsuch each have separate dissents.

Thomas’ 91-page dissent is a doozy, but he rarely has read a dissent from the bench, and he does not do so today.

Roberts moves on to closing ceremonies, noting that an orders list will be issued at noon today and then thanking the Supreme Court bar, the court’s staff and, per tradition, retiring employees. There are nine that he will recognize today, though none is a justice, despite the drama that will soon unfold over an errant news report about Alito retiring.

The chief justice recognizes “from chambers” La Randa Mayes, Amy Vargo, and Linda Stout; police Corporal Kevin Schlanger; and from the Office of Information Technology Kraig Krist and IT Director Charles “Chip” Gerald, who gets nods of appreciation from a few of the justices.

Second to last on the chief’s list is Ella Cole, who retired at the end of March after 39 years of service at the Supreme Court, “five more than John Marshall,” Roberts says to laughter.

Cole corralled reporters up to the courtroom for most of those years and is beloved in the Press Room. It would not surprise us if she had wrangled her fellow retirees to enter the courtroom single file today.

Roberts seems especially enthusiastic about the ritual this year, citing each name again preceded by Mr. or Ms. before wishing them well in their retirement.

With that, Marshal Gail Curley bangs her gavel and the seven justices here today retreat behind the curtains.

The opinions reflect three divergent accounts of the constitution. The Roberts majority treated birth in the United States, coupled with subjection to U.S. sovereign authority, as enough to establish citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The principal dissents focused on a more demanding concept of allegiance, especially for children of temporary visitors and unlawfully present parents. Kavanaugh’s middle position would have sided with the challengers to Trump’s order but avoided the majority’s broader constitutional holding as to every child of unlawfully or temporarily present parents.

The outcomes, however, are only part of the story. The justifications and rationales are also important. In that regard, the opinions differ sharply in length, vocabulary, precedent use, and conceptual structure. The following breaks down these elements.

Opinion lengths

The length distribution shows how much of the case’s written law is in dissent. The Roberts majority was 7,801 words, or a relatively small 13.8% of all authored-opinion words. The Thomas dissent alone was 27,477 words, or 48.5% of the authored-opinion total. Alito added another 11,594 words, or 20.5%, and Gorsuch added 820 words, or 1.4%. Together, the three dissents accounted for 39,891 words, approximately 70.5% of the authored text.

That imbalance affects how the decisions flow. The controlling opinion is relatively compact, while the dissents supply most of the historical excavation and counter-history. Thomas’ dissent was more than three-and-a-half times the length of the Roberts majority. The Jackson concurrence, at 6,323 words, was almost as long as the majority itself, while Kavanaugh’s separate opinion was much shorter at 2,603 words.

Concepts

The graph above groups terms into broader categories rather than counting individual words in isolation. The sharpest difference is the territorial/common-law frame. In the Roberts majority, territorial/common-law terms (that is, the nature of birthright citizenship at the founding) accounted for 29.5% of such concepts in his opinion, with 76 mentions. In the dissents, the same accounted for only 9.3%, with 133 mentions.

The dissents devoted a larger share of their vocabulary to domicile (where one makes their permanent home), exclusive allegiance, immigration status, and tribal-citizenship exception analogies. Domicile/exclusive-allegiance terms made up 35.8% of the mix, with 512 mentions, compared with 31% and 80 mentions in the Roberts majority. Immigration-status terms were also more prominent in the dissents: 23.5% of dissent mentions, compared with 16.7% in the majority.

Term counts in opinions relative to oral arguments

The raw term counts show the vocabulary that dominated both the opinions and the argument, and in turn their reasoning. Across the authored opinions, unsurprisingly, citizen/citizenship appeared 1,021 times, far more than any other term. Domicile-related terms were next at 397, followed by jurisdiction at 255, Indian/tribal terms at 201, and temporary/sojourn at 179.

The oral argument anticipated many of those same terms: in other words, the topics raised at oral argument were predictive of the eventual decision. Several terms stand out. Citizen/citizenship, again, unsurprisingly, sits at the top of both the argument and opinion counts. Domicile also carried over strongly from argument to opinion. By contrast, common law reflected a term that was central to the majority’s reasoning but did not dominate the overall written record in raw-count terms.

Term use in majority and dissenting opinions

The majority/dissent frequency comparison shows where the Roberts majority and the dissents diverged most. The Roberts majority used common-law terms at 59 mentions per 10,000 words, compared with only 1.8 per 10,000 words in the combined dissents. Jus soli (Latin for “right of the soil”) showed the same directional pattern: 9 per 10,000 words in the majority, compared with 0.5 in the dissents.

The dissents moved in the opposite direction on domicile and immigration-status language. Domicile-related terms appeared 363 times in the combined dissents, or 91 per 10,000 words, compared with 30 times in the Roberts majority, or 38.5 per 10,000 words.

Allegiance is the notable counterexample. The Roberts majority used allegiance much more intensively than the dissents. That supports the point that the majority did not avoid allegiance; it defined allegiance through birth, protection, and territorial jurisdiction rather than through parental domicile or exclusive national allegiance.

Precedent use across opinions

The graph above shows that the 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark (in which a person born in the United States to parents of Chinese descent was held to be a citizen) was the central authority across the case, but each opinion used it differently. The Roberts majority cited or referenced Wong Kim Ark 16 times. Thomas referenced it a striking 49 times, and Alito referenced it 24 times. Both distinguished this case, and argued that Wong Kim Ark, if anything, supported their positions. Kavanaugh’s separate opinion had the highest relative mention of this precedent (17 times) given the briefness of his opinion, in which he argued that Wong Kim Ark was not inconsistent with his view that birthright citizenship was not constitutionally guaranteed.

The other precedents reveal the opinions’ different historical emphases. The Roberts majority relied heavily on the 1844 case of Lynch v. Clarke (a New York case holding that the child of a temporary visitor was a citizen), with 13 references, and the 1812 case of Schooner Exchang v. Fadden (concerning the “jurisdiction of a nation within its own territory”), with seven. Thomas’ dissent cited Dred Scott 31 times and Lynch 25 times, while also leaning on Elk v. Wilkins (concerning Native American citizenship) 14 times. Jackson’s concurrence was more Reconstruction- and caste-focused, with five references to Dred Scott and three to Plessy v. Ferguson. Gorsuch’s short dissent referenced Wong Kim Ark three times and Plessy once.

Summing it up

So what does it all mean? The structure of the opinions in Trump v. Barbara track their content. The Roberts majority is brief and rule-oriented, focused on the common law, jus soli, territorial jurisdiction, and a version of allegiance grounded in sovereign protection. That pattern shows a majority opinion organized around continuity: the citizenship clause is treated as carrying forward a settled birth-on-soil principle, with narrow historical exceptions.

The dissents are much longer and a good deal more sweeping. Their language concentrates heavily on domicile, foreign allegiance, and immigration status, reflecting an effort to rebuild the doctrine around a narrower conception of national membership.

The precedent patterns point in the same direction. Both sides return repeatedly to Wong Kim Ark, which functions as the shared center of gravity rather than as a one-sided authority. The disagreement, which shows the malleability of precedent, lies in what that case means.

Ultimately, the majority’s supporting citations emphasize common-law and territorial authorities. The dissents give more weight to cases and examples that make jurisdiction look less automatic. In that sense, the opinions do not merely disagree over the result; they assemble different legal worlds from much of the same source material.

The announcement came as part of a list of orders from the justices’ conference on Monday, June 29. That conference, which is colloquially known as the “clean-up conference,” has traditionally served as an opportunity for the justices to dispose of any petitions for review that may have been on hold until they issued opinions on the merits in cases presenting similar issues. But in recent years, the court has also used the conference as one last opportunity to add new cases to its docket for the following term, as it did on Tuesday.

The Supreme Court last year turned down a request to weigh in on a challenge to the constitutionality of a Maryland law banning semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15. Three justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch – indicated in Snope v. Brown that they would have granted the challengers’ petition for review, while a fourth justice – Brett Kavanaugh – described the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upholding the ban as “questionable.” Kavanaugh wrote that the Supreme Court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.”

Just over a year later, Kavanaugh’s prediction came to fruition. In a brief order on Tuesday, the justices agreed to take up both an Illinois man’s challenge to Cook County’s ban on semiautomatic rifles and a challenge by gun owners and gun-rights groups to a similar law in Connecticut. The cases will be argued together, most likely in the fall.

The Illinois case was brought by Cutberto Viramontes, who went to federal court in Chicago in 2021 to argue that the county’s prohibition violates his Second Amendment right to bear arms. The lower courts upheld the law, pointing to a 2023 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Bevis v. City of Naperville that rejected a similar challenge. In Bevis, the 7th Circuit explained in Viramontes’ case, the court of appeals had ruled that the plaintiffs seeking preliminary relief had not shown “that the covered firearms materially differed from machineguns and military-grade weaponry, which the Supreme Court instructed can be banned under the Second Amendment.” And nothing in the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment cases, the 7th Circuit continued, provided any reason to overrule Bevis.

Viramontes came to the Supreme Court in August, asking the justices to take up his case. He argued that the court should “guarantee fundamental Second Amendment rights and … address the confusion in the lower courts over how to apply this Court’s precedent in arms bans cases—precedent that is straightforward but that the lower courts have proven incapable of applying correctly.”

Cook County urged the justices to deny review, pointing to what it characterized as the lethality of assault rifles and the absence from the record in the case “of even a single instance in which assault weapons were ever used in lawful self-defense.” And that lethality, the county continued, also “deter[s] effective, prompt law enforcement intervention” when such weapons are used in mass shootings. But in any event, the county concluded, this dispute is not an appropriate one to address the legality of the ban on semiautomatic rifles because Viramontes “simply did not bother to compile a record sufficient to support his constitutional challenge,” opting instead to “lose fast and seek review in” the Supreme Court.

Connecticut passed the law at the center of Grant v. Higgins in the wake of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a 20-year-old, after killing his mother at her home, murdered 20 first-graders and six adults.

A federal court in Connecticut turned down the challengers’ request to temporarily block the state from enforcing the ban, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld that ruling. It reasoned that the ban “impose[s] targeted restrictions on unusually dangerous weapons while preserving numerous legal alternatives for self-defense and other lawful purposes.” Moreover, it added, it “impose[s] a burden comparable to historical antecedents that regulated other unusually dangerous weapons unsuitable for and disproportionate to the objective of individual self-defense.”

The challengers came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to decide whether the ban can stand. They argued that, under the court’s prior decisions, “a firearm cannot be banned if it is in common use for lawful purposes. If the most popular rifle in the country is not in common use,” they said, “it is hard to see what that phrase could possibly mean.”

The state countered that the prevalence of semiautomatic rifles does not mean that they are immune from restrictions. “The Second Amendment,” it argued, “does not bar states from banning particularly dangerous weapons that are neither used nor useful for self-defense just because manufacturers flood the market before states respond. That is especially true when the weapons’ unique dangers are brought to the fore by new societal developments nobody predicted when the technology came out, like the current mass shooting epidemic.”

The justices turned down a group of requests to weigh in on the constitutionality of restrictions on the gun rights of young people under the age of 21. The challengers had argued that such restrictions violate the Second Amendment rights of 18- to 20-year-olds. Thomas indicated that he would have granted review in one of those cases – West Virginia Citizens Defense League v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, involving a federal law that bans the commercial sale of handguns to anyone under the age of 21.

The justices apparently did not act on other gun-rights cases that it had been considering at its conferences for several months, involving challenges to bans on large-capacity magazines – that is, devices that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition that can be fed into a semi-automatic weapon.

In addition to the gun-rights cases, the justices also granted review in two additional cases: Grand v. City of University Heights, in which an Orthodox Jewish man in Ohio is asking the court to revive his religious-discrimination lawsuit against city officials who told him he needed a permit to host a prayer group in his home; and Apple v. Epic Games, in which Apple has asked the court to weigh in on how clear a court order must be before a litigant can be held in contempt for violating it.

Finally, the court turned down the Trump administration’s request to clear the way for it to fire the top U.S. copyright official, Shira Perlmutter, after a lower court ordered the government to temporarily reinstate her.

The head of the U.S. Copyright Office is known as the Register of Copyrights, and she is the primary adviser to Congress on copyright issues. The Register of Copyrights is housed within the Library of Congress; she is appointed by the Librarian of Congress, who is in turn nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve a 10-year term.

Perlmutter went to federal court, seeking to block her removal. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., turned down her request for an order that would temporarily reinstate her while her challenge to her firing continued. But in an order on Sept. 10, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted that request, and on Monday the Supreme Court declined to intervene. In a brief, unsigned order, the court indicated that its decision not to interfere “is not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a major ruling on money in elections. By a vote of 6-3, the justices struck down a federal law that limited the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for office. The majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, agreed with the challengers that the coordinated expenditure limits violate the First Amendment.

Tuesday’s decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission overruled the court’s 2001 decision in Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, in which the court – then by a vote of 5-4 – upheld the same limits.

Writing for the court, Kavanaugh said that Tuesday’s ruling “treats all political parties equally. It will allow all political parties—including the DNC and RNC and the respective Senate and House campaign committees, as well as other parties and party committees—to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process, and to coordinate more closely with their candidates.”

In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan argued that the majority’s opinion “rewrites the rules, to allow circumvention of the contribution limits.” In so doing, she said, “the majority … jettisons a rule needed to protect our democracy’s integrity.”

The expenditure limits at the center of the case are part of the Federal Election Campaign Act. In 2022, four challengers – then-Sen. J.D. Vance, then Rep. Steve Chabot (a Republican from Ohio), and the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee (which focus on electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate and House, respectively) – went to federal court in Cincinnati. They argued that the coordinated party limits violate the First Amendment by (among other things) preventing the committees from working with candidates to ensure that their advertisements have the same political message.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld the restrictions. Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton acknowledged that the challengers had made “fair points,” but he concluded that the court of appeals was bound by the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2001 Colorado case.

When the challengers asked the Supreme Court to review the 6th Circuit’s decision, the Trump administration agreed that the restrictions violate the First Amendment, and it urged the justices to weigh in. With the federal government no longer defending the limits, the court appointed Roman Martinez, a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts and then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to do so.

In his opinion for the majority, Kavanaugh explained that under the Supreme Court’s current campaign finance cases, the only rationale for campaign-finance restrictions is to prevent “quid pro quo” corruption – that is, “contributions in exchange for official action.” Supporters of the coordinated-expenditure limits, Kavanaugh noted, insist that those limits must remain in place to prevent donors from circumventing the limits on contributions by donating money to a political party and then instructing the political party to use that donation “in order to support a particular candidate—a practice referred to as ‘earmarking.’”

But there are other measures in place to prevent such circumvention that do not restrict speech in the same way that the coordinated-expenditure limits do, Kavanaugh emphasized: the base limits on contributions, federal laws that treat “earmarked” contributions as contributions to a candidate, and federal disclosure laws. Moreover, Kavanaugh added, most states do not impose these kinds of coordinated-expenditure limits in their elections, but “‘no evidence of corruption’ via circumvention ‘has materialized.’” By contrast, Kavanaugh wrote, the coordinated-expenditure limit “imposes a severe and direct restriction on free speech and infringes fundamental First Amendment values. Otherwise stated, the restriction on political-party coordinated expenditures” does not pass the stringent constitutional test: it “is ‘disproportionate’ and is not ‘necessary’ and ‘narrowly tailored’ to the Government’s interest in preventing circumvention of the base contribution limits.”

Kavanaugh rejected arguments that the court should adhere to its decision in the 2001 case, comparing that ruling to “a three-legged stool where all three legs have already been knocked out.” The rationale of that decision, he said, “has been rejected by subsequent cases and is no longer good law in light of the Court’s more recent precedents.”

Kagan argued in her dissenting opinion that the court’s ruling “ushers in the same opportunities for quid pro quo corruption that the contribution limits were meant to check.” “As a result,” she wrote, “a donor will be able to give a party as much as half a million dollars (as compared to the $7,000 he can give directly to the candidate) to cover the candidate’s bills. And the candidate can seek just such a donation.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that states can exclude transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports teams. The justices ruled unanimously that laws enacted by Idaho and West Virginia do not violate federal civil rights laws, but they divided over whether the West Virginia law violates the Constitution, at least with regard to the athlete in the case before the court.

In his 29-page opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “[c]onsistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the States may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex. The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, contended that “the majority extends great sympathy to those it favors: the young cisgender girls and women who play sports. I share that sympathy. Playing sports can lead to benefits that are immeasurable, and many are understandably invested in ensuring that competition stays fair and safe. Because the majority, however, inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions, I respectfully dissent.”

The court’s decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox came just over a year after the Supreme Court, also by a vote of 6-3, upheld a Tennessee law banning the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy by transgender teenagers.

Tuesday’s ruling centers on two laws that limit participation on women’s and girls’ teams. Idaho enacted the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in 2020. The law bars transgender women and girls from participating on any women’s and girls’ sports teams in public schools, from elementary school through college. Idaho was the first state to pass such a law; since then, 25 other states have enacted similar bans.

The West Virginia Legislature passed that state’s law, known as the Save Women’s Sports Act, in 2022. The law prohibits transgender women and girls from participating on women’s and girls’ sports team in public secondary schools and colleges.

There are two challengers in two separate cases, which were argued on the same day in January. One challenger is Lindsay Hecox, who filed this lawsuit because she wanted to try out for the women’s track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. Hecox did not make the NCAA teams at BSU but competed in women’s soccer at the club level.

The other challenger is Becky Pepper-Jackson, identified in court filings only as B.P.J., a 15-year-old high school student who has publicly identified as female since the third grade. Pepper-Jackson takes medicine to stave off the onset of male puberty and has also begun to receive hormone therapy with estrogen. Pepper-Jackson’s mother, Heather Jackson, went to federal court in West Virginia when she learned that her state’s law would bar Pepper-Jackson from participating on the girls’ middle school sports teams.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed with Hecox that the Idaho law violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal treatment and prohibited Idaho from enforcing the ban. The court of appeals reasoned that the Idaho law was intended “to categorically ban transgender women and girls from public school sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.” The law also discriminates on the basis of sex, the lower court ruled, because athletes on girls’ and women’s teams are subject “to invasive sex verification procedures to implement that policy,” while athletes on boys’ and men’s teams are not.

A federal appeals court in Richmond also barred West Virginia from enforcing its law. Specifically, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that West Virginia’s law violates Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding, because it discriminates against Pepper-Jackson on the basis of sex.

Writing for the court, Kavanaugh made several overarching points. First, he emphasized, men and women have “inherent physical differences” that are “relevant to athletic performance” – for example, “height, weight, strength, speed, endurance, and jumping ability.” As a result of these differences, “forcing female athletes to compete against males can create significant safety risks” in contact sports. Moreover, he added, “in virtually all competitive sports, forcing female athletes to compete against males can undermine competitive fairness.” As a result, he said, “schools therefore typically maintain separate women’s and men’s sports teams.”

These points provided the underpinning for Kavanaugh’s conclusion that the Idaho and West Virginia laws do not violate Title IX or the Constitution. First, he explained, Title IX bars “discrimination on the basis of sex,” and the regulations that implement the law “expressly permit schools to maintain separate teams for ‘members of each sex.’” When both the law and the regulations refer to “sex,” he wrote, they mean “biological sex,” because that was the “ordinary meaning” of the word when they were enacted in the 1970s. Indeed, he continued, “the Title IX regulations allowed separate sports teams precisely because of the biological differences between the sexes.”

Kavanaugh pushed back against Pepper-Jackson’s suggestion that interpreting the regulations to bar transgender women and girls from women’s and girls’ sports teams would not be “reasonable” and would therefore violate such a requirement imposed by a 1974 amendment to Title IX. “Separate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable” in light of the differences between men and women and the effects of those differences, Kavanaugh wrote. And as evidence of that reasonableness, he noted that “27 States, the NCAA, the” U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and the International Olympic Committee “have all drawn the same line.”

“Whether biological males may participate on women’s and girls’ sports teams may be a debated policy question. But the legal question for Title IX purposes is whether West Virginia may limit women’s and girls’ sports teams to biological females. As a matter of text and history, West Virginia may do so,” Kavanaugh concluded.

Kavanaugh relied on many of the same points in determining that the Idaho and West Virginia laws do not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment. Because “the laws limit women’s and girls’ sports teams to biological females,” Kavanaugh explained, they are subject to a constitutional test known as “intermediate scrutiny,” which requires the states to show that a classification based on sex “is ‘substantially related’ to achieving an ‘important’ government objective.”

Both states’ laws do this, Kavanaugh wrote: the states have “interests in safety and competitive fairness,” which they promote by “limiting women’s and girls’ sports to biological females.” This is true, Kavanaugh continued, even when the effect of the classification is to exclude transgender athletes who “have taken puberty blockers or hormones” and therefore may not pose the same risks to fairness and safety. “Especially in the sports context,” Kavanaugh wrote, “an enormous practical and administrability problem would arise if courts suddenly had to make such individualized exemptions.” “The legislatures and the schools are better equipped—and under the Constitution, are the more appropriate entities—to assess the competing medical and scientific considerations and draw appropriate lines,” Kavanaugh stressed.

More broadly, Kavanaugh stated that “the underlying medical and scientific premise of” that argument is “the subject of ongoing medical and scientific debate.” “States and leading athletic organizations disagree with the plaintiffs,” Kavanaugh said, “and have concluded that biological males still retain a physical advantage after taking puberty blockers and hormones.”

Kavanaugh concluded with a paean to sports and, in particular, women’s sports. “Sports,” he wrote, “are highly competitive and generally zero sum. At almost every turn, someone wins and someone loses. Every athlete who makes a team takes a roster spot from another athlete. Every player who earns playing time reduces the playing time of a teammate.” Female athletes, he contended, “care deeply about all of those things.”

Justice Clarence Thomas joined the Kavanaugh opinion but also penned a brief solo concurring opinion. “Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls,” Thomas wrote, “even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immutable, ‘biological’ characteristic; it is binary; and ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘boy’ and ‘girl,’ are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex. To use language to obscure reality—to show ‘indifference regarding the truth’—is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens ‘as equal[s].’”

Justice Neil Gorsuch concentrated on Congress’ enactment of Title IX using its powers under the Constitution’s spending clause, which gives it the power to spend money to provide for the “general Welfare of the United States.” Although that provision allows Congress to put conditions on the funds that it allocates to others, Gorsuch explained, the recipient of those funds “must ‘”voluntarily and knowingly”’ assent to those conditions for them to bear any legal force.” Moreover, Gorsuch continued, “Congress must ‘clearly and unambiguously’ specify the conditions it expects the funding recipient to follow.” In this case, Gorsuch said, “[n]othing in Title IX clearly and unambiguously alerts funding recipients that they are prohibited from restricting a school-sponsored sports team to biological women or girls.”

In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor agreed that West Virginia’s ban does not violate Title IX. She explained that, when Pepper-Jackson has agreed with the state that “sex” means “‘biological sex’ or sex identified at birth,’” there is no violation because the state can create sports teams based on sex. But she would have upheld the lower court’s ruling and sent the case back for more fact-finding related to Pepper-Jackson’s constitutional claim. That “unresolved factual dispute” over whether athletes like Pepper-Jackson, who have never gone through puberty, are “similarly situated to cisgender girls” is actually an important part of whether excluding them from participating in sports advances the state’s interests and therefore whether the state’s ban can pass constitutional muster.

“Because of the Court’s decision today,” Sotomayor concluded, “West Virginia, and any other state actor, can deny B. P. J. and others like her” the benefits of playing sports “simply because it thinks they have an inherent athletic advantage, even if the facts show that they do not. In the end, to the Court,” Sotomayor argued, “the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to virtually everyone born in the United States. In a decision by Chief Justice John Roberts, in Trump v. Barbara, the justices agreed with the challengers, as well as all of the lower courts around the country that have considered the issue, that Trump’s order cannot be reconciled with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which confers citizenship on anyone “born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Writing for the majority, Roberts emphasized that the “children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States” “satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause.” “Under the Constitution,” he concluded, “they are citizens at birth.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito called the ruling both “one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court” and “a serious mistake.” “Careful analysis of the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the process that led to its adoption,” Alito argued, “shows that it does not degrade the concept of United States citizenship in this way. Instead,” he contended, “the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country.”

Trump issued the executive order at the center of the case on Jan. 20, 2025, shortly after he was sworn into office for a second term. It provided that babies who are born in the United States to parents who are in this country either illegally or temporarily are not automatically entitled to citizenship.

Although Trump’s order was slated to go into effect 30 days after he signed it, it never did. Instead, several federal judges across the U.S. prohibited the Trump administration from enforcing the order while challenges to it moved forward in court.

Faced with the prospect that Trump’s order could be on hold indefinitely, the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court last spring, asking the justices to weigh in on whether the lower courts can issue “universal” or “nationwide” injunctions – orders that bar the enforcement of laws or policies anywhere in the country. By a vote of 6-3, in Trump v. CASA, the court ruled that they cannot.

After the Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting universal injunctions, cases challenging the merits of Trump’s order continued in the lower courts. On July 10, a federal judge in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction that blocked the government from enforcing the order against a class of babies born after Feb. 20, 2025, who are or would be denied U.S. citizenship by the order. U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante concluded “that the Executive Order likely ‘contradicts the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the century-old untouched precedent that interprets it.’”

The Trump administration then appealed to the Supreme Court on Sept. 26, asking it to review Laplante’s ruling without waiting for a federal appeals court to weigh in. The justices granted the government’s request on Dec. 5, and the case was argued on April 1.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision. Roberts explained that under early English law, children who were born in Britain automatically became British subjects. “This view crossed the Atlantic with the colonists—and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” Roberts observed. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was adopted to repudiate the Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that a Black person whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as enslaved persons was not entitled to any protection from the federal courts because he was not a U.S. citizen. In so doing, Roberts wrote, the framers of the amendment intended to “permanently enshrine” the existing understanding of birthright citizenship. “A child born on American soil and subject to American law was made an American citizen.”

The Supreme Court then reaffirmed that principle in 1898 in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to parents of Chinese descent. When he returned to the United States from a visit to China in 1895, immigration officials would not allow him to enter the country on the ground that he was not a U.S. citizen. “What the Court held in Wong Kim Ark was simple,” Roberts stressed: “the Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States. Not surprisingly, then, in the 128 years since, we have repeatedly understood the rule” of that case “to guarantee citizenship to all children born in the United States and subject to its power.”

Roberts rejected the government’s argument that, even if birthright citizenship was the norm in early U.S. history, by the time the 14th Amendment was enacted, the key question was whether a child owed “primary allegiance” to the United States, which in turn hinged on “domicile” – the place where someone has a permanent home. As an initial matter, Roberts said, “there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view.” But in any event, he added, if Congress “intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design.”

“Citizenship, then and now,” Roberts concluded, “was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the result that the court reached – that the president’s executive order is invalid – but not its reasoning. In his view, Trump’s order “does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment” but does violate a federal law providing that children who are “born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are U.S. citizens. Congress, Kavanaugh suggested, “could amend” that law “or otherwise enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. But,” he noted, “Congress has not yet done so.”

Justice Clarence Thomas penned a lengthy dissent, which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined. He called the majority’s account “not historically accurate” and said that it “adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”

Gorsuch also wrote a separate brief dissent, in which he appeared to suggest that Trump’s executive order might violate the Constitution as it applies to the children of undocumented immigrants who intend to live in the United States permanently. “If those parents are not domiciled here,” Gorsuch queried, “then where are they domiciled? And if the answer is nowhere,” he continued, “how can we reconcile that conclusion with this Court’s longstanding recognition that every person is domiciled somewhere?” Because the challengers in this case have argued that Trump’s order is invalid in all circumstances, rather than just some, Gorsuch explained, “these questions may not be properly before us. But their answers are undeniably important to a Nation committed to a view of citizenship open to all children born here to parents who can call this country their home.”

The court has four cases left to decide: Trump v. Barbara (birthright citizenship); West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox (transgender athletes); and National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission (Campaign Finance). For a refresher on these cases, see the Closer Look section below.

On a (somewhat) separate note, do you know an exceptional lawyer looking for something different? We're hiring to help build a new editorial product serving appellate lawyers, corporate counsel, and commercial litigators. If you have a federal clerkship and significant appellate or commercial litigation experience, send a brief note explaining why you're interested, along with your resume, to scotusblog@thedispatch.com.

At the Court

On Monday, the court released its opinions in four cases: Trump v. Slaughter, Trump v. Cook, Watson v. Republican National Committee, and Chatrie v. United States.

• In Slaughter, the court, by a vote of 6-3, held that the Federal Trade Commission’s for-cause removal provision violates the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
• In Cook, the court denied the Trump administration’s request to be allowed to remove Federal Reserve System Governor Lisa Cook from office while her challenge to her firing continues. Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett wrote dissenting opinions. Alito’s dissent was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
• In Watson, the court held, by a vote of 5-4, that the federal Election-Day statutes do not require mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day in order to be counted. Barrett wrote the majority opinion, and Alito wrote a dissenting opinion, joined in full by Thomas and Gorsuch and in part by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
• In Chatrie, the court held that police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Okello Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cellphone location information. Kagan wrote the majority opinion, Gorsuch wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment, and Alito and Barrett wrote dissenting opinions.

Earlier on Monday, the court added six cases to its oral argument docket for the 2026-27 term and denied review in President Donald Trump’s appeal of a $5 million judgment against him in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll. For more on Monday’s order list, see the Morning Reads and On Site sections below.

Late Monday morning, Thomas denied Roy Moore’s request to block a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit from going into effect. Moore had contended the lower court’s ruling needed to be put on hold to ensure he would be able to recover the $8.2 million that a jury awarded him if he ultimately prevails in the case.

Also on Monday, eight of the nine justices released their financial disclosures for 2025. (Alito was granted an extension, so his will come later this year.) Find Amy’s coverage in the On Site section.

Morning Reads

As Nerves Fray at Supreme Court, Some Pine for an Old Colleague With a Soft Touch

James Romoser, The Wall Street Journal (paywalled)

As tensions appear to rise at the Supreme Court, “several current justices have privately expressed that they miss [the] presence” of retired Justice Stephen Breyer, “both as a friend and for his ability to lower the temperature,” according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited “people close to the court.” During his 28 years as an associate justice, Breyer “could be counted on to help keep the peace,” in part by “lightening the mood” using “anecdotes about modern architecture and knock-knock jokes he learned from his grandchildren.” “[S]ome within and around the court saw him as the court’s glue, bringing levity in his interactions with his colleagues and avoiding hard-edge commentary in his opinions. His embrace of collegiality helped contribute to a sense that the court was a functional, collaborative institution, even when it was divided over tough cases.”

Supreme Court won’t revive Alan Dershowitz’s $300 million suit against CNN

Lindsay Whitehurst, Associated Press

The court on Monday refused “to revive a $300 million defamation lawsuit filed against CNN over its coverage of a prominent attorney’s remarks made while defending President Donald Trump during his 2020 impeachment,” according to the Associated Press. “Alan Dershowitz said the news network aired only a portion of the comment made during his defense of the president, distorting his meaning to make him look like he’d ‘lost his mind.’” “In his appeal, Dershowitz had urged the court to reconsider New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,” a “landmark First Amendment case that made it harder for public figures to win libel lawsuits.” Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the denial, in an opinion joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Supreme Court rejects legal battle over New York's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers

Melissa Quinn, CBS News

On Monday, the court denied a petition for review “involving New York’s now-repealed mandate for healthcare workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic,” according to CBS News. “The dispute arose after the New York Department of Health issued an emergency rule in 2021 that required all licensed healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. ... A group of employees at New York healthcare facilities sought religious exemptions from the vaccine mandate,” then sued when their requests were denied and they were then fired. “The workers, who are unnamed in court papers, argued that their employers’ refusal to grant exemptions violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination because of religion.” “A federal district court tossed out the case, and an appeals court upheld that decision.”

On Site

Opinion Analysis

Supreme Court allows Trump to fire FTC commissioner and overturns major restraint on presidential power

The Supreme Court on Monday gave President Donald Trump sweeping new authority over approximately two dozen multi-member agencies. By a vote of 6-3, the justices struck down the for-cause removal provision protecting FTC commissioners and overruled its 91-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

Opinion Analysis

Court prevents Trump from firing Fed governor

On Monday, the court ruled in favor of Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors whom Trump had attempted to fire. By a vote of 5-4, the court held that Cook can continue to remain in her job while her challenge to Trump’s efforts to fire her moves forward.

Opinion Analysis

Justices uphold state law allowing for late-arriving mail-in ballots

Just over four months before the 2026 midterm elections, the court on Monday upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by, and received within five days of, Election Day.

Opinion Analysis

Court rules that law enforcement’s use of “geofence warrant” was a “search”

On Monday, the court ruled that when law enforcement officials used a “geofence warrant” – a warrant that instructed Google to provide location data for cellphone users who were near a particular place during a specific time period – to obtain evidence used to convict a Virginia man of a 2019 bank robbery, they conducted a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.

Court News

Court agrees to hear six new cases, including dispute over proof of citizenship to vote

The court on Monday added six new cases to its argument docket for the 2026-27 term. The announcements came as part of a list of orders from the justices’ private conference on June 25, which was the final regularly scheduled conference before the justices’ summer recess. The justices met again on Monday and are expected to release orders from that conference sometime this week.

Court News

Supreme Court will not consider $5 million verdict against Trump

The court will not hear an appeal by President Donald Trump seeking review of the $5 million jury verdict entered against him in the sexual abuse and defamation case filed by journalist E. Jean Carroll. His petition for review was conferenced by the justices for the first time on June 25 after being scheduled for a February conference and then rescheduled more than a dozen times.

Court News

Justices’ financial disclosures reveal Bad Bunny concert tickets, plenty of travel in 2025

Justice Sonia Sotomayor received concert tickets valued at more than $4,000 from the record company that represents the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny, while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson received a painting for her chambers valued at $2,500. Those gifts, along with other details about the justices’ book deals, travel, and teaching gigs, were made public in the justices’ annual financial disclosures, which were released on Monday.

View from the Court

250th birthday minutes on the bench

In his View from the Court column, Mark Walsh explained what it was like in the courtroom on Monday as the court released its decisions on mail-in ballots, the president’s removal powers, and geofence warrants. He highlighted the justices’ use of brief historical lessons in their recent opinion summaries.

A Closer Look

The Final Four Cases

As noted above, the court has indicated that today will be the final opinion announcement day for the current term. There are four cases yet to be decided, including Trump v. Barbara, on President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.

Here’s a brief refresher on these final four cases.

Trump v. Barbara

In Barbara, the court is considering a challenge to Trump’s birthright citizenship order, which he signed on Jan. 20, 2025, and which said that, beginning in 30 days, babies born in the U.S. would not be automatically entitled to citizenship if their parents are in the country either illegally or temporarily. The court is weighing whether the order violates the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment and/or a federal immigration law that codifies that clause.

Trump’s order has never gone into effect, as challenges to it were filed almost immediately, and every lower court that has weighed in so far has ruled that it is unconstitutional. Last term, the court addressed one aspect of the dispute in Trump v. CASA, holding that district courts did not have the power to issue universal injunctions putting the order on hold nationwide. However, the court left open the possibility of similar preliminary injunctions in class-action lawsuits, which explains why the order has remained on hold.

By taking up Barbara, the court agreed to squarely address the order itself. The Trump administration contends that the executive order simply “restores the original meaning” of the citizenship clause, while the challengers counter that the administration “is asking for nothing less than a remaking of our Nation’s constitutional foundations.” At oral argument on April 1, the court appeared likely to side with the challengers and prevent the order from going into effect.

West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox

In B.P.J. and Hecox, the court is considering laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prohibit transgender athletes from competing on women’s and girls’ school sports teams. The cases are closely related, but they were not consolidated for argument, likely because the lower court ruling in Hecox centered on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, while the lower court ruling in B.P.J. centered on Title IX, a federal civil rights law that bars sex discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding.

During oral arguments on Jan. 13, the states – which claim they are not discriminating against transgender athletes and are, instead, seeking to preserve fairness and safety in sports – appeared likely to prevail. The lingering question was how narrow the court’s ruling would be.

National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission

In NRSC v. FEC, the court is revisiting the thorny issue of campaign finance restrictions. The case, like 2001’s FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee before it, addresses limits on the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for office. The court has been asked to strike down those limits and potentially overrule that 2001 decision.

The challengers, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, assert that the limits on coordinated spending violate the First Amendment. The Trump administration supports their position, so the court appointed Roman Martinez, a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts and then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to offer an opposing view. Martinez contends that the NRSC and NRCC did not have a right to sue or the right to avail themselves of the expedited review that the challengers sought.

At oral argument on Dec. 9, it was unclear how the court would rule, in part because Justice Neil Gorsuch did not ask any questions, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked only one.

SCOTUS Quotes

“To ‘discharg[e] the duties of his trust,’ the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”

— Chief Justice John Roberts in Trump v. Slaughter  (2026)

“The [majority’s] result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before. It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him. In granting the President this unbridled authority, the Court upends its precedent, misconstrues our history, and sheds any pretense of judicial modesty.”

— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting in Slaughter

Every summer, before the justices leave town for the Supreme Court’s recess, they have one last impromptu conference in which they consider – and usually dispose of – all the cases relisted after their last scheduled conference. In recent years, that “mop-up” or “clean-up” conference has overwhelmingly  happened the day the court hands down the last opinions of the term. This year, it happened the day before the court handed down the last cases.

The court had just 30 petitions and applications before them at the conference. Ten of them were new relists. Given the volume of cases and the shortness of time until the court will be issuing its next order list, I will have to be extremely summary.

Another round of gun cases?

The court was holding a number of cases for United States v. Hemani, which held that prohibiting a marijuana user from possessing firearms violated the Second Amendment. These cases all concerned whether laws prohibiting people under the age of 21 from possessing firearms violate the Second Amendment. They are National Rifle Association v. Glass, McCoy v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, West Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Bivens v. Second Amendment Foundation, and Picon v. United States.

After Hemani was decided, they released those holds and considered these cases at the June 25 conference. That would frequently be enough if the court was simply going to grant the petitions, vacate the judgment below, and remand to the lower courts for further consideration in light of Hemani. Maybe the justices simply need more time to decide what to do, or maybe they’ve decided Hemani won’t provide sufficient guidance to the lower courts and they need to grant review in one of the new cases.

Appeal waiver mop-up cases

These are not the most glamorous cases, but they’re thematically related. On the same day Hemani was decided, the court also decided Hunter v. United States, holding that agreements criminal defendants make with the government not to appeal sentences are unenforceable when they would result in a “miscarriage of justice.” Yesterday, the court GVR’d scads of petitions for further consideration in light of Hunter. But it needs a little more time with two of the cases, Jones v. United States and . . . Jones v. United States. I’m not being careless (or at least not just being careless) – these really have the same caption. Nothing jumps out of the petitions from the Jones twins suggesting that the court will need to grant review to finish the work it started in Hunter; I think they probably just need more time because of some particular aspect of those cases.

An Epic sequel

Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc. is the latest chapter in the antitrust fight Epic launched over the App Store back in 2020. After a 2021 trial, the district court enjoined Apple under California’s unfair-competition law from barring app developers from telling customers about, and linking them to, cheaper ways to pay than through in-app purchases. The Supreme Court denied review of that injunction in 2024. Apple then filed a notice of compliance: it permitted links but imposed a 27% commission on link-out purchases and fenced them in with design and placement rules. The district court found that maneuver to be in civil contempt – and referred Apple and a testifying executive to federal prosecutors over testimony it considered false. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the contempt finding while sending the precise commission remedy back to the district court.

Apple’s petition raises two questions about the equitable power of the federal courts. The first is whether a party can be held in contempt for violating the “spirit” of an injunction that is silent about the conduct at issue, or whether contempt requires violating an order that clearly and unambiguously forbids it – a point on which Apple says the circuits are divided. The second is whether the 9th Circuit carved out an antitrust exception to last term’s Trump v. CASA by allowing an injunction Epic obtained for itself alone to sweep in millions of nonparty developers. Because the parties greatly expedited cert briefing to permit a decision before the court’s summer recess (the petition, opposition, and reply were filed in under three weeks), would-be amici largely had to sit this case out, but Apple points to the heavy amicus turnout in the court of appeals as a measure of the importance of the issues.

Another pork case

The court also has another challenge to a state pork-sales law. Triumph Foods v. Campbell involves Massachusetts’ law barring the sale of pork from breeding pigs confined in ways the state deems cruel. That obviously echoes National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, but this case comes in a somewhat different posture: The challengers include a federally regulated pork processor and farmers, and their lead argument is that Massachusetts’ law is preempted by the Federal Meat Inspection Act because it forces federally inspected facilities to segregate, track, process, and certify compliant pork. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit rejected that argument, reasoning that the law is a sales restriction rather than a regulation of slaughterhouse operations, and also rejected the challengers’ dormant commerce clause theories (barring states from restricting interstate commerce). Triumph has also asked the court at least to GVR in light of the recent decision in Monsanto v. Durnell, which construed similar “in addition to or different from” preemption language.

Praying for a grant

Finally, Grand v. City of University Heights is a religious-land-use case that began as a pro se petition but has since attracted enormous amicus support and a counseled reply by heavy hitter Josh Rosenkranz. Daniel Grand is an Orthodox Jew, and his faith requires him to pray with a group of 10 men. Because he cannot drive on the Sabbath, he invited others to his home for a minyan. After a neighbor complained, the city sent a cease-and-desist letter and told him he needed a special-use permit for a “place of religious assembly.” Grand applied, then withdrew the application, and the lower courts held his First Amendment and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act claims unripe because the city never finally denied the permit. Grand asks whether the usual land-use finality requirement applies to claims that zoning threats chilled his religious exercise, or whether the injury was complete once the city told him to stop holding prayer gatherings at home.

That’s likely to be it for this term. Thanks for reading all these months. Hope to see you back here in the fall!

New relists

National Rifle Association v. Glass, 24-1185

Issue: Whether Florida’s law banning 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing firearms violates the Second Amendment.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

McCoy v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, 25-24

Issues: (1) Whether federal laws banning 18- to 20-year-olds from purchasing handguns from federally licensed firearm dealers violates the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep arms; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit erred by finding that the district court's certification of a nationwide class action pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(b)(2) constituted an abuse of discretion because the district court’s certification came after it granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs but prior to its issuance of a final order.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

West Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, 25-132

Issue: Whether a federal law that bans licensed sales of handguns and handgun ammunition to law-abiding 18-to-20-year-old adults violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Jones v. United States, 25-524

Issue: Whether the only permissible exceptions to a general appeal waiver are for claims of ineffective assistance of counsel or that the sentence exceeds the statutory maximum.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Grand v. City of University Heights, Ohio, 25-965

Issue: Whether the First Amendment's established chilling-effect doctrine, under which a credible government threat that deters the exercise of fundamental rights constitutes a complete and independently actionable constitutional injury, is displaced by Williamson Cty. Planning v. Hamilton Bank’s land-use finality requirement when a plaintiff alleges that government threats both before and after a Planning Commission meeting chilled religious exercise, worship, and assembly.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Triumph Foods, LLC v. Campbell, 25-1047

Issues: (1) Whether the Federal Meat Inspection Act imposes additional or different – even if non-conflicting – requirements on pork producers, and is thus preempted by the FMIA under principles of express or implied preemption; and (2) whether the FMIA violates the dormant commerce clause or the other constitutional doctrines sufficiently pleaded in the complaint.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc., 25-1311

Issues: (1) Whether a court may hold a party in civil contempt based on a violation of an injunction’s “spirit” where the injunction is silent as to the conduct upon which contempt is based, or, instead, whether a court must ground a finding of civil contempt on the violation of an order that clearly and unambiguously proscribes the precise conduct at issue; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has properly created an “antitrust” or “competition” exception to Trump v. CASA, Inc., and the longstanding equitable principles on which CASA rests, or otherwise disregarded CASA’s limits.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Bivens v. Second Amendment Foundation, 24-1329

Issue: Whether firearms laws imposing a minimum age of 21 violate the purported Second Amendment rights of 18-to 20-year-olds.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Picon v. United States, 25-5713

Issue: Whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms applies fully to 18-20-year-olds.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Jones v. United States, 25-6136

Issues: (1) whether the appellate review waiver in petitioner’s plea agreement bars his claim of constitutional error under United States v. Davis; and (2) whether petitioner’s appellate-review waiver is unenforceable under the miscarriage-of-justice exception.

(Relisted after the June 25 conference.)

Returning Relists

Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. Washington, 25-153

Issue: Whether ammunition feeding devices with the capacity to hold more than ten rounds are “Arms” presumptively entitled to constitutional protection under the plain text of the Second Amendment.

(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, and June 25 conferences.)

Duncan v. Bonta, 25-198

Issues: (1) Whether a ban on the possession of exceedingly common ammunition feeding devices violates the Second Amendment; and (2) whether a law dispossessing citizens, without compensation, of property that they lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the takings clause.

(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, and June 25 conferences.)

Viramontes v. Cook County, 25-238

Issue: Whether the Second and 14th Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.

(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, and June 25 conferences.)

National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont, 25-421

Issue: Whether a ban on the possession of AR-15-style rifles and firearm magazines with a capacity in excess of 10 rounds violates the Second Amendment.

(Relisted after the Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, and June 25 conferences.)

Grant v. Higgins, 25-566

Issue: Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the AR-15.

(Relisted after the Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, June 18, and June 25 conferences.)

Carroll, a journalist known for writing a popular advice column for Elle for 27 years, filed her lawsuit in 2022. She alleged that Trump had sexually abused her in a dressing room at a New York department store in 1996 and that he had defamed her in a 2022 social media post calling her accusations, among other things, a “complete con job” and a “Hoax.” Carroll relied on a New York state law enacted that year, which gave adult victims of sexual abuse one year to sue their abusers, even if it would have otherwise been too late to do so.

A jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and awarded her $5 million. Trump appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which upheld the verdict and later declined to reconsider the case.

Trump came to the Supreme Court in November 2025, asking the justices to weigh in. Emphasizing that he had “clearly and consistently denied that this supposed incident ever occurred,” Trump contended that the lower courts should not have allowed Carroll’s lawyers to introduce three pieces of evidence: testimony by two women, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, who alleged in 2016 that Trump had assaulted them – on an airplane in 1979 and at Trump’s home in Florida in 2005; and the “Access Hollywood” tape – a 2005 recording that surfaced shortly before the 2016 election, in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.

Carroll countered that the 2nd Circuit had held, and Trump does not contest, that even if the district court had been wrong to admit the three pieces of evidence, it ultimately wouldn’t have made a difference “taking the record as a whole and considering the strength of Ms. Carroll’s case.” Therefore, she argued, the Supreme Court should deny review.

Trump’s petition for review was initially slated for consideration at the justices’ private conference in late February, but the justices did not actually consider it until last week, when they denied it without comment.

The court granted six petitions for review, on topics ranging from election law to parental rights. They are:

• RiseandShine Corp. v. PepsiCo, involving whether a trademark’s “inherent strength” is a question of law, which a judge decides, or instead a question of fact, which is normally decided by a jury.
• Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission, involving how to determine “just compensation” when a private entity uses the federal power of eminent domain to obtain rights of way to construct natural gas pipelines.
• International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson, a case about whether parents have a right to challenge Washington laws allowing runaway teens to receive mental health care and treatment (including as to gender transitions of their children) at licensed shelters without parental consent.
• Wassily v. Blanche, involving whether noncitizens who receive asylum but whose asylum is later terminated can become lawful permanent residents or are instead always ineligible.
• Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, a challenge to Arizona’s requirement of proof of citizenship for applicants using the state’s voter-registration form, as well as whether a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, allows states to remove noncitizens from its voting rolls within 90 days of a federal election.
• Montoya Palacios v. Liggins, a case about whether a petition for habeas corpus that challenges civil immigration detention is a “civil action” under the Equal Access to Justice Act, so that a detainee who prevails in such a case could be eligible for attorney’s fees if the government’s position was not “substantially justified.”

The court called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in a pair of related cases, Republican National Committee v. Eakin and Pennsylvania v. Eakin, challenges to a Pennsylvania law that requires mail-in voters to write the date on their ballot by hand. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit struck down the law. There is no deadline for the federal government to file its brief.

Over written dissents, the court also denied review in several noteworthy cases. In Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, the justices declined to hear a petition for review filed by Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who represented Trump during his first impeachment trial before the Senate in January 2020. Dershowitz went to federal court in Florida, where he argued that CNN defamed him by deliberately misrepresenting statements that he made during the proceeding.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision not to take up Dershowitz’s case, in an opinion joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch. He would have granted review and reconsidered the court’s landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, which held that to prevail on a defamation claim, public figures must show that the statement on which the claim is based was both false and made with “actual malice” – that is, either knowing that it was false or with reckless disregard for whether it was false. Such a standard, Thomas argued, “‘bears “no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution.”’”

In Smith v. Kind, the Supreme Court rejected a request from an inmate who was sprayed with pepper spray – although the correctional officer who did so knew that he had a “medical contraindication” to the spray – and placed naked in a cold cell for 23 hours to review a federal appeals court’s determination that the correctional officers were entitled to qualified immunity. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit “conclude[d] that a jury could find that both actions … lacked a legitimate penological purpose and thus violated the Eighth Amendment,” which bans cruel and unusual punishment. However, it continued, because the inmate, Antonio Smith, could not point to cases involving the same facts, therefore it could not have been “clearly established” that the officers’ conduct violated Smith’s rights.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She called the 7th Circuit’s “grant of qualified immunity … clearly wrong” and indicated that she would reverse that ruling without additional briefing or oral argument. The Supreme Court, she wrote, “has emphasized that ‘“clearly established law” should not be defined “at a high level of generality”’ and that courts should look to prior cases involving ‘similar circumstances,’ but this analysis does not permit discarding every case that presents any factual variation.” “A ‘body of relevant case law’ may clearly establish those contours even if no single case, on its own, presents identical facts.” In this case, Sotomayor stressed, “even without a case matching the exact conditions that Smith faced …, the body of case law on needless deprivations of warmth in prisons made it abundantly clear, and beyond debate, that the officers’ treatment of Smith violated the Eighth Amendment.”

And in Doe v. Hochul, the court turned down a petition for review from New York healthcare workers who were denied a religious accommodation from the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and lost their jobs when they were not vaccinated.

In an opinion joined by Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, Gorsuch dissented, arguing that the case “raises an important and recurring question of federal law that warrants this Court’s attention.” “I fail to see,” Gorsuch emphasized, “how a state law (especially an unconstitutional state law) prohibiting an accommodation can always and automatically supply an employer with a” defense that accommodating the employee’s religious observance or practice would place an “undue hardship” on the employer’s business.

The disclosures are relatively opaque and are intended to provide information about potential conflicts of interest and the justices’ compliance with ethical standards, rather than snapshots of the justices’ wealth.

The financial disclosure forms for eight of the nine justices became available at noon EDT on Monday. The forms were due on May 15, but federal judges and justices can receive extensions of up to 90 days to submit their forms. Forms for Justice Samuel Alito, who received an extension last year, are not yet available online.

Sotomayor and Jackson were the only justices to report gifts. Sotomayor indicated that she had received $4,333 worth of tickets from Rimas Entertainment, which “provided tickets for a concert for me and guests while I was on a private trip to Puerto Rico in August 2025.” Sotomayor did not specifically identify the artist who performed at the concert, but Bad Bunny played 31 sold-out shows in San Juan between July and September 2025. And a September 2025 story on the announcement that Bad Bunny would headline the halftime show at the Super Bowl in February 2026 noted that Sotomayor had attended one of his Puerto Rico concerts.

Jackson reported that she had received a painting for her chambers from Paul Branton and Kristen Williams. Branton is a Chicago-based artist who posted a portrait of Jackson on social media and indicated that he had sent it to her as a gift.

Five of the eight justices who filed their disclosures on Monday spent time in the classroom during 2025. Both Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Brett Kavanaugh earned $33,285 by teaching at Notre Dame Law School, where Barrett taught for more than 15 years before becoming a federal judge. Barrett’s work for Notre Dame included a stint in London in October 2025, where she taught a “legal theory workshop.” Justice Neil Gorsuch earned $30,379.91 for his teaching gig in Prague for George Mason University during July 2025, while Chief Justice John Roberts earned $25,000 for teaching at New England Law School. Justice Clarence Thomas stayed closer to home, earning $18,000 for teaching at Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law.

In 2024, Jackson held the top spot for the justices’ book royalties, reporting approximately $2 million in “book advances.” She remained in first place in 2025, reporting $1,181,250. Barrett, whose book Listening to the Law was published in September 2025, reported nearly $850,000 in “publication/copyright royalties” income, while Gorsuch reported $300,000 from HarperCollins, which published Over Ruled and Heroes of 1776 (a children’s book), in 2024 and 2026, respectively. Gorsuch also received $361.47 from Princeton University Press, which published his book on assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2009. Sotomayor reported $88,100 in income from Penguin Random House, which has published several of her books, including children’s books.

Several justices also reported reimbursements for travel, including overseas. Justice Elena Kagan stayed in the United States, traveling to judge a moot court at Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law in September 2025. In addition to her teaching gig in London, Barrett also traveled to Oxford, England, in July 2025 for a “judicial forum,” while Jackson went to Dublin to accept an award from Trinity College and participate in a “moderated discussion with students.” And Sotomayor went to the Dominican Republic in May 2025 to accept an award from the World Jurist Association.

The modest ground floor display focuses on how some of the “lawyers, statesmen, and soldiers—some of whom would later become Justices of the Supreme Court—fought tirelessly to bring about a new government.”

On the bench in recent weeks, the justices themselves have been providing their own historical lessons, an updated version of “Bicentennial Minutes,” a series of short educational spots broadcast on CBS from 1974 through 1976. Let’s call them “Semiquincentennial Minutes.” (Trademark pending.)

Justice Elena Kagan had one such moment with her opinion on June 11 in Abouammo v. United States, a case about proper venue for a federal criminal prosecution.

“Not the most obvious thing for the Constitution to care about,” Kagan said from the bench that day.

But as her written opinion put it, “Venue in criminal cases mattered more than might be supposed to the Nation’s Founders. Prior to the Revolution, Parliament enacted measures to try allegedly treasonous colonists in England, rather than in their home colonies. The legislation was so roundly despised as to make it into the Declaration of Independence. Among the ‘injuries and usurpations’ listed there was the practice of ’“transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.’”

A week later, the next Semiquincentennial Minute came in United States v. Hemani, in which the court held that the prosecution under a federal gun statute of a man who used marijuana and possessed a firearm was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch detailed the drinking habits of “many notable early Americans,” including John Adams and his tankard of hard cider with breakfast and James Madison’s reported pint of whiskey daily.

And last week, in her dissent from the bench in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, Justice Sonia Sotomayor departed from the text of her opinion to refer to France’s centennial gift to the United States, saying the Statute of Liberty’s lamp was being “extinguished” by the majority’s view of the immigrant arrival policy at issue.

Today, there will be another Semiquincentennial Minute or two, but not for a little while.

In the guest box, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s parents, Ed and Martha Kavanaugh, are here today. (It was just his mother last Thursday.)

At 9:54 a.m., cutting it a little closer than usual, Solicitor General D. John Sauer leads his office contingent, which includes most of his top deputies, into the courtroom.

Civil rights veteran Sherilynn Ifill, now at Howard University law school, arrives and takes a seat in the front row of the bar section, but decides to change seats at the last minute. (There are plenty of seats to choose from in the nearly empty section.)

When the court takes the bench, Justice Samuel Alito is absent. Perhaps his unusual outpouring of three opinion announcements last Thursday came about because he has an out-of-town commitment, but we don’t know.

Chief Justice John Roberts announces that orders have been filed, and that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has the opinion in Watson v. Republican National Committee.

Barrett takes some care to detail the holding that federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to fives days after. Among her points is that “early voting would be at risk” if the challengers’ view prevailed.

This is one that some predicted after oral argument might go the other way. Barrett announces that Alito has filed a dissent, joined in full by Justice Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch and in part by Kavanaugh.

The decision is a loss for leading advocate Paul Clement (who isn’t here) and for Sauer, who personally argued in support of the challengers’ position.

Kagan is next with Chatrie v. United States, with the majority holding that the police conducted a search under the Fourth Amendment when they acquired a Virginia man’s cellphone location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.

Kagan explains the wide relevance of the case to the courtroom gallery: “As you sit here today, location history may be saving on your phone.” She is otherwise relatively brief in explaining geofence warrants, possible police “fishing expeditions,” and expectations of privacy in the 21st century.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a concurrence, joined by Sotomayor. Gorsuch has an opinion concurring in the judgment. Alito has the dissent, joined in parts by Thomas and Barrett, while Barrett has her own dissent.

Roberts announces that “I have the opinion of the court in two related cases.” This could be the transgender sports cases, but he quickly adds, “I will start with Trump v. Slaughter.”

At this moment, reporters in the Press Room are being handed copies of both Slaughter, about President Donald Trump’s attempt to remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission, and Trump v. Cook, about his efforts to remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In fact, the two lengthy opinions have rubber bands around them.

But it will be quite a while before we get to Cook. The chief justice starts with his Semiquincentennial Minute.

When the framers adopted the Constitution, they vested executive power in just one person, the president, he says. The decision was “not made lightly” as “only 10 years earlier” the country had declared its independence from a king it viewed as a tyrant.

Roberts’ written opinion expands on that semiquincentennial history lesson, but from the bench he moves on to the power of independent agencies like the FTC before turning back to James Madison’s views of executive power and the Decision of 1789 confirming the removal power.

He spends a fair amount of time on the key precedent at issue in the case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, concluding that “it has not stood the test of time.”

Roberts addresses several points made by “the dissent,” and there seems to be no misunderstanding that an oral dissent is coming.

Roberts explains that Thomas has joined all but one section of his opinion, while Gorsuch has filed a concurring opinion. Sotomayor has the dissent, joined by Kagan and Jackson.

Sauer, who argued this case and Cook, appears satisfied with this victory, but he sits in the lead chair at the counsel table with his hands clasped as Sotomayor begins reading from her dissent.

“In recent years, this court has strongly increased its absolutist view of presidential power,” Sotomayor says, a theory that is “deeply misguided.”

She has her own mini-Semiquincentennial Minute, or moment, discussing the Revolutionary War Debt Commission, which she suggests was an early example of federal agencies for which the president had limited removal power.

Sotomayor goes on for nearly 17 minutes, calling the result “profoundly destabilizing” and saying the court is “creating an Executive Branch that Congress never dreamed of establishing and that it now has little hope of ever reining in.”

Still, she says that she along with Kagan and Jackson, “respectfully dissent.”

Roberts, who has kept his reading glasses on during the dissent, offers no off-the-cuff retorts or rebuttals. He says, “I will now turn to the opinion in Number 25A312, Trump versus Cook.”

It is 10:42, and the rest of the world, including the Press Room, the president, the markets, and the nation, have known the outcome of this case for a good half hour before most of us in the courtroom do (given it was already posted on the court’s website and reported on in places such as SCOTUSblog).

Roberts has yet another Semiquincentennial Minute with a discussion of the origins of the Federal Reserve system, going back to the Revolutionary War era, involving something called the Bank of North America.

From there he moves fairly briskly through the First and Second National Banks before getting to the modern Federal Reserve and then the president’s efforts to remove Lisa Cook for cause.

It becomes clear enough where the court is headed when Roberts says “that any definition of ‘cause’ in this context must reflect the Federal Reserve’s unique historical status and role.”

He puts almost as much emphasis on the significance of Alexander Hamilton as Ron Chernow and Lin-Manuel Miranda did.

The chief justice notes that Kavanaugh and Jackson have filed concurring opinions, and that Thomas has a dissenting opinion, Alito has a dissent joined by Gorsuch, and Barrett has her own dissenting opinion.

Roberts had a few points of rebuttal from the bench, apparently to Thomas’ dissent. But none of the dissenters has an oral statement today.

This is another defeat for Sauer, who seems to take it in stride in the courtroom, and a victory for Clement, who represented Cook. (He still isn’t here.)

With that, the chief justice announces that the court will next sit on Tuesday and “at that time we will announce all remaining opinions ready during this term of the court.”

With four cases left, the court may need to check on its supply of rubber bands.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that when law enforcement officials used a “geofence warrant” – a warrant that instructed Google to provide location data for cellphone users who were near a particular place during a specific time period – to obtain evidence used to convict a Virginia man of a 2019 bank robbery, they conducted a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. By a vote of 6-3, the justices sent Okello Chatrie’s case back to the lower court for it to consider whether, as the Fourth Amendment requires, the search was “reasonable.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan emphasized that “[a]n individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location, and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information—even though for only a limited time, and from a third-party tech company.”

Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissenting opinion joined in part by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, contended that the majority’s opinion “will send seismic waves through our Fourth Amendment doctrine” but would ultimately not have any effect on Chatrie’s case.

The issue at the center of Chatrie v. United States arose after a man armed with a gun entered a federal credit union outside Richmond, Virginia, and gave the teller a note demanding money. He made off with nearly $200,000, but law enforcement officials did not have any leads until they served Google with a geofence warrant, which directed the tech company to provide location data for cellphone users who were near the bank at the time of the robbery.

The information that Google provided to law enforcement officials came in three tranches. First, Google gave law enforcement officials a list of the 19 accounts (but without the names attached to those accounts) linked to devices that were within 150 meters of the bank during the 30 minutes before and after the robbery. Second, based on that list of 19 accounts, the government asked for additional information about nine accounts that were in the area during a two-hour period. At the third step, a detective asked for, and received, the names and information associated with three accounts – one of which was Chatrie’s.

Relying on the location data, law enforcement officials obtained a warrant to search two residences linked to Chatrie, where they found almost $100,000 of the stolen cash, a gun, and demand notes.

Prosecutors charged Chatrie with bank robbery. He asked the trial judge to bar prosecutors from using the evidence obtained as a result of the geofence warrant at his trial, arguing that the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment.

A federal district judge agreed that the warrant in Chatrie’s case did not have the kind of probable cause and specificity that the Fourth Amendment requires. However, she nonetheless allowed the prosecutors to use the evidence, reasoning that even if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith.

Chatrie pleaded guilty to bank robbery, although he retained his right to appeal the district court’s ruling allowing prosecutors to use the evidence obtained through the geofence warrant. He was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

By a vote of 2-1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld the denial of Chatrie’s motion to exclude the evidence obtained as a result of the geofence warrant. The majority reasoned that law enforcement officials had not conducted a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment because Chatrie could not reasonably expect two hours’ worth of location data, which he had voluntarily allowed Google to have, to be kept private. When the full court of appeals reconsidered the case, it upheld the panel’s ruling in a deeply divided decision.

In an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Kagan explained that the purpose of the Fourth Amendment “is ‘to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials.’” And although the Supreme Court’s early decisions interpreting the Fourth Amendment “focused on whether law enforcement officials ‘obtain[ed] information by physically intruding’—that is, trespassing—on private property,” more recently it has also concluded that the government conducts a “search” when it invades an area that “an individual seeks to preserve … as private” and that “expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable,” Kagan emphasized.

Eight years ago, in Carpenter v. United States, the court ruled that law enforcement officials conducted a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when they accessed cell-site location information – a historical record created when a cell phone connects to a cell site, “‘that provide[s] a comprehensive chronicle of the user’s past movements.’” “The resemblances between CSLI” and the location data at issue in this case “in their relationship to personal privacy, practically leap off the page,” Kagan wrote.

For purposes of whether the government conducted a search, Kagan said, it does not matter that law enforcement officials “access[ed] only a short amount of cell-phone location information.” Even that small amount, she emphasized, can provide significant information about someone that they might prefer to keep private – including visits to “‘the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, [or] the by-the-hour motel.’”

Nor does it matter, Kagan continued, that Chatrie gave Google permission to collect and use the location data. Location data, Kagan suggested, is far more personal than the kind of “third-party records” that the Supreme Court has held are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, she added, the location data “is the automatic price of conventional cell-phone usage.”

Kagan stressed that the Fourth Amendment “prohibits only searches that are ‘unreasonable.’” In this case, she said, Chatrie and the government have disputed – and the court of appeals did not decide – whether the geofence warrant provided the kind of “‘particularized information’ … based on ‘probable cause to believe that Google had information’ that would help solve a crime.” Therefore, the court sent the case back to the lower court for it to make that determination.

Justice Neil Gorsuch penned a separate opinion in which he agreed that the use of Chatrie’s location data constituted a “search.” But he took what he described as a “more traditional approach” to reach that result, arguing that the data was Chatrie’s “personal property” and that the government had searched it.

Alito argued that the court should have either dismissed the case or upheld the lower court’s decision based on the “good faith” exception – the idea that evidence obtained under a warrant should normally be admitted, even if it was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, if the officers believed that they were acting in good faith. Because the full 4th Circuit had held that Chatrie could not overcome that exception, Alito argued, and the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on that issue, its ruling has no real impact – particularly when Google “has modified its Location History service in a manner that forecloses future use of this geofence procedure.”

Just over four months before the 2026 midterm elections, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by, and received within five days of, Election Day. By a vote of 5-4, the justices in Watson v. Republican National Committee rejected an argument, made by the political parties and others challenging the law, that federal law requires mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett concluded that “the election-day statutes require the electorate’s choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.”

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Barrett’s opinion for the court.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that “from this Nation’s founding until the last few decades of the 20th century—a period that spans the enactment of all three election-day statutes—having an ‘election’ on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined Alito’s opinion, while Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined most of the opinion.

Mississippi passed the law at the center of the dispute in 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later, the Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party, along with a Mississippi voter and a county election official, went to federal court in Gulfport, Mississippi, to challenge the post-election ballot deadline; the Libertarian Party of Mississippi filed a similar lawsuit a few weeks later, which was combined with the first suit. They argued that Mississippi’s law clashes with a federal law, first passed by Congress in 1845, that designates the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the “election day.”

Senior U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola, Jr., upheld the Mississippi law. In his view, Congress had established a national Election Day to prevent two problems: requiring voters to go to the polls on multiple different days to vote in state and federal elections, and the prospect that, if elections were held in different states on different days, the results of earlier elections could influence the elections that followed. “Neither of those concerns,” he concluded, “is raised by allowing a reasonable interval for ballots cast and postmarked by election day to arrive by mail.”

The challengers appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which reversed, holding that federal law requires all ballots to be received by Election Day. Over a dissent by five judges, the full court of appeals turned down Mississippi’s plea to rehear the case, and the Supreme Court agreed in November to weigh in.

In a 22-page opinion, the court on Monday reversed the 5th Circuit’s decision and upheld the Mississippi law. Barrett emphasized that the question before the justices was “a narrow one about timing” – simply “whether counting ballots postmarked by election day, but received up to five days later, violates the federal election-day statutes.”

In the majority’s view, “[t]he defining element of an ‘election’ … has always been the electorate’s choice of a candidate.” That choice, Barrett wrote, “is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received.” This means, Barrett continued, that – as with the Mississippi law – “the deadline for individuals to vote” must be Election Day. But the federal laws at the center of this case, Barrett stressed, “do not set a deadline for ballot receipt” and therefore “do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.”

Barrett pushed back against the challengers’ argument that when Congress enacted two of the three “election day” statutes implicated in the case, there was no mail-in voting, and so the use of the word “election” necessarily means that the ballots must also be received by Election Day. “At bottom,” she said, that “theory is that because we are governed by 19th-century election-day laws, we are also governed by 19th-century voting practices. Carried to its logical conclusion,” Barrett posited, “this theory would call into question the way modern elections work” – for example, potentially jeopardizing early voting, “because in the 19th century, the polls were open only on election day itself.” “But,” according to Barrett, “historical practice, detached from statutory text, is not controlling.”

Barrett also pointed to the federal law requiring states to allow military and overseas voters to cast absentee ballots in federal elections. That law, she said, “presupposes that the deadline for ballot receipt is uniformly a matter of state law,” which “would make little sense” if those ballots had to be received by Election Day.

Finally, Barrett rejected the challengers’ contention “that requiring ballots to be received by election day protects election integrity and increases voter confidence in election results.” Such arguments, she said, are not legal arguments but instead “policy arguments” that “are properly directed to legislatures” instead. “The question today is not whether requiring ballots to be received by election day is a good or bad idea; the question is whether the idea has made its way into the United States Code.”

Alito’s dispute with the majority hinged on when, in his view, the “election” occurs. He acknowledged that “[b]oth voting by mail and early voting have become popular, and” that the plaintiffs “do not dispute the lawfulness of these modern practices.” But, he said, “under federal law, the electorate’s collective choice must still be authoritatively expressed on election day. That requirement,” he said, “is met in a jurisdiction with mail voting or early voting provided that the critical act occurs on election day: the completion of the collection of the ballots that embody the electorate’s collective choice. That is what took place when all voting was done in person,” he wrote, “and compliance with the election-day statutes demands that the same occur in a modern election.”

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors whom President Donald Trump had attempted to fire. By a vote of 5-4, the court held that Cook can continue to remain in her job while her challenge to Trump’s efforts to fire her moves forward.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts contended that, if the Trump administration were correct, it “would in effect transform the Federal Reserve’s for-cause protection into at-will employment—an interpretive leap out of step with the statute Congress enacted and our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the Roberts decision.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas called the ruling “incorrect.” “Although the Court expresses concern that the President removed a Board member for ‘the first time in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history,’” he wrote, “it expresses no such concern that it today upholds an injunction against the President’s removal of an executive officer for the first time in the Constitution’s 237-year history.”

Justice Samuel Alito also filed a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch; Justice Amy Coney Barrett filed her own dissenting opinion.

The decision was a major ruling on the president’s power over the seven-member board of the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank. The Fed is an independent government agency that is not funded by Congress through the normal appropriations process, operating instead using interest on securities that it owns.

Congress has also sought to insulate the Fed from outside political influence by requiring members of the board, who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, to serve staggered 14-year terms, a design intended to prevent any one president from “stacking the deck” with his own nominees. Additionally, federal law only permits the president to remove members of the board “for cause.”

Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has attempted to assert control over several multi-member independent agencies, whose officials could also only be removed for cause. In orders issued last year, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission, National Labor Relations Board, Merit Systems Protection Board, and Consumer Product Safety Commission while their appeals moved forward.

Cook, however, was different. In August, Trump posted screenshots on social media of a letter to Cook in which he fired her. Trump alleged that Cook, who was nominated to serve on the Fed by then-President Joe Biden in 2023, had committed mortgage fraud in 2021. (Cook has denied the allegations, calling them “flimsy,” “unproven,” and “conveniently timed following the President’s criticism of the board’s policy decisions”; several media outlets have reported that financial documents may undermine Trump’s contentions.)

Cook went to federal court in Washington, D.C., and in September 2025, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb issued an order requiring the Fed to allow Cook to remain in office while litigation continued. Cobb concluded that Cook was “substantially likely” to show that Trump had violated federal law when he fired her because the “for cause” requirement does not allow the president to remove a board member for her conduct before she took office. The firing also violated Cook’s constitutional right to fair treatment, Cobb added, because she did not have notice and an opportunity to contest her firing before it occurred.

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit left Cobb’s order in place while Cook’s challenge continues. The majority agreed that Cook was likely to succeed on her claim that she did not receive all of the procedural protections to which she was entitled under the due process clause of the Constitution before she was fired.

Because Cook remained in her job, she participated in the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting on Sept. 16 and 17, during which the Fed lowered interest rates by a quarter of a point – the first rate reduction in nine months.

The Trump administration then came to the Supreme Court on Sept. 18, asking the justices to step in. In a brief, unsigned order on Oct. 1, the justices opted to hear oral arguments in January instead, leaving Cook in office for several more months.

In his 26-page opinion, Roberts emphasized that the case came to the court as a request by the government for temporary relief. That means, he said, that the government must show (among other things) that it is likely to prevail on the merits of its appeal – which, he concluded, it has not done.

The majority’s opinion considered and rejected each of the government’s arguments. First, Roberts rebuffed the government’s contention that courts cannot review the president’s decision to remove a member of the Board of Governors “for cause.” “Whether a Governor should be removed, it is true, is a decision only the President can make (short of impeachment). But that does not mean that he may make that decision for any reason, or no reason.”

When determining whether a governor has been fired for “cause,” Roberts continued, the bar is not (contrary to the government’s assertion) “very low.” Roberts stressed that “[n]ot only the fact of independence but also the appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve’s design,” which in turn “counsels a substantial threshold for ‘cause.’” This determination, Roberts suggested, may hinge on whether the justification that the president offers for the firing is one that indicates that the governor is “truly” not fit to serve in that role or instead appears to be a pretext to replace the governor with a new candidate who will better serve the president’s interests. “Without such constraints in place,” Roberts wrote, “any perceived or alleged misstep (past or present) could provide a ready pretext for a Governor’s removal—a fact that he would surely know, and that would surely weigh on him as he decided what to say and how to vote. Nothing,” Roberts concluded, “could be more corrosive of the independence that Congress sought to preserve.”

Roberts next rejected the government’s contention that courts cannot issue orders – like Cobb’s – that temporarily reinstate a governor to the Fed while litigation continues. “On their view,” Roberts recounted, “all that a court may do is wait, and perhaps award backpay later—even if the President fires a member of the Board for an absurd reason, or no reason, and even if the court holds that he broke the law in doing so. The law,” Roberts emphasized, “does not require such a result.” Indeed, Roberts posited, such a rule would allow the president to fire a governor “for very lengthy periods of time without substantial cause for removal.”

Roberts noted that the majority was deciding the government’s request “on narrow grounds.” “No matter the precise definition of cause, or the scope of our review of any such determination, the President failed to afford Cook the procedural protections to which she was entitled by statute. Without such protections, she could not properly dispute the charges the President laid against her.”

Roberts also pushed back against the argument – made by Thomas in his dissenting opinion – that the “for cause” removal requirement violates the Constitution’s separation of powers by restricting “the President’s power to ‘remove his subordinates at will.’” Roberts pointed to the efforts by Congress to shield earlier national banks from presidential influence to avoid “even the ‘suspicion’ of political manipulation of monetary policy.” Even if “the Federal Reserve is more powerful than its predecessors,” Roberts wrote, it still “remains ‘consistent’” with the idea “that monetary policy should not be subject to political interference.” And although this question arises on the court’s interim docket, Roberts acknowledged, he emphasized that the justices “have had the benefit of not only amici and oral argument but months of internal consultation and deliberation. We see no reason to leave the public in limbo, or to sow doubt as to the status of one of our Nation’s (and the world’s) most important financial institutions.”

In his dissent, Alito argued that the justices “should have granted or denied” the government’s request “in a brief order last fall,” rather than hearing oral argument and “bringing proceedings in the lower courts to a 9-month standstill."

The Supreme Court on Monday gave President Donald Trump sweeping new authority over approximately two dozen multi-member agencies that Congress intended to be independent. By a vote of 6-3, the justices struck down a federal law that bars the president from firing members of the Federal Trade Commission except in cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” That law, a majority of the justices ruled, violates the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government. And in reaching that decision, the court overruled its 91-year-old decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had upheld the law at the center of the dispute.

More broadly, Monday’s decision was a major victory for proponents of the “unitary executive” theory – the idea that the president should have complete control over the executive branch. Under this theory, the president should be able to fire any member of the executive branch, and laws – like the one that the court struck down – that restrict his ability to do so violate the separation of powers.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts contended that “the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work. Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a 49-page dissent that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Today,” she wrote, “the Court discards” the “democratic regime” created by the Constitution “in favor of one that distorts the structure of Government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result,” she concluded, “is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before.”

The Federal Trade Commission was created more than a century ago. It has five commissioners, no more than three of whom may come from any one political party. Each commissioner is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve a seven-year term.

During his first term in office, Trump nominated Rebecca Slaughter to fill one of the Democratic seats on the FTC. Then-President Joe Biden renominated her in 2023 to serve a second term. Last year, the White House notified Slaughter in a letter that she had been “removed from the Federal Trade Commission, effective immediately.” The letter did not cite any of the legal grounds that would allow Trump to fire her. Instead, Trump told Slaughter that allowing her to remain on the FTC would be “inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.”

Slaughter went to federal court in Washington, D.C., to challenge her firing. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered the Trump administration to reinstate her, and a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the government’s request to pause that ruling while it appealed. Judges Patricia Millett and Nina Pillard wrote that only the Supreme Court could overturn its decision in Humphrey’s Executor, which in their view was “controlling” in Slaughter’s case.

The Trump administration then went to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to freeze AliKhan’s order while litigation continued. Over a dissent by Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, the court granted the government’s application – effectively permitting Trump to fire Slaughter – and set the case for oral argument in December.

In a 36-page opinion, the court on Monday reversed the lower court’s ruling. Roberts first emphasized that the Constitution gives the president “[t]he executive Power,” as well as the responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The Framers of the Constitution, Roberts explained, wanted to create a system in which the one person, the president, was in charge of the executive branch. The officials who work for him, Roberts continued, are there to help him, but the president must be able to fire them if they are not performing well – so that he can carry out his own job.

Roberts acknowledged the Supreme Court’s decision in Humphrey’s Executor, upholding the same law at the center of this case. But that decision, he contended, “was tethered to a highly circumscribed and almost fictional view of the FTC’s role” as being “very limited”: “they were ‘neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.’” “At this point,” Roberts reasoned, “all that is left of Humphrey’s is its observation that an agency that ‘exercises no part of the executive power’ need not fall within the rule of Presidential removal.”

In this case, Roberts concluded, “the FTC unquestionably exercises executive power, and must therefore be controlled by the” president. For example, the current version of the FTC “enforces and administers some 80 statutes, which cover almost every facet of our Nation’s economy.” The agency both carries out investigations and then enforces compliance “through in-house adjudications.” Indeed, Roberts noted, the agency even “files civil suits on behalf of the United States in federal court.” “As we have said many times, the ‘discretionary power to seek judicial relief’ lies at the very core of executive authority,” Roberts observed. And because the FTC exercises such power, Roberts said, “Slaughter served as the President’s subordinate at the FTC—and … the President was entitled to cut her tenure short.”

The court’s ruling on Monday, Roberts indicated, did not resolve all questions about when an agency or entity exercises executive power, so that its officials can be fired by the president for any reason. Roberts emphasized that “not all offices created by Congress necessarily come with executive or even sovereign power attached” – for example, the Boy Scouts of America and Georgetown University. The same is true, Roberts continued, for “some functions traditionally handled outside the Executive Branch” – such as the Federal Reserve, “to the extent that it follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States—both of which influenced monetary policy and neither of which were subject to plenary Presidential control.”

The court was also not deciding, Roberts said, “the fate of officials not before us,” such as federal judges that do not have lifetime tenure. “All we do today is recognize what has been clear for a century,” Roberts wrote, “that those who fall within the President’s ‘general administrative control’ must be removable by the President at will.”

In a 16-page solo concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch praised the court for, in his view, “tak[ing] a notable step back toward the Constitution.” But he stated that this step was not “enough on its own.” Rather, given the agencies’ “enormous legislative and judicial powers,” “the only sure path is to finish the the journey we start today and restore legislative and judicial powers to where they belong: in Congress and the courts.”

In her dissent, Sotomayor stressed that Congress established multi-member agencies like the FTC “to address complex problems while enjoying some independence from Presidential removal and thus absolute partisan control.” In holding that the president can remove Slaughter and other FTC commissioners for any reason, she argued, the majority “gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

Monday’s decision, Sotomayor contended, “reshapes our Government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President’s hands”—for example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Carroll filed the lawsuit that led to Trump’s petition in 2022 in a federal court in New York. She asserted that Trump had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store in 1996 and then defamed her in 2022 after she went public with her assault allegations. A jury ultimately awarded Carroll $5 million, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld that verdict.

In November, Trump came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to hear his appeal. He contended that Carroll’s lawyers should not have been allowed to introduce testimony by other women who also alleged that Trump had assaulted them, as well as the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.

In her brief responding to Trump's petition, Carroll argued that even if the jury should not have been allowed to consider the evidence, it ultimately would not have made a difference because the rest of her case was so strong. She asked the justices to deny review.

On Monday, the justices did so, without a noted dissent from the denial. The court is expected to soon received another petition for review from Trump in a separate defamation case involving Carroll, in which the same federal appeals court upheld an $83 million verdict in Carroll’s favor.

We are expecting eight more decisions in argued cases (which are likely – though not guaranteed – to come down by the end of this week), including Trump v. Barbara (birthright citizenship); Trump v. Slaughter (removal protections for heads of independent agencies); Trump v. Cook (Trump’s effort to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook); West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox (transgender athletes); and Watson v. Republican National Committee (mail-in voting).

At the Court

Orders from the justices’ June 25 conference are expected this morning at 9:30 a.m. EDT.

The justices’ financial disclosure reports for 2025 are scheduled to be released at noon EDT. However, we may not get all nine reports today, because justices sometimes apply for and receive extensions.

There will likely be at least one more opinion day after today. The court will offer an update after this morning’s opinion announcements.

Morning Reads

Trump administration asks US Supreme Court to endorse immigration detention policy

Nate Raymond, Reuters (paywalled)

The Trump administration has filed a petition for review asking “the U.S. Supreme Court to let it detain people arrested in its immigration crackdown without a chance to seek bond, even if they have lived in the country for years,” according to Reuters. The petition addresses a May decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which held “that the administration misinterpreted a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and that ... migrants were denied bond hearings in violation of their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.” “Two other appeals courts have endorsed the administration’s policy, a fact U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted as he urged the justices to intervene and resolve a ‘critically important question of immigration law’ that is fueling thousands of lawsuits by people challenging their detention.”

Supreme Court halts order to force reporter to reveal source or pay fine

Scott Nover and Julian Mark, The Washington Post (paywalled)

Late on Friday, the court “stayed an order that would have forced former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge to either disclose a confidential source or pay $800 a day in court sanctions,” according to The Washington Post. Chief Justice John Roberts paused the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “to give the Supreme Court time to consider Herridge’s request for emergency relief. He gave the opposing party in the case, Chinese American scientist Yanping Chen, until Wednesday to respond.” Chen alleges that Herridge “breached federal privacy law by identifying details about her in stories published beginning in 2017. Herridge refused to explain how she learned of a federal probe into Chen,” and “was held in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper after refusing to disclose her source.” The D.C. Circuit affirmed Cooper’s decision.

The Supreme Court Is Building Its Own Massive Police Force

Josh Gerstein, Politico

Over the past few years, “with little fanfare, the size of the Supreme Court’s police force has begun mushrooming,” according to Politico. “For years, the force sat at fewer than 200 officers, but now officials are aiming to more than double the ranks of the agents and officers who protect the justices and the Supreme Court’s building. The push for a rapid security buildout stems from the substantial threats to the justices at a moment of growing political violence in the U.S. and the sense that the system has just not been up to the task of keeping them safe.” “During a virtual recruiting event in April, a Supreme Court Police officer said” an assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022 “led directly to the ongoing surge in security.”

Fear grips Haitian communities after Supreme Court ruling unwinds protection from deportation

Gisela Salomon, Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos, and Claire Galofaro, Associated Press

On Thursday in Mullin v. Doe, the Supreme Court cleared the way for “the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disasters in Haiti and Syria.” In the wake of the decision, “fear ricocheted through those communities across the United States,” as about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians who had immigration protections through the Temporary Protected Status program began preparing for possible deportation, according to the Associated Press. “They don’t know if they can work, if their kids can go to school. Many are making preparations to leave their children who are U.S. citizens behind if they are sent away.”

Bayer’s Roundup Win Brings Company New Life—and Renews Breakup Speculation

Patrick Thomas, The Wall Street Journal (paywalled)

Over the past decade, Bayer has faced a “legal storm over Roundup weedkiller,” as users sought to hold the company liable for not warning them about the alleged link between the popular product and cancer. But now, after a major Supreme Court victory, the “clouds are parting,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The court “insulated Bayer against claims that it failed to warn people about potential cancer risks,” “eliminat[ing] what has been the most successful line of attack used by plaintiffs’ lawyers.” The ruling is expected to derail tens of thousands of ongoing cases, and it “also allows Bayer to challenge courtroom verdicts it lost that haven’t been finalized and paid, potentially saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Would Cameras Inside the Supreme Court Provide Sunshine, or a Stage?

Charles Hilu, The Dispatch (paywalled)

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently advanced a bill that “would direct the Supreme Court to allow television coverage of all of its open sessions, unless a majority of justices decides that doing so in a particular case would violate the due process rights of one of the parties involved,” according to The Dispatch, noting that such a move “has been under discussion for decades.” While proponents say the Cameras in the Courtroom Act would support “the noble goal of increasing transparency in government, those opposed fear that putting cameras in federal courtrooms would turn their proceedings into a spectacle and degrade the judiciary.”

On Site

From the SCOTUSblog Team

When justices wade into politics

Generally, Supreme Court justices refrain from explicitly commenting on politics. That custom, however, is not a hard-and-fast rule, and over more than two centuries, justices have at times set it aside while sitting on the bench. As the current court generates criticism from both sides of the aisle, Nora dove into the (somewhat) rare occasions when justices have openly done so.

Contributor Corner

Hunter v. United States – the most important criminal case of the term

In his SCOTUSCrim column, Rory Little revisited the court’s June 18 ruling in Hunter v. United States, explaining why it may portend “seismic shifts in criminal law.” “The lopsided [8-1] vote in Hunter masks deep divisions ... and a three-justice concurrence by Justice Neil Gorsuch suggests broad implications for much of our current criminal justice system,” Little wrote.

Podcasts

Advisory Opinions

SCOTUS Ends Judicial Review of Temporary Protected Status

Sarah Isgur and David French react to the court’s rulings in two major immigration cases and a case on Hawaii’s restrictions on concealed-carry permit holders.

Amarica’s Constitution

No Coffee for You

After a recent discussion on private vs. state action, Akhil Amar and Andy Lipka return to the topic to address a recent incident in New York regarding U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman’s banishment from a coffee shop because of his political stance. They also reflect on the court’s ruling in Wolford v. Lopez, in which the justices considered similar questions.

Divided Argument

Mechanical / Animal

Dan Epps and Will Baude run through Supreme Court opinions from last week, focusing on two cases – Wolford v. Lopez and Pung v. Isabella County – that look unrelated but turn on the same question: when may a state rewrite background property law to limit a constitutional right?

A Closer Look

The Evolution of Opinion Releases

You might recall from a previous closer look that the busiest opinion day in Supreme Court history appears to have occurred during Chief Justice Melville Fuller’s court in 1889, with 50 decisions. But how has the actual release of opinions changed over time? The answer: dramatically.

Throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, there was no printed text distributed to the press (or anyone else) on decision day. Rather, the justices read out their opinions in full, and reporters would then write down what they heard. Indeed, the availability of the earliest decisions was only made possible by “individuals acting solely on an entrepreneurial basis” who compiled decisions and then sold the volumes for profit.

The first such volume was published in 1790 by Alexander Dallas. However, Dallas’ work quality was inconsistent, with his four reports “often characterized by omissions, errors, and publishing delays.” Dallas’ fourth volume, for example, contained Supreme Court decisions issued through the August 1800 term, but was not published until 1807. The work of the court’s second reporter (and nephew of President John Adams), William Cranch, involved similar delays and inaccuracies. Fortunately, under the third reporter, Henry Wheaton, timeliness and reliability improved considerably, in part because Justice Joseph Story agreed (anonymously) to give Wheaton written opinions or notes that he had prepared.

In 1817, Congress created a statutory, salaried (at $1,000 a year) Reporter of Decisions position for Wheaton, but even then, he was still responsible for printing costs and sold the volumes of opinions commercially. For a time, Wheaton was also the only person allowed to print and profit from the court’s rulings – until the court itself decided in 1834’s Wheaton v. Peters that no Reporter “possessed a copyright for its work product.” With this, opinions ceased being Reporters’ personal property and became the public’s.

On March 14, 1834, the court issued an order requiring the justices to file their opinions in written form, so the justices sent their original written opinions to the Reporter, who would then send them (having now been compiled, typed, and printed by said reporter) to the clerk for preservation once the term’s volume was published. A “subsequent order” in 1843 then reversed the sequence (directing that opinions go first to the clerk for recording and only then to the Reporter).

Still, the printed text was not necessarily “perfect.” Through the Taney era, justices read their opinions aloud and then turned the manuscripts over to the clerk and the Reporter, but some justices kept revising these (at times substantially, such as in the Dred Scott case) in the interval before publication.

In 1874, Congress appropriated $25,000 to create the United States Reports as the official archive of Supreme Court opinions. The earlier reports, starting with Dallas’, were retroactively numbered as volumes 1-90. With this, the U.S. government assumed responsibility for the printing and sale of the U.S. Reports, which it began publishing in 1876. But because the official bound U.S. Reports volumes lagged by years, several companies stepped in and started publishing “Supreme Court Reporter” series in a (relatively) more timely manner – for instance, West Publishing Company began its “Supreme Court Reporter” (with the unofficial opinions) with the 1882 term. That said, the Government Printing Office served and serves as the sole official publisher (with the Reporter compiling and publishing the U.S. Reports).

In 1935, after an Associated Press reporter inaccurately characterized a series of cases, the court finally began giving journalists full printed opinion proofs (“bench opinions”) as soon as the justices announced them from the bench. This new “hand-down” protocol meant that “immediately before a Justice announced a decision in the Courtroom, the Clerk of the Court directed messengers to hand copies to a small group of journalists stationed in front of the bench.” The journalists would then send these copies through pneumatic tubes located near them to the press room. Chief Justice Warren Burger had the pneumatic tubes (and the reporter seats immediately in front of the bench) removed in 1971, although he had a syllabus (summary) added to each opinion when they were released, instead of when they were later published.

Starting in the 1990s, copies of opinions became electronically available the day they were announced through the court’s “Project Hermes.” And on April 17, 2000, the Supreme Court launched its official website and began posting each opinion online within hours of its being read in the courtroom. Today, as Supreme Court watchers are well aware, such posting occurs within mere seconds of opinion announcements.

SCOTUS Quote

“Political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago[.]”

— Justice Samuel Alito in Mullin v. Doe  (2026)

I think Hunter may portend similar seismic shifts in criminal law.

Facts and proceedings in Hunter

In 2024, a fraudster named Munson Hunter III pleaded guilty. As part of a plea bargain that dismissed nine of 10 criminal charges, Hunter signed an agreement (and also agreed in court) that he would not appeal his conviction or sentence. At a hearing, Hunter said he understood that his sentence had “not yet been determined” and would be “within the sole discretion” of the judge. He nevertheless agreed that he “knowingly and voluntarily waives the right to appeal.”

Weeks later, the court’s probation office recommended that, in light of prior mental health issues, Hunter should be required (when on supervised release after any prison time) to “take all mental health medications that are prescribed by his [treating] physician.” Hunter objected, saying “I don’t drink. I don’t use drugs. ... I don’t want to have to be forced to medicate.” The sentencing judge imposed that condition anyway and, despite his waiver of appeal, Hunter filed an appeal arguing that compelled medication would violate his constitutional rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit dismissed his appeal, relying on its precedent ruling that an appeal waiver controls even if a sentence is “unconstitutional.” The Supreme Court granted review to settle differing lower court views; many had ruled that appeal waivers could not be enforced if a miscarriage of justice would result.

Eight justices agree: courts may correct a miscarriage of justice

Justice Elena Kagan’s majority opinion vacated the 5th Circuit and adopted the prevailing lower court view (while remanding for consideration of Hunter’s specific objection). For all but Justice Clarance Thomas, Kagan wrote that an appeal waiver is “unenforceable when it would result in a miscarriage of justice” – “the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute” and “undermine public confidence in the judiciary.” Quoting from a 1988 precedent, Kagan repeated that “[t]he ‘federal courts’ ... have an ‘independent’ ‘institutional interest’ in ensuring that legal proceedings ‘appear fair to all who observe them.’” Or, as she quoted from a 2008 dissent by Justice Samuel Alito, “[w]e have repeatedly stressed the importance” of “the interest of the Judiciary and the public in correcting grossly prejudicial errors of law that undermine confidence in our legal system.”

Chief Justice John Roberts silently joined Kagan’s opinion, while Thomas wrote a solo dissent. Justice Brett Kavanaugh “join[ed] the Court’s opinion in full” (along with Alito and Amy Coney Barrett), and also penned a separate concurrence, joined by Alito and Barrett, while Barrett concurred alone. Finally, Gorsuch wrote his own lengthy concurring opinion, joined (in an unusual pairing) with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Thus, in my perhaps idiosyncratic vote-counting system, I would record the vote as 8 (2+3+3) to 1.

The two competing three-justice concurrences expose what is actually a 5-4 court. Gorsuch’s concurrence boldly takes to task the entire structure of modern criminal law plea bargaining. In sum (you really should read it in full), Gorsuch predicts that there is “considerable work ahead to flesh out” the implications of what he believes the court’s opinion should lead to. In response, Kavanaugh’s concurrence makes clear that he, Alito, and Barrett “respectfully disagree” with Gorsuch’s “understanding,” which Kavanaugh says “may not be entirely consistent with the Court’s opinion.”

That simple “may not be” may foreshadow huge doctrinal developments. Predicting voting alliances is far from an exact science. But one might speculate that, in a future case, Kagan could join the Gorsuch group with Sotomayor and Jackson, while Thomas might align more with Kavanaugh, Alito and Barrett. That division would leave a 5-4 court, with the chief justice silently in control. And the power of Gorsuch’s willingness to disrupt settled doctrine should not be underestimated: It can produce results. Witness his doctrine-shifting impact on administrative law (Loper Bright v. Raimondo) and his push behind the ongoing right-to-jury-trial “revolution” (including next term’s 12-person jury case, Kian v. Florida).

Kagan’s opinion for the entire (almost) court

Let’s go through several of the opinions. A few snatches from Kagan’s straightforward precedent-laden analysis might lead some to describe Hunter as “limited.” Carefully written to carry eight ideologically different justices, Hunter could be read to recognize only a narrow, “hard-to-meet” miscarriage of justice exception, permitting judicial action only in “extreme cases” where a failure to consider an egregious situation, despite an appellate waiver, would cause the public to question “the judiciary’s commitment to law.” The idea that courts have the power to correct miscarriages of justice is so common, timeless, and frankly unspecific, that even the “conservative” justices were able to “join[] the Court’s opinion in full.”

As already mentioned, Barrett also filed her own brief concurrence to describe her view of the source of the court’s power to “correct” errors – she previously published two articles as a law professor on the topic. Barrett seems to be responding to Thomas’ claim that there is no constitutional right to appeal (a “true fact” that feels irrelevant today and yet always surprises law students) and claiming that there is no “source of law” to allow judicial intervention. While there may not be a source of law to allow judicial intervention, she believes that “egregious” and “obvious” errors can be corrected.

But it is Gorsuch’s three-justice concurrence that could lead to far-reaching changes and a deep 5-4 division in future criminal law cases. So let’s turn to that.

Gorsuch: “the jury trial has given way to a conveyor belt of plea bargains”

That’s the first sentence in a concurring opinion that is longer than the majority. In sum, Gorsuch writes that “the Court has often condoned” various “coercive prosecutorial tactics designed to induce defendants to take plea deals.” Yet at the founding, denial of jury trials was a centerpiece of objections in the Declaration of Independence, and the right was enshrined “not just once, but twice, in the Constitution.” By contrast, “plea bargains didn’t begin to emerge as an alternative to trial” until the 1850s, and “even then” that new idea “met with intense judicial skepticism ... well into the twentieth century.” Since court precedents bear “some responsibility” for the current state of affairs, in Gorsuch’s view Hunter is merely a “begin[ning] to correct course.”

Gorsuch presents the 1978 decision in Bordenkircher v. Hayes as illustrative of “the kind of coercive tactics this Court became willing to stomach.” Hayes was threatened by the prosecutor with a life sentence for forging an $88.30 check, unless he accepted the prosecutor’s offer of five years in prison. He refused, and the prosecution reindicted him and obtained a mandatory life sentence. The court affirmed, acknowledging that even if the result was not “ideal,” “the fact is that ... plea bargain[s] are important components of this country’s criminal justice system.” According to Gorsuch, such a result would have been “unthinkable only a few decades earlier.” Gorsuch also notes Brady v. United States, which upheld in 1970 a plea bargain that the defendant agreed to only after being threatened with the death penalty.

And that is not all. After describing the current plea bargain system as ahistorical and inconsistent with the framers’ vision, Gorsuch examines “even deeper problems lurking” in the court’s common “voluntary and knowing” standard for plea bargains. A century ago, the court wrote unanimously (with one unexplained concurrence) in Kercheval v. United States that a plea agreement is not “knowing” unless made “with full understanding of the consequences.” (A strong 2025 article by Professor Julian Cook may have influenced re-discovery of this case.) Before waiving constitutional rights, says Gorsuch, a person “must fully understand the consequences of that decision.” In her concurrence, Barrett (who you will recall joined the court’s opinion “in full”) echoes Gorsuch’s concern, noting that under “longstanding waiver principles,” “[i]t is well established” that a defendant’s waiver of “a known right” must be “intentional” (quoting from the court’s 1938 decision in Johnson v. Zerbst).

I pause to note the huge implications of Gorsuch’s and Barrett’s mutual reliance on the meaning of “voluntarily and intelligently” waiving a “known” constitutional right. Gorsuch pretty clearly suggests that many appeal waivers and plea bargains do not meet this standard because the defendants do not yet know the consequences regarding their rights. Gorsuch also notes a potential impact of allowing unknowing waivers to support “unreasonable searches and seizures” of a defendant’s home. Meanwhile, Barrett does not say exactly why she disagrees with Gorsuch’s “understanding,” but she joins the court’s opinion that Hunter may appeal his sentencing condition despite his waiver, citing Zerbst.

But the Zerbst standard is not limited to plea bargains; rather it is often cited generally, and specifically, to support “consent” searches in the Fourth Amendment context. Gorsuch says that the “work ahead” regarding his views is for “lower courts” to “flesh [things] out.” If they take him up on this, together with Barrett’s views, a stricter (and I would argue, more realistic) application of an “intentional,” aware-of-the-consequences standard for “knowing and voluntary” waivers could have impacts well beyond the narrow appeal waiver context.

Finally, Gorsuch’s concurrence throws into doubt many current sentencing practices and the federal rules that govern sentencing, the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Kagan wrote for all eight justices that a miscarriage of justice encompasses any “sentence exceeding what the relevant statute allows.” Gorsuch expounds on this, writing that that “category should likewise include” other aspects of sentencing. He mentions at least four, supported by existing lower court decisions: (1) penalties imposed for “offenses different than those of which the defendant stands convicted,” such as expunged convictions (I think this might also reach United States Sentencing Guideline 2B1.1, which appears to have allowed Hunter’s sentencing judge to consider all 10 counts that Hunter was charged with rather than just the one to which he pled guilty, something Gorsuch also criticizes); (2) remedies or mandatory minimum sentencings that “the law does not permit” or “for which the defendant does not qualify”; (3) “constitutionally infirm conditions of supervised release” such as forced medication that Hunter alleged here; and (4) “marked departure[s] from mandatory sentencing procedures” such as not providing “reasons for [a] chosen sentence” or not addressing “non-frivolous arguments for a different one.” 

Gorsuch also provides other “aspects of sentencing” that he considers open to examination. Gorsuch’s long list undoubtedly triggered Kavanaugh’s brief critique that Gorsuch “would set a lower bar” for miscarriages of justice that “may not be entirely consistent” with Kagan’s opinion. Gorsuch agreed that “none of these questions is before us in this case,” but he said (portended?) that “all ... may warrant further exploration.”

A few further thoughts about Hunter

Kagan’s and Gorsuch’s opinions raise other ideas that I have been writing about this term.

• With three justices expressing a broad critique of central elements of our current criminal justice system, three others disagreeing in a more conservative direction, and Kagan holding firm in the middle with Roberts (who was silent), there is no better example of the “wild card court” I’ve described than this case.
• Kagan says “the answer” in Hunter “stems from the special, and indeed pivotal, role of the judiciary.” When Thomas asserts (alone) that the majority has no “source of law” for its ruling, Barrett responds that the court has inherent authority to recognize “doctrines ... which are ‘settled by tradition or emerging consensus.’” As I wrote back in March, it is time for the court and scholars to deeply (re)investigate the historical and independent authority of the judicial branch as proclaimed in the first sentence of Article III of the Constitution: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court.” Like the parallel first sentence of Article II, vesting “the executive Power ... in a President,” Article III provides a strong “source of law” for federal judges, one potentially as powerful as the “unitary executive” theory we see today. I think that an essential (pivotal?) component of the American conception of the judicial power is to correct, as both Kagan and Barrett write, “egregious” and “obvious” errors.
• Can a miscarriage of justice be addressed even if ineffective lawyers miss it? Neither Kagan nor Gorsuch address that question; but as I have written, the “principle of party presentation” has always been merely a guideline that the Supreme Court has itself ignored. Despite this, as I noted earlier this month, the court has twice this term applied the principle as though it is a binding, dispositive, rule. Professor Judith Resnik has since reminded me that the 1842 case of Swift v. Tyson – a civil proceduralist’s landmark – is another (in)famous example. (I continue to not understand why Sotomayor and Jackson, at least, appear to accept application of this principle as a rigid “rule” without comment.) If the court agrees that in some cases a federal court has the power to address at least “egregious and obvious” errors, then the court needs to explain why it would lack that power if poor lawyering leaves the error unexposed.

My conclusion ... for now

As with Apprendi, any transformative implications from Hunter will have to be divined in future cases. Hunter will undoubtedly produce lower court applications, as well as much legal commentary and articles, to “flesh out” Gorsuch’s ideas. Kagan’s majority was written to stimulate as little controversy as possible. It was thus uncharacteristically prosaic, giving only examples supported by already existing lower-court rulings. Her opinion did not speculate about the future (other than to “doubt” that Hunter will “‘open the floodgates’ to ‘waived appeals’”). And she pointedly made no comment on any of the other justices’ separate opinions, thus gathering a solid majority while letting sleeping dogs lie ... for now.

Importantly, the real substantive division in Hunter appears to be (as it was in Apprendi) five to four. Kagan’s majority (with Roberts silently joining) and Gorsuch’s concurrence speak for a broad judicial power. Kavanaugh, Alito, and Barrett firmly if “respectfully disagree” with Gorsuch’s broad discussion, and Thomas dissented. Exactly where Roberts and Kagan – indeed, all the justices – will land along the arc of Gorsuch’s ambitious vision will not be settled for years to come. And, consistent with Roberts’ apparently preferred institutional role as chief justice, he appears, by his silence, to remain solidly in control of the court’s agenda.

Generally, the justices have refrained from explicitly commenting on politics. That custom, however, is more a matter of practice and institutional norms than a hard-and-fast rule, and over more than two centuries, justices have at times set it aside while sitting on the bench.

As the current court continues to generate criticism from both sides of the aisle, it seemed relevant to take a deep dive into the (somewhat) rare occasions when justices have openly – and often controversially – done so.

Politics from the bench

In the court’s earliest years, the judicial and political roles were hard to separate – in ways that might shock those who currently accuse the court of partisanship. Besides often being heavily invested in political causes (e.g., campaigning on behalf of elected officials or seeking elected office themselves), the early justices often used addresses to grand juries while circuit riding as occasions for commentary beyond the strictly legal. At that time, such bodies were not simply assembled to decide whether to indict individuals. Instead, the responsible circuit justice would address the grand jurors at the start of each court term, “laying out their duty and the manner in which it was to be performed,” and “lectur[ing] on the role of government, on the implications of the new Constitutional system, and on the jury’s role and responsibility within that system.” Many of these charges were later printed in newspapers and reached a wider audience. In this way, the justices acted as “republican schoolmasters” who saw their role as to “instill a sense of civic virtue in the populace.”

The first chief justice, John Jay, did just that while riding circuit. In May 1790, Jay addressed several grand juries on the (then) “Eastern circuit,” openly contemplating political ideas discussed in the Federalist Papers, such as if men are capable of self-government. Jay was also political in a more explicit sense – he advised President George Washington in both politics and law, and while on the court, negotiated the “Jay Treaty” between the United States and Britain – which helped avert war between the two countries.

But perhaps no early justice tested the limits as far as Justice Samuel Chase. A Federalist who had campaigned for President John Adams in 1800, Chase delivered an 1803 charge to a Baltimore grand jury that criticized Republicans and the Jefferson-aligned Congress for repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801. This repeal, which, among other things, removed 16 circuit judges (most appointed by Adams), meant, according to him, that “the independence of the national judiciary” would be shaken to its foundation. Following this, Chase assailed a new Maryland provision broadening the vote to include individuals without property, saying that it would turn the U.S. into “a mobocracy.”

These overtly political remarks led in part to Chase’s impeachment by the House (specifically, the articles called out his activities as “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan”) and President Thomas Jefferson himself encouraged Chase’s impeachment in a letter to a House member, referencing “the extraordinary charge of Chace [sic] to the grand jury at Baltimore” and asking “ought this seditious & official attack on the principles of our constitution, and on the proceedings of a state, [] go unpunished?”

The Senate ultimately acquitted Chase in 1805, and no justice has been impeached since.

Then there was Chief Justice John Marshall, who – even while serving as chief justice – remained heavily involved in Federalist politics. Perhaps most remarkably, Marshall held two offices simultaneously after being sworn in as chief, as he continued acting as secretary of state for the final month of the Adams administration. Legal scholars today have noted the conflict of this “double duty,” which was not limited to Marshall (Jay and Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth served in similar roles). In fact, the case that made Marshall’s legacy, Marbury v. Madison, arose directly from commissions he had failed to deliver in his capacity as secretary of state.

Marshall’s off-bench advocacy didn’t end with the Adams administration, however. After his ruling in 1819’s McCulloch v. Maryland that recognized Congress’ ability to create the Second Bank of the United States pursuant to the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution drew criticism from certain corners, Marshall published a series of nine essays in the Alexandria Gazette under the pen name “A Friend of the Constitution” defending his own opinion. Legal scholars have also debated if Marshall’s conduct there was appropriate.

Mid-19th century

In 1829, President Andrew Jackson nominated John McLean for the Supreme Court, who took his seat the day after. During his time as a justice, McLean had a goal in mind other than serving on the court: to become president. Indeed, as Adams once remarked, McLean “thinks of nothing but the Presidency by day and dreams of nothing else by night.”

In 1848, McLean was talked about as a candidate for the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, but he demurred after Martin Van Buren took the lead for the nomination. Nevertheless, in a withdrawal letter that ran in several newspapers, McLean endorsed the party’s defining position of keeping slavery out of the land the United States had won from Mexico. This was not unusual for McLean, who was more than willing to take on the nation’s most difficult issues: He also voiced his strong objections to the annexation of Texas and to the war with Mexico (as, famously, did Abraham Lincoln). This was not met without opposition, as Mississippi Sen. Henry Foote complained that “the conduct of McLean, as a political letter-writer, is unworthy of the bench, discreditable to the country, and wholly indefensible.” Others accused him of “electioneering from the bench” given antislavery remarks contained within some of his court opinions.

Justice Levi Woodbury, who was on the court with McLean, made a presidential run of his own to serve as the nominee for the Democratic Party. Woodbury was reportedly known as a “loyal Jackson man … [who] saw [his] judicial and political positions as interchangeable.” The year before the 1848 Democratic convention, he held for a unanimous court in Jones v. Van Zandt that (1) the Fugitive Slave Act was valid under the Constitution as an exercise of congressional power and (2) that slavery’s protections were baked into the Constitution’s original compromises. The decision “gave him southern support,” though not enough to secure him a victory over Sen. Lewis Cass, who then went on to lose to Zachary Taylor.

The most widely read jurist in America

Near the start of the 20th century, Justice David J. Brewer treated the lecture hall as his second vocation. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who professed personal fondness for Brewer, frequently poked fun at his “itch for public speaking.” Nevertheless, by one historian’s account, all that speaking made Brewer “probably the most widely read jurist in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.”

And Brewer did not shy away from politics at the podium. His most insistent cause was peace; he spoke against the country’s drift toward empire abroad, against military buildups, and against war in general. He also took aim at the Progressive movement and at President Theodore Roosevelt in particular, criticizing Roosevelt’s imperialism (specifically, the Monroe Doctrine) and accusing him of playing “hide and seek” with the idea of running for a third term as president. Brewer also said New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes (who would eventually take his place on the court) – was a better politician than Roosevelt. The justice’s constant readiness to speak his mind in public reportedly unsettled some of his colleagues, including Holmes.

Which brings us to Hughes. Hughes, who had served as governor of New York, was initially nominated to the court in 1910 by President William Howard Taft, “in part to remove a likely challenger from the 1912 presidential election.” This didn’t quite work: Six years after his Senate confirmation, Hughes ran for president again, becoming the only sitting justice to be nominated for the presidency by a major party. He resigned from the court after being nominated and subsequently lost to Woodrow Wilson. In 1930, after serving as secretary of state, Hughes was picked as chief justice by President Herbert Hoover to fill the seat vacated by Taft and was swiftly confirmed. From there, perhaps his most notable political maneuver was to successfully speak out against President Franklin Roosevelt’s court packing plan, leading the president to grudgingly remark that Hughes was the best politician in the nation.

A first for radio

In 1937, there was no shortage of drama in politics or on the court. Hugo Black, a New Deal Democrat from Alabama who as a senator had been a vocal supporter of Roosevelt’s plan to enlarge the institution, was confirmed that August by a vote of 63 to 16. Soon after, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Ray Sprigle won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Black’s membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and editorial boards and politicians demanded that he step down.

Black publicly responded on October 1, 1937, with an 11-minute address made available across the U.S. via radio — by the Hugo Black archive’s account, the first such broadcast any justice had ever made. He admitted the charge (“I did join the Klan”) but maintained that he had resigned years earlier, kept no ties to the group, and held no racial or religious prejudice. The Post-Gazette put the audience at roughly 50 million, second, it said, only to the radio audience for King Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936. The address did its work: Polling showed Americans who wanted Black to resign dropped from 59 to 44 percent. Black took his seat on October 4, 1937, and proved to one of the court’s most ardent defenders of civil rights for Black Americans.

A justice takes on the bicentennial

In 1987, with the country gearing up to celebrate the Constitution’s 200th anniversary under a commission led by the recently retired Chief Justice Warren Burger, Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to join in. Speaking on May 6 to a lawyers’ group in Hawaii, Marshall remarked that the Framers’ judgment did not strike him as especially wise and described the document they wrote as “defective from the start“ – being, in his view, a charter that had protected slavery, shut women out of the vote, and that took a civil war and a series of amendments to set right.

The Maui speech drew front-page coverage (The Washington Post headline read “MARSHALL BLASTS CELEBRATION OF CONSTITUTION BICENTENNIAL”) and a conservative backlash, with one legal group going so far as to call for his resignation on the theory that Marshalls’ words “reflect[ed] a deep-seated bitterness and dislike that impair his capacity.” Others criticized Marhsall for misreading the Founding and defended the Constitution’s Framers, which was responded to at length in many a law review article. To be fair, the response was not all critical, and some received the speech well. For his part, Marshall did not address the critics and reprinted his address in several law journals.

Calling a candidate a ‘faker’

A more recent moment of a justice entering the political fray occurred when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – in a string of interviews with The Associated Press, The New York Times, and CNN – went after the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, in July of 2016, calling him “a faker,” pressed the point that he had not released his tax returns, said she could not picture the country with him as president, and quipped that her late husband would have judged it time to decamp for New Zealand. As NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported, no modern justice she knew of had ever “publicly criticize[d] a presidential candidate.”

The New York Times editorial board told Ginsburg to give up the political commentary, while Sen. Mitch McConnell called the comments inappropriate and Chuck Grassley said she should stay out of it. Trump did not remain silent, tweeting that her “mind is shot” and demanding that she resign. Ginsburg put out a statement describing her remarks as “ill-advised” and conceded that judges ought not to comment on candidates for office.

Arguing about whether the court is political

More recently, several justices have weighed in publicly on the question of whether the court is political – a subject that is arguably, in and of itself, political. In 2018, Trump dismissed an adverse ruling which held the administration could not deny asylum to individuals who crossed the border illegally as the work of an “Obama judge.” Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back, saying that “we do not have Obama judges or Trump judges.” Trump replied in a tweet: “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.” (As many media outlets, including SCOTUSblog, have reported, this has been far from Trump’s only criticisms about the Supreme Court and the justices – especially following its tariffs decision).

In 2021, speaking at a center named for McConnell, Justice Amy Coney Barrett insisted that the justices are not “a bunch of partisan hacks.” The same year, Justice Stephen Breyer published a book and embarked on a public tour arguing that the court is not a political body and warning against proposals to add seats to it. And in 2022, after the court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Elena Kagan said more than once that judges put their legitimacy at risk when they come across as “political or partisan.”

Last term, as well as this one, brought some additional reflections on politics from the justices. In July, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the state of American democracy is what keeps her up at night and that she is “not afraid to use [her] voice.” She called some of the court’s recent decisions an “existential threat to the rule of law” and warned that these risk making the court appear political. And in April 2026, in an address at the University of Texas that raised some eyebrows, Justice Clarence Thomas linked “progressivism” to Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao, and said that the audience should find “the same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration had … It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when everyone around you expects you to live by lies. It may mean confronting today’s fashionable bigotries such as anti-semitism … It may mean running for your school board when you see that they are teaching your children to hate your values and our country.”

The court and politics, still

Critics of the current court, from those troubled by Thomas’ remarks on progressivism to those skeptical of Jackson’s statement about existential threats to the rule of law, at times speak as though the current justices publicly wade into politics in a way that previous courts never approached. History very much suggests otherwise.

As noted at this article’s start, Robert Dahl wrote in 1957 that Americans are “not quite willing to accept” the court as a political institution and “not quite capable of denying it.” If anything, the preceding two centuries show that certain justices, at certain times, felt much the same way.

At the Court

On Thursday, the court released its opinions in four cases: Mullin v. Doe, Wolford v. Lopez, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, and Monsanto v. Durnell.

• In Mullin v. Doe, the court held, by a vote of 6-3, that the Temporary Protected Status program bars courts from reviewing the Secretary of Homeland Security’s determinations on TPS designations. The decision means that the Trump administration can end removal protections for Syrian and Haitian nationals. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, and Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
• In Wolford, the court held, also by a 6-3 vote, that Hawaii’s law prohibiting licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization violates the Second and 14th Amendments. Alito wrote the majority opinion, and Kagan and Jackson wrote dissenting opinions. Jackson’s dissent was joined by Sotomayor.
• In Al Otro Lado, the court held, again by a vote of 6-3, that asylum seekers do not “arrive[] in the United States” for the purposes of being permitted to apply for asylum under the Immigration and Nationality Act until they physically cross the border in the U.S. Alito wrote the majority opinion, and Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Kagan and Jackson. Jackson also wrote a dissenting opinion.
• In Monsanto, the court held, by a vote of 7-2, that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act expressly preempts a state-law failure-to-warn claim because the claim would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to its Roundup products’ label that the EPA does not require. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, and Jackson wrote a dissent, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

After Thursday’s opinion announcements, the justices met in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. The court will release orders from that conference on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.

Later on Thursday, the court denied a request for a stay of execution from Dusty Ray Spencer, who was sentenced to death for murdering his wife, Karen Spencer. Hours later, he was executed in Florida.

The court has indicated that it will next release opinions on Monday at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging that morning beginning at 9:30. There is expected to be at least one more opinion announcement day after Monday.

Morning Reads

White House calls immigration decisions a ‘tremendous win’

Aileen Graef, CNN

In a statement, “[t]he White House called the two immigration decisions handed down by the Supreme Court Thursday a ‘tremendous win’ for the Trump administration,” according to CNN. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Temporary Protected Status program “was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status or legal residency” and that President Donald Trump “is committed to ‘restoring integrity to our immigration system,’” including by ending “‘egregious abuses to our asylum system.’”

Almost 7 in 10 say Supreme Court should keep birthright citizenship in place: Survey

Max Rego, The Hill

As the Supreme Court considers a challenge to President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, a new Quinnipiac University poll found that “69 percent of 1,165 self-identified registered voters believe the Supreme Court” should rule for the challengers and “keep birthright citizenship in place,” according to The Hill. “Ninety-five percent of Democrats and 69 percent of independents” held that view, while “a little over half of Republicans surveyed said the high court should side with the Trump administration.” The court’s birthright citizenship ruling could come as soon as Monday.

The Forgotten Founder

Anastasia Boden, The Dispatch

For The Dispatch, Anastasia Boden, who is a columnist for SCOTUSblog, reviewed a new book about “the unsungest of the unsung heroes” – James Wilson, “who helped design the architecture of American government” and then went on to serve on the Supreme Court, where he became “the first and only justice to be imprisoned while on the bench.” She praised the book – The Lost Founder by Jesse Wegman – for recovering this significant historical figure “from obscurity,” noting that “even many lawyers have little idea who” Wilson is. Wilson was “one of the clearest expositors of the radical American idea that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed,” wrote Boden. “In an era when many Americans feel increasingly disconnected from their institutions, Wilson is a Founder worth remembering.”

The Ascension of Westside Mothers

Steve Vladeck, One First (paywalled)

In a post for his Substack, Steve Vladeck reflected on, among other things, the court’s Tuesday ruling in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, describing it as “a massively important holding with constitutional dimensions – one that reflects the culmination of a long-term conservative legal project to weaken” Congress’ powers under the spending clause. In Landor, he wrote, the majority endorsed a “previously fringe” idea “that statutes that Congress enacts under the Spending Clause are somehow of lesser force and status – and impose fewer obligations – than the laws it enacts under its other enumerated regulatory powers.” “The decision will bear not only on the ability of individuals to vindicate the federal rights Congress has conferred but on the capacity of Congress itself to provide for enforcement of the Spending Clause statutes it enacts going forward,” including in such areas as Medicaid, education, and nursing home regulations, Vladeck contended.

On Site

Opinion Analysis

Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii gun restriction

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a Hawaii law that makes it a crime for gun owners to bring their guns onto private property that is open to the public unless they have the property owner’s specific consent. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with a group of Maui residents with concealed-carry permits that the law violates the Second Amendment.

Opinion Analysis

Court allows Trump administration to end removal protections for Syrian and Haitian nationals

On Thursday, the court cleared the way for the federal government to remove protections for citizens of Haiti and Syria under the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows foreign citizens to stay in the U.S. when the government believes it is not safe for them to return to their home. By a vote of 6-3, the justices paused lower-court rulings that barred the Trump administration from ending the TPS designations.

Opinion Analysis

Justices side with Trump administration in border dispute over asylum seekers

In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the court upheld the federal government’s policy of systematically turning back asylum seekers before they can reach the U.S.-Mexico border. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with the Trump administration that the policy does not violate a federal law that permits noncitizens to apply for asylum when they “arrive[] in the United States,” because they don’t “arrive” until they cross the border.

Opinion Analysis

Court rules for Roundup maker in dispute over cancer warnings on pesticide labels

The court on Thursday sided with Monsanto in a high-stakes dispute over cancer warnings on pesticide labels. In an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled, by a vote of 7-2, that state lawsuits aimed at holding the company liable for failing to warn consumers about the potential risks of Roundup exposure are barred by the federal law governing pesticide sales.

View from the Court

An unusual retort to a dissent from the bench

In his View from the Court column, Mark Walsh described what unfolded as the justices announced Thursday’s opinions. Of particular note was Justice Samuel Alito’s rare response to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s 10-minute delivery of her oral dissent in Al Otro Lado. “There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” Alito said.

Relist Watch

Penultimate relists: papers, parents, and procedural puzzles

In his Relist Watch column, John Elwood examined six petitions for review that were considered by the justices for a second time during their private conference on Thursday, including three on Arizona voting laws, one on attorney’s fees, one on parents’ involvement in their children’s gender identity and transitioning, and one on access to a certificate of appealability in a habeas case.

A Closer Look

Coverage of Wolford v. Lopez

As noted above, the Supreme Court held in Wolford v. Lopez that a Hawaii gun law addressing private property that is open to the public violated the Second Amendment. The law in question was sometimes referred to as a “vampire rule,” because it required concealed-carry permit holders to receive express permission from property owners before entering with a gun. Although most media outlets, including SCOTUSblog, went with “strikes down” to describe what the court did to Hawaii’s law, its nickname created some interesting headline possibilities, as evidenced below.

The New York Times: Supreme Court Overturns Hawaii Gun Law

The Washington Post: Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii limits on carrying guns in public

Associated Press: Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii law requiring permission to carry guns in stores and hotels

USA Today: Supreme Court strikes down gun limits for stores, other public places

NBC News: Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii’s ‘vampire rule’ for gun owners

NPR: Supreme Court bars ‘vampire rules’ on gun ownership

Fox News: Supreme Court strikes down blue state’s ‘vampire rule’ in major win for gun rights

National Review: Supreme Court Drives a Stake Through Hawaii’s ‘Vampire Rule’

Washington Examiner: Supreme Court strikes down sweeping Hawaii gun law 6-3

Vox: The Supreme Court’s embarrassing new Second Amendment decision, explained

SCOTUS Quotes

“The Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States. It cannot give way to ‘the spirit of Aloha’ in Hawaii, any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple … or the Windy City.”

— Justice Samuel Alito in Wolford v. Lopez (2026)

“Today’s decision makes one thing clear: The Court’s objective is protecting guns, not consistently preserving any principle of law.”

— Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting in Wolford

Next week, what is being billed as the biggest fireworks show ever in Washington, D.C., will help celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. Yet the Supreme Court will offer its own pyrotechnics this morning with a dramatic and possibly unprecedented rebuttal by a majority opinion author to an impassioned dissent from the bench.

But first, after being out of town and missing Tuesday’s session, I arrive at the court this morning and decide to check the cafeteria menu, in case a lengthy opinion release spills into the lunch hour. Today’s special is “Garlic Parmesan Wings.” Yesterday’s special of a “Hawaii Five-O Burger” – “Caramelized Onion, Griddled Pineapple Slice, Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, Pepper Jack Cheese and Sriracha Aioli” – is a reminder that the big Hawaii gun case, Wolford v. Lopez, is among the 12 decisions we’re expecting in the next few days.

In the courtroom, it is a bit of a relief that the bar section is nearly empty; there will be no bar admissions today even though this is the last regularly scheduled court session of the term. (Tuesday was the first bonus day and there will be more.) The court abstains from that in-court procedure after the third week of June. This means there will be no delay between the moment opinions are done and when Marshal Gail Curley announces the next day for court. (Chief Justice John Roberts makes the announcement if this is the penultimate opinion day.)

In the justices’ guest box, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s mother, Martha, is in attendance, as she is with some frequency.

The U.S. solicitor general’s office contingent is led by Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris and several other top deputies and assistants. Solicitor General D. John Sauer is not here today.

When the justices take the bench, all are present, and Roberts announces that Kavanaugh has the opinion in Monsanto v. Durnell. He concisely summarizes the court’s holding that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act expressly pre-empts a Missouri man’s state-law failure-to-warn claim that would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to its glyphosate-based pesticide Roundup.

Kavanaugh notes that the Environmental Protection Agency’s view that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer in humans is shared by regulators in Canada, Australia, Japan, and the European Union. My mind goes to the World Cup, as those three countries are vying to move on the knockout stage, while thankfully the EU is not confined to a single team.

Harris argued in support of Monsanto and seems pleased with this result. Kavanaugh announces the somewhat unusual lineup that includes a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas and a dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The chief justice next announces that “Justice [Samuel] Alito has the opinion in three of our cases this morning.”

It’s not unheard of for a justice to have two majority opinions in one day. Three is a little more rare, but Alito has been behind his colleagues in completed opinions, which is not necessarily his fault but could be due to the concurring and dissenting justices.

Alito’s first serving is a Hawaii Five-O Burger: Wolford.

He is concise with a summary of the holding that Hawaii’s law prohibiting licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public without the property owner’s express authorization violates the Second and 14th Amendments.

He spends a few moments explaining why the decision has rejected Hawaii’s proffered historical analogues for justifying its gun regulation, with special attention to the state’s citation of an 1865 Louisiana law that generally barred the carrying of guns on premises or plantations of citizens. That law was enacted as part of the post-Civil War “Black Codes” aimed to perpetuate the subjugation of Blacks. Alito calls it “strange indeed” that Hawaii would rely on “this racist law.”

Alito announces a lineup that includes a concurrence by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch in part, and a dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with a separate dissent by Justice Elena Kagan.

Alito moves right along to his second case, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, which holds that an “alien” standing in Mexico does not “arrive” in the United States by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country but only when he crosses the border. The Immigration and Nationality Act thus neither entitles such a person standing in Mexico to apply for asylum nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him.

This lineup includes a concurring opinion by Thomas, as well as a dissent by Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, and a separate dissent by Jackson.

Alito pauses, and I am looking down jotting in my notebook ready for him to move on to his third case when another voice sounds from the bench.

Sotomayor, it quickly becomes clear, is delivering an oral dissent in this case, and she opens with something from page 29 of her 35-page opinion, the story of the M.S. St. Louis, the ship that left Nazi Germany in 1939 with some 900 Jewish refugees but was turned away in Cuba, Miami, and Canada before returning to Europe, where 250 of the refugees died in the Holocaust.

This led, after World War II, to a treaty and federal laws meant to avoid such a fate for asylum-seeking refugees. But under the practice at issue in this case, U.S. immigration officers “physically block” asylum seekers just outside ports of entry, Sotomayor says.

“Turn the ship back,” she states, hammering home her point.

She takes issue with the majority’s conception of “arrive,” saying it is perfectly logical to say you have arrived in Washington, D.C., when you have landed at “Reagan National Airport,” which is in Virginia. (She uses its “DCA” code in the opinion, but adds from the bench that “I always think I’m still in D.C.” while at that close-proximity airport.)

Sotomayor also discusses the federal “metering policy” that limited the number of arriving aliens who would be inspected at ports of entry and how it has led to makeshift camps on the Mexican side of the U.S. border and other “dire humanitarian conditions.”

As Sotomayor goes on for 10 minutes, longer than the total of Alito’s first two opinion summaries, he at times leans back in his chair and sips from his water cup. When she wraps up, he leans forward and we expect him to move on to his third opinion.

But first, he has a response.

“There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” he says. This causes heads to turn in the courtroom. He goes on with a short substantive retort to Sotomayor, paraphrasing his written opinion’s point that “the government’s policy merely delayed entry by some aliens as a way of improving a situation that both interfered with the proper conduct of inspection and created unsanitary, inhumane, and sometimes dangerous conditions at ports of entry.”

He tells the audience to read the opinion and says, “I will move on to the next case.”

There is some discussion afterwards in the press room, where those who listened to the audio piped into the Public Information Office caught some or all of Alito’s retort, about what he meant by “had I known there would be a dissent read.” It seems clear enough he knew when the justices took the bench that Sotomayor planned an oral dissent, because he expectantly paused at the end of his short summary. But what he seemed to mean was that he didn’t have much notice that she planned to dissent.

Update: On Friday, the court said that Alito’s courtroom reaction to Sotomayor’s oral dissent had been a result of a “misunderstanding.”

“Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor’s chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench,” a spokesperson for the court said. “It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito’s part.”

While Alito favors short summaries, he does tend to respond to more of the dissent when he knows an oral dissent is coming. (He did this most recently in Louisiana v. Callais in late April, when he responded in some detail to Kagan’s oral dissent. But that was a “prebuttal” – he included his responses in his opinion summary, not speaking after her oral dissent.)

The closest historical analogue I can remember to today’s Alito retort came in Glossip v. Gross in 2015. In that case, in which the court rejected an Oklahoma death row inmate’s challenge to the state’s means of execution, Justice Stephen Breyer read from his dissent, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that fundamentally called into question the constitutionality of the death penalty.

That prompted a short rebuttal from Justice Antonin Scalia, delivered from the bench (and in a concurrence in print that was, a bit strangely, more colorful than his bench statement).

Back to Alito and his third opinion of the day. He delivers a succinct summary of the court’s holding in another immigration case, Mullin v. Doe, which allows the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for Syrian and Haitian nationals.

He essentially makes just one point from his 24-page opinion, that the administration has ended TPS for every country that has come up for renewal. (He doesn’t connect the dots to his conclusion in the written opinion that this undercuts the challengers’ arguments about the alleged discriminatory animus at play regarding Syria and Haiti.)

It is essentially another 6-3 lineup, with two justices not joining one part of Alito’s opinion, and Thomas filing a concurrence. Kagan has written a sharp dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, but she does not summarize it from the bench.

The reporters look expectantly at the chief justice, wondering whether there could be yet more today. But he is looking to the marshal.

Curley bangs her gavel and announces that the court is recessed until Monday. With no “penultimate” announcement from the chief justice, it appears there are at least two more opinion days, with more fireworks likely.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Monsanto in a high-stakes dispute over cancer warnings on pesticide labels. In an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, the court ruled, by a vote of 7-2, that state lawsuits aimed at holding the company liable for failing to warn consumers about the potential risks of Roundup exposure are barred by the federal law governing pesticide sales.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch. In it, she contended that Thursday’s ruling is based on “a labeling requirement that does not exist,” and described the effects of the majority’s interpretation of the law as “both remarkable and regrettable.”

The court’s ruling comes after decades of debate and litigation over the safety of glyphosate, a highly effective and popular herbicide that serves as the main active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. Since 1974, when the Environmental Protection Agency first reviewed and registered glyphosate-based pesticides, clearing the way for their sale in the United States, the EPA has repeatedly concluded that such products do not need to carry a cancer warning. However, the EPA’s determinations have not dispelled concerns about Roundup’s cancer risks. These concerns increased in 2015, when a working group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The IARC’s report led to tens of thousands of lawsuits against Monsanto over how Roundup products were labeled. Plaintiffs such as John Durnell, who brought the case that was before the court, contended that the company was liable for failing to warn them about the alleged link between glyphosate and cancer, while Monsanto countered that the EPA, which oversees pesticide labeling, had not required a cancer warning.

Over the past decade, Monsanto has paid billions in damages and settlement agreements in these lawsuits even as it has continued to assert that state-level claims over Roundup labels are preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which authorizes the EPA to regulate the use, sale, and labeling of pesticides and which includes a uniformity requirement prohibiting states from imposing “any requirements for labeling or packaging in addition to or different from those required” by the federal government.

When it asked the Supreme Court to clarify the scope of FIFRA, Monsanto emphasized that thousands of lawsuits over Roundup’s label remain pending and claimed that the future of U.S. agriculture was at stake in the case. In January, the justices agreed to weigh in.

On Thursday, the court held that FIFRA expressly preempts a state-law failure-to-warn claim against Monsanto, because such a claim would require the company “to add a cancer warning to Roundup’s label” that is not part of the EPA-approved label. That outcome, Kavanaugh wrote in his 22-page majority opinion, runs afoul of FIFRA’s uniformity requirement.

Before registering a product for sale and distribution, Kavanaugh explained, the EPA “undertakes an extensive review of the pesticide and its proposed labeling,” and “determine[s] that the proposed label includes all warnings necessary and adequate to protect human health and the environment.” Once registered, “the manufacturer is required to use” the label approved by the EPA until it receives approval for a change or the EPA orders a change. The agency, according to Kavanaugh, “possesses a slew of tools to monitor the pesticide market and scientific developments, and thereby ensure that pesticide labels contain appropriate warnings in light of changed circumstances or new information.”

Since it first studied glyphosate-based pesticides in 1974, Kavanaugh continued, the EPA has “repeatedly concluded that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer” and therefore not required “pesticides like Roundup to include a cancer warning on their labels.” That means that, “as a matter of federal law, Monsanto legally must use a label without a cancer warning unless and until EPA approves or requires a change.”

Kavanaugh rejected Durnell’s contention, echoed by Jackson in her dissent, that a state failure-to-warn claim does not violate the uniformity requirement because the goal of both the claim and FIFRA is to ensure that manufacturers “include adequate warnings to protect human health.” Such an argument, he wrote, “operates at far too high a level of generality and disregards the central and comprehensive role that EPA performs in making labeling determinations.”

Kavanaugh also dismissed the idea that state claims must be allowed to ensure that labels account for new research. “EPA does not sit in an information-free silo,” he wrote. “It keeps abreast of new safety developments” and follows up on potentially significant findings, such as when it “commissioned multiple reports about glyphosate’s potential carcinogenicity” after the IARC report came out. Third parties are free to “bring new information to EPA’s attention,” Kavanaugh concluded, but they cannot use state lawsuits to “impose labeling requirements” that the EPA has deemed unnecessary or inaccurate.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a brief concurring opinion, in which he expressed support for the majority opinion but called out what he believes are “underlying constitutional infirmities” in FIFRA. “[T]he Act,” he wrote, “likely exceeds Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause,” because agriculture and manufacturing are “entirely ‘separate’ from ‘commerce.’” It also “raises questions about Congress’s ability to delegate core legislative power to the EPA,” he contended, and about separation-of-powers issues raised by “the modern administrative state.”

In her 24-page dissent, Jackson wrote that the court should have joined the “chorus” of “state and federal courts that have rejected” Monsanto’s preemption argument. She asserted that FIFRA gives the EPA the authority to review product labels when assessing pesticides, but not the authority to have the final say on cancer warnings. “In accepting Monsanto’s argument and holding that Durnell’s failure-to-warn claim is preempted, the Court misunderstands FIFRA’s requirements, misinterprets the scope of FIFRA’s preemption, and ultimately leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered,” she wrote.

“FIFRA,” according to Jackson, “expressly limits States’ authority to regulate pesticide labels, but it does not eliminate that authority.” States retain the power to impose labeling requirements that are “‘equivalent to’ FIFRA’s requirements,” and the cancer warning at issue in this case is one such permissible state requirement because it stems from the shared goal of avoiding misbranding. “As the Missouri Court of Appeals explained, Durnell’s claim has the same ‘practical effect’ as FIFRA’s misbranding prohibition: ‘[B]oth require a pesticide manufacturer to adequately warn users of the potential dangers of using its product,’” she wrote.

The idea that “state law cannot require Roundup’s label” to include a warning that the EPA has not required “has some intuitive appeal,” Jackson acknowledged, adding that “federal approval should count for something, after all.” But that conclusion “is unmoored from the” the text of FIFRA, which says that registered pesticides can still be subject to a misbranding charge. “This means,” she wrote, “that the EPA’s approval of a pesticide’s label cannot conclusively establish that the pesticide is not misbranded.” “The majority reads into FIFRA a labeling requirement that does not exist, and it reads out of FIFRA the statute’s ongoing prohibition on misbranding,” Jackson concluded.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the federal government’s policy of systematically turning back asylum seekers before they can reach the U.S.-Mexico border. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with the Trump administration in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado that the policy, which was adopted a decade ago as a response to a surge in the number of Haitian immigrants seeking asylum outside San Diego, does not violate a federal law that permits noncitizens to apply for asylum when they “arrive[] in the United States.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito called the question before the court a “straightforward” one. “In ordinary speech,” he wrote, “no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place. The context in which the phrase ‘arrives in the United States’ is used in the immigration statutes at issue here supports an ordinary meaning.’”

In an opinion that she read from the bench – an expression of strong disagreement with the majority’s decision – Justice Sonia Sotomayor (joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson) wrote that “[t]he consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not.”

The policy at the center of the case is known as “metering.” Officials from the Customs and Border Patrol agency implemented the policy – which was formalized in a memorandum in 2018 – by standing along the U.S. border with Mexico and turning back noncitizens without valid travel documents, including asylum seekers, before they could enter the United States.

The challengers in the case are Al Otro Lado, Inc., an immigrant rights group, and 13 people who are seeking asylum, which is a form of legal protection for people who fear persecution or harm in their own countries. When noncitizens who arrive at a port of entry (an officially designated site to enter the country), such as an airport or a land crossing, indicate that they want to seek asylum, they are normally screened by border officials and then channeled into the asylum system, which may include either an interview with an asylum officer or proceedings in immigration court.

The challengers argued, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed, that, for purposes of applying for asylum, noncitizens who were turned away from ports of entry before they could cross the border had “arrived in” the United States.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court reversed that decision. Alito first pointed to what he characterized as the “clear” meaning of the phrase “arrives in the United States” “when used in everyday speech.” Surveying several different major dictionaries, Alito concluded that “a person arrives in a destination when he enters within its area—not before.” He rejected the challengers’ argument that “when someone ‘block[s]’ the way of the person seeking to arrive,” “to arrive in a place is merely to ‘be at its threshold’” – so that, for example, asylum seekers “arrive in the United States” when they try to enter the country. “A running back does not arrive in the end zone when he reaches the 1-yard line,” Alito countered, nor does a letter “arrive in the mailbox when a dog assaults the carrier a step away from the mailbox. A person arrives in a destination only when he enters it, and that conclusion does not change because someone or something blocks entry.”

This conclusion, Alito continued, is bolstered by other immigration laws that distinguish between “actual entrance into the United States and attempted entrance.” The latter distinction, he suggested, shows that “[a]n alien who unsuccessfully attempts to arrive in the United States does not arrive in the United States.” If Congress had wanted “aliens who arrive at or near the border to be able to apply for asylum,” Alito emphasized, it could have said so expressly. But, he concluded, “Congress did not use those terms.”

Alito also rebuffed the challengers’ argument that the phrase “arrives in” must apply to some asylum seekers who are not yet in the United States because the same provision also allows noncitizens to apply for asylum if they are “physically present in the United States.” Otherwise, the challengers contended, and contrary to one of the principles on which courts rely when interpreting laws, the phrase “arrives in” would not have any additional meaning. Alito acknowledged that the challengers’ “argument has some force,” but he wrote that the rule is not an “iron” one. “[E]ven excellent writers do not always trim every unnecessary word,” he said, “and the same is true of Congress.”

Additionally, Alito pushed back against the challengers’ contention that accepting the government’s interpretation would violate the United States’ obligation under international conventions, as well as the Refugee Act of 1980, not to return refugees when they would face persecution because of characteristics such as their race or religion. The Supreme Court has held, Alito emphasized, that the ban on returning refugees “imposes a duty on nations not to send refugees that are within their borders to certain places. It does not establish,” he wrote, “that refugees have a right to enter a nation at the time they prefer.”

Finally, Alito rejected the challengers’ suggestion that the majority’s decision “will create perverse incentives for aliens to enter the country illegally” instead. “Metering,” he wrote, “does not permanently bar any alien from arriving in the United States and then applying for asylum. It merely delays the date when some may enter. Illegal entry, on the other hand, may be expensive and dangerous, and it carries adverse legal effects.”

Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which he argued that the lower court, by issuing a declaration that the government’s metering policy violated federal law, had granted “relief that Congress has prohibited” under federal immigration law, which provides that only the Supreme Court has the power “to enjoin or restrain the operation of” some federal immigration laws. But in any event, Thomas added, Congress does not have the power under the Constitution to require the president to “allow aliens to cross the border against his will.”

In her 35-page dissent, Sotomayor challenged Alito’s conclusion that the ordinary meaning of the phrase “arriving in” always means that someone is physically within a particular space. “If someone said, ‘Call me when you arrive in Washington, D. C.,’” she posited, “it would be logical to call them once you have landed at DCA Airport, just across the river in Virginia.”

Sotomayor also reiterated the argument that the majority’s ruling creates “‘a perverse incentive’” for asylum seekers to enter the country illegally, suggesting that Alito was wrong to dismiss the concern as “overstated.” “The point,” she wrote, “is not that illegal entry always produces a net windfall for asylum seekers; it is that Congress was unlikely to devise a system in which asylum is available to those who unlawfully set foot over the border, but not to those who attempt to comply with the law and are physically blocked from entering at the threshold of a port of entry by an immigration officer.”

“Congress,” Sotomayor concluded, “passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past. Yet if the refugees on the M. S. St. Louis” – a ship carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees seeking to escape from Nazi Germany, who were turned away from (among other countries) the United States and eventually returned to western Europe, where many of them died in the Holocaust – “were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto U.S. soil.”

In an extremely rare move, Alito responded briefly to Sotomayor’s dissent from the bench, saying that there was “much that I would have added” to his oral summary of the opinion if he had known she would read such an extensive summary. Alito emphasized that the “metering” policy had been employed “by two different administrations” – the Obama administration and the first Trump administration” – “as a way of dealing with surges” of asylum seekers at the border in an “orderly and humane” manner.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a brief separate dissent in which she argued that the court should have never granted review because the metering policy had been rescinded in 2021 and the case lacked “a factual record establishing how metering works in practice.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the federal government to remove protections for citizens of Haiti and Syria under a federal program that allows foreign citizens to stay in the United States when the U.S. government believes that it is not safe for them to return to their homes. By a vote of 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe, the justices paused rulings by federal courts in Washington, D.C., and New York that had barred the Trump administration from ending the designations under the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Haiti and Syria. Instead, the court ruled that the federal law creating the TPS program generally bars courts from reviewing the determinations by then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to end the TPS designations for Haiti and Syria. The court also ruled that the Haitian TPS holders are likely to lose on the claim that Noem ended TPS status for Haiti because the country’s citizens are overwhelmingly Black and therefore violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the language of the TPS statute prohibiting judicial review “is clear, and its plain meaning is very broad.”

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She wrote that at this stage of the litigation, the Haitian and Syrian TPS beneficiaries “ask for only one thing: that they may stay in this country while they continue to litigate their claims. … [T]hey are entitled to that relief, and should not instead be consigned to devastating, and indeed life-threatening, injury.”

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990. The program gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to designate a country’s citizens as eligible to remain in the U.S. and work if they cannot return safely to their own country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions there.

Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano made both of the designations at the center of this case. In 2010, shortly after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 300,000 people and causing catastrophic damage, she designated Haiti under the TPS program. Napolitano made a similar designation for Syria two years later, pointing to “deteriorating conditions” there after a “brutal crackdown” by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad against anti-government dissenters.

Napolitano’s designations of Haiti and Syria initially lasted for 18 months, but they were repeatedly extended until 2025, when Noem announced that the Trump administration planned to end both designations. Noem said that a new Syrian government was attempting to “move the country to a stable institutional governance,” and that she had determined that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian nationals … from returning in safety.” And in both cases, she indicated that it would be “contrary to the national interest” to allow the countries’ TPS designation to remain in place.

Challenges from Haitian and Syrian nationals with TPS followed in Washington, D.C., and New York, respectively. Federal judges in those cities barred the Trump administration from ending the TPS program for both countries, and two federal appeals courts declined to step in.

The Trump administration then came to the Supreme Court earlier this year, asking the justices to pause the lower courts’ orders and hear oral arguments in the disputes immediately, without waiting for the federal appeals courts to weigh in. Those requests came less than a year after the Supreme Court twice blocked rulings by a federal district judge in San Francisco that would have temporarily barred the Trump administration from ending a TPS designation (as well as an extension of that designation) for Venezuela.

On March 16, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the Haiti and Syria disputes, but it temporarily left the lower courts’ rulings in place – and, as a result, kept the protections for Haitian and Syrian nationals intact – while the case moved forward at the Supreme Court. The court heard oral arguments on April 29.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s rulings. Alito explained that the law creating the TPS program “allows ‘no judicial review of any determination . . . with respect to the . . . termination’ of a TPS designation. The term ‘determination,’” he continued, “can be used to describe either an individual decision or” “the chain of events leading up to a decision.” Moreover, Alito continued, the government’s reading is supported by “other terms” in the same provision, “particularly the phrase ‘with respect to’”—which “‘generally has a broadening effect, ensuring that the scope of a provision covers not only its subject but also matters relating to that subject.’”

“Under either of these definitions,” Alito concluded, courts generally cannot review Noem’s decisions to terminate the TPS designations for Syria and Haiti. Each of the claims by the challengers in this case involves “a discrete decision made by the Secretary—for example, her decision to consult the State Department in a particular manner and her decision that country conditions in Syria and Haiti justified termination of their TPS designations. And all those steps were part of the process that led to her final decision to terminate these countries’ TPS designations.”

Alito also rejected the challengers’ argument that although courts cannot review the substance of Noem’s decision to terminate TPS status, they can weigh in on procedural violations of the laws governing her determinations – for example, their claim that Noem “inadequately consulted the State Department about conditions in Syria.” “[T]he TPS judicial-review bar,” Alito stressed, “expressly restricts review.”

Alito similarly turned down the challengers’ contention that decisions that are only part of the secretary’s “ultimate ‘determination’” can be reviewed. Alito once again emphasized that such an interpretation “is inconsistent with the plain meaning of the statutory text. And that is true whether the term ‘determination’ is understood to mean a discrete decision or a process leading up to a final decision.” This theory, Alito continued, is also inconsistent with the general principles of federal agency laws, under which “[i]f the final agency action is unreviewable, then so too are subsidiary determinations.”

Alito downplayed the challengers’ suggestion that, if courts cannot review the secretary’s decisions, it could lead to “many shocking abuses” – such as “a 50-year TPS designation, contrary to the 18-month statutory cap” or a decision to terminate TPS “based on a coin-flip.” Even if the courts could not step in, Alito posited, “Congress would have ample means to stop that abuse, including, for example, through the annual appropriations process.”

And even if there is an exception to the general bar on judicial review for the Haitian TPS beneficiaries’ claim that Noem’s decision to terminate the designation for Haiti violated the Constitution, Alito added, that claim “will likely fail.” The challengers had pointed to statements by President Donald Trump about Haiti – which, as Kagan provided in her dissent, included suggestions that Haitians in Ohio were “eating the dogs . . . [and] cats,” descriptions of Haiti as a “shithole country,” and contentions that Haitians living in the U.S. “probably have AIDS” – as well as statements by Noem about immigration and TPS. Alito acknowledged that the statements contain “heated language.” But “[n]one” of those statements, he concluded, “was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on” reasons having nothing to do with race. But, he wrote, “[p]olitical discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago, and the statements cited by” the Haitian TPS beneficiaries “exemplify this development.”

Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which he argued that courts also lack the power to review the Haitian TPS beneficiaries’ constitutional claim. “[T]he statute,” he contended, “makes Congress’s intent to preclude judicial review clear.” But even if courts could review constitutional claims generally, he said, these challengers could not prevail because noncitizens cannot sue the federal government for violations of their right to equal treatment. Such a guarantee is only binding on the states, he wrote.

In a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Kagan first offered a different, and narrower, reading of the judicial-review bar. The TPS judicial-review bar, she contended, applies only to the DHS secretary’s “‘ determination’ ‘with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.’” This means, she wrote, that courts do have the power to review decisions and actions beyond the secretary’s “determination[s]” about TPS designations or terminations. This includes, she said, “the procedural steps the Secretary must undertake prior to making any determination about” the conditions in a particular country.

Here, Kagan said, the challengers are not arguing that Noem “made the wrong call when she determined that Haiti and Syria no longer meet the criteria for TPS (although the plaintiffs surely think that too). Instead,” Kagan wrote, “the claims are that the Secretary failed to comply with a pre-determination procedural mandate—more specifically, that she failed to consult with appropriate agencies about country conditions.”

Kagan called it “plain to see” that race played a role in the decision to terminate the TPS designation for Haiti. “The evidence” that the Haiti TPS beneficiaries “have offered,” she stressed, “includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” But those “statements fairly shout,” she said, “in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.”

“Respectfully,” Kagan concluded, “I dissent from the Court’s decision that” the TPS beneficiaries “may … be put on the next plane.”

This Thursday’s conference is the last one currently scheduled during the October Term 2025. If past practice is any guide, the court will add a mop-up conference after it releases the last opinions in argued cases – which, at this point, looks likely to happen next week. But before the justices can close the books on the term and scatter to their respective undisclosed locations, they have to clear out the relists.

The court made real progress on Monday, disposing of eight relisted cases. As we expected, the court granted review in last week’s Nielsen v. Watanabe, which asks whether a federal prisoner may bring an implied damages action under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics for alleged deliberate indifference to his medical needs after he was badly beaten by other prisoners. Some informed commentators think that the real question is not whether this particular Bivens claim survives, but whether the court has finally tired of narrowing Bivens one case at a time and is ready simply to overrule it. Meanwhile, the court is holding Mohan v. Watkins, which raises the same issue, pending Nielsen’s resolution.

In seven-time relist McCarthy v. Hernandez, the court summarily reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit’s grant of habeas relief to Pedro Hernandez, who was convicted of the notorious 1979 murder of six-year-old Etan Patz. Hernandez confessed to the murder multiple times – first before receiving Miranda warnings, and then again after receiving these – and argued that the later confessions were tainted by the earlier, unwarned one.

During deliberations, the jury sent the judge a note asking whether, if it found the first confession involuntary, it had to disregard all the later ones as well. The trial judge said no. The 2nd Circuit held that the trial court should have instructed the jury on the rule of 2004’s Missouri v. Seibert, under which certain two-step interrogations designed to circumvent Miranda are admissible only if the later, warned confession is sufficiently attenuated from the earlier, unwarned statement. The Supreme Court disagreed, and held that the 2nd Circuit had exceeded its authority under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act because Seibert “said nothing about jury instructions.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that they would have denied certiorari.

The court also granted, vacated, and remanded (decided without oral argument) in two relisted cases after prosecutors confessed error. The court GVR’d in Newberry v. Texas for further consideration in light of Texas’ brief arguing that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had wrongly rejected Newberry’s claim that prosecutors improperly withheld exculpatory information in violation of Brady v. Maryland. And in Grayson v. United States, the court GVR’d after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld the admission of a FaceTime recording showing Grayson offering to pay for a murder, but the government later conceded that the recording should have been suppressed under federal law. Grayson still may not obtain relief on remand; the government maintains that any error was harmless. Justice Samuel Alito agreed in a dissent from the GVR order that the error was harmless, noting that Grayson herself had called the FBI and described the incriminating FaceTime call in detail.

The other relisted petitions fared less well. Continuing the solicitor general’s intermittent cold streak, the court denied review in United States v. Carter, in which the government sought review of a D.C. Court of Appeals (the highest court in D.C.) decision holding that a defendant’s race is relevant to whether a reasonable person would feel free to leave an encounter with police and thus whether the person has been “seized.” Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented from the denial of certiorari, saying that the D.C. Court of Appeals’ rule was important, constitutionally fraught, and worthy of review now rather than later.

The court also denied review in five-time relist Saldaño v. Texas. Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, dissented from denial, arguing that the court should at least have summarily vacated so that Texas courts could consider whether Victor Saldaño is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution under 2002’s Atkins v. Virginia. Sotomayor emphasized that every expert to evaluate Saldaño had concluded that he is intellectually disabled – and that even Texas had asked for a remand to sort that issue out. In her view, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ refusal to take even that “modest step” risks turning the Eighth Amendment into a dead letter.

Lastly, the court denied review in 11-time relist City of Los Angeles v. Estate of Hernandez, in which the city sought review of a decision holding that the final two shots an officer fired at a man approaching her with a box cutter were constitutionally excessive. Thomas and Alito noted, without opinion, that they would have granted the petition.

That brings us to this week’s new business. There are 180 petitions and applications for this week’s conference. Six are being considered for a second time. So are they just summer reruns or surprise season finales? Let’s take a look.

Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship triple feature

Three of this week’s new relists – Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, Petersen v. Mi Familia Vota, and Arizona v. Promise Arizona – arise from long-running litigation over Arizona’s 2022 voting laws, known as House Bills 2492 and 2243. Together, they ask how far Arizona may go in requiring documentary proof of citizenship or residence, limiting mail voting by “federal-only” voters, and checking voter rolls for noncitizens – and how much deference the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit owed the district court after a bench trial.

Some background, regrettably necessary. In 2013’s Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., the Supreme Court held that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 requires Arizona to “accept and use” the federal voter-registration form, which does not require documentary proof of citizenship, for federal elections. Arizona responded with a bifurcated system: voters who provided documentary proof of citizenship could vote in all elections, while those who used the federal form without such proof could be registered as “federal-only” voters. Then, in a 2018 consent decree in litigation brought by the League of United Latin American Citizens and others, the Arizona secretary of state (and the Maricopa County Recorder) agreed to treat state-form applicants the same way as federal-form applicants for federal-election registration purposes. In 2022, Arizona enacted H.B. 2492, which among other things required documentary proof of citizenship and residence for state-form applicants and barred certain federal-only voters from voting by mail or for president. H.B. 2243 added new procedures for checking databases and canceling registrations of voters believed not to be citizens.

The district court enjoined significant parts of the laws. As relevant here, it held that Arizona could not reject state-form applications lacking documentary proof of citizenship, both because of the LULAC consent decree and because the NVRA does not allow Arizona to demand that extra proof for federal registration. It also held that the documentary proof-of-residence requirement violated the NVRA, that public-assistance-agency forms requiring extra proof were not “equivalent” to the federal form, that Arizona could not deny mail voting to federal-form registrants lacking documentary proof of citizenship, and that the state could not systematically remove voters within 90 days of a federal election. After a lengthy bench trial, the district court also rejected the claim that H.B. 2243 was enacted with discriminatory intent.

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed most of the injunction but (holding that the district court applied too demanding an evidentiary standard) vacated the no-discriminatory-purpose finding. The panel majority also held that Promise Arizona had representational standing, even though Arizona says the organization failed to identify any injured member after trial. Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented, arguing the panel’s decision was “[u]nprecedented” and that Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship and voter-roll-cancellation laws should largely have been sustained. According to Bumatay, the consent decree could not bind the legislature, Promise Arizona lacked standing, and the majority reweighed the discriminatory-intent evidence in derogation of the “strong presumption of good faith” owed to lawmakers. Eleven judges dissented from denial of rehearing en banc on various grounds in three separate opinions.

The petitions divide the issues into three baskets. The RNC’s petition presents two questions: whether the NVRA or the LULAC consent decree bars Arizona from requiring documentary proof of citizenship from state-form applicants, and whether the NVRA bars Arizona from removing noncitizens from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. The petition filed by Arizona legislative leaders Warren Petersen and Steve Montenegro overlaps on the state-form question, but also asks whether the NVRA preempts Arizona’s rule barring federal-only voters without proof of citizenship from voting by mail, and whether the 9th Circuit improperly disturbed the district court’s discriminatory-intent ruling. The petition filed by the state of Arizona and state attorney general Kristin Mayes is narrower: it challenges the 9th Circuit’s holding that Promise Arizona has representational standing and the remand on discriminatory purpose.

The solicitor general, one of several respondents in the case, displays the kind of moderation that in Supreme Court practice usually means “everybody is at least a little unhappy.” It supports granting the RNC petition but opposes the others. The United States says the state-form proof-of-citizenship question and the 90-day removal question warrant review. The government also points to the court’s emergency-docket encounters with these issues before the 2024 election. Specifically, in August 2024, in this case, the court partially stayed the injunction against Arizona’s state-form proof-of-citizenship requirement, though it declined to disturb the injunction against the mail-voting restriction. And in October 2024, in Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights, the court stayed an order blocking Virginia’s similar noncitizen voter-roll-removal program. The government reads those stays as a preliminary sign that the state-form and voter-roll questions warrant review; respondents read them more modestly, as emergency orders issued under election-season pressures. But the solicitor general argues that the mail-voting issue is not ready for the court, and that the discriminatory-intent ruling, though according to the government “plainly wrong,” is interlocutory (there has been no final ruling) and may be corrected on remand. Arizona responds that describing a ruling as “plainly wrong” is a peculiar reason to deny review.

The other respondents say the cases are poor vehicles. They argue that the state-form issue is entangled with the still-operative LULAC consent decree; that the mail-voting question is Arizona-specific, because Arizona’s federal-only-voter system and heavy reliance on mail voting are unusual; and that the discriminatory-intent issue is premature because the 9th Circuit merely sent this back to the lower court. On the 90-day issue, respondents argue that there is no real split and that the NVRA permits individualized removals close to an election, just not systematic programs likely to sweep in eligible voters when there is little time to correct mistakes. And the RNC and the solicitor general argue that this case presents a valuable opportunity to address these issues outside the context of a contested election.

Given the number of moving pieces, the justices probably need more time just to get a handle on all the issues, much less to decide whether there might be vehicle problems preventing the court from resolving them.

EAJA does it

Our next new relist is Montoya Palacios v. Liggins, which involves a question that sounds technical until you remember that lawyers, like everyone else, prefer to be paid: whether a habeas petition challenging civil immigration detention is a “civil action” under the Equal Access to Justice Act, making a prevailing detainee potentially eligible for attorney’s fees when the government’s position was not substantially justified.

Kevin Montoya Palacios, a citizen of El Salvador, was ordered removed but granted withholding of removal to El Salvador under the Convention Against Torture. After years under an order of supervision, ICE detained him following a routine check-in in Baltimore, saying his case was being reviewed for third-country removal to Mexico. Montoya Palacios filed a habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241, and the district court ordered his release under his prior supervision terms.

Montoya Palacios then sought fees under EAJA, which authorizes awards to prevailing parties in “any civil action (other than cases sounding in tort)” against the United States, to be filed “within thirty days of final judgment in the action,” defined to mean “a judgment that is final and not appealable.” Montoya Palacios did not wait until the government’s period for appealing his habeas win had expired; he applied immediately, and the district court denied relief under controlling precedent from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit holding that immigration-detention habeas proceedings are not “civil actions” under EAJA because habeas is a “unique, hybrid” proceeding. Montoya Palacios sought summary affirmance under that precedent in an apparent effort to speed his case to the Supreme Court. The 4th Circuit obliged, affirming in a two-sentence order.

Montoya Palacios sought cert, noting that the government had acknowledged a “deeply rooted circuit split” regarding the availability of EAJA fees for immigration detention proceedings, with the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 3rd, and 10th Circuits holding that such fees are available and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th and 5th Circuits holding that they are not. The government, in a brief filed without seeking an extension, agrees that “the courts of appeals are divided on the issue, and this case would be a suitable vehicle for resolving the disagreement on an important and recurring legal question.” The papers were distributed for conference and the case appeared to be on a glide path for a grant.

Then came a late-arriving amicus brief filed by Eva Daley and Adolph Michelin, immigrants who won cases deepening the circuit conflict in the 10th and 3rd Circuits, respectively. [Disclosure: My firm was among counsel to Daley in the 10th Circuit and has been among counsel to Michelin in the 3rd Circuit and Supreme Court proceedings.]

They moved to file an amicus brief out of time, explaining that they had only recently learned of the case because of the summary nature of proceedings in the 4th Circuit and because the cert-stage filings were not publicly available through the court’s online docket. They argue that the question should not be decided in what they call a defective vehicle, arguing that Montoya Palacios filed his EAJA application before he was entitled to fees because the judgment was not final and was still open for the government to appeal, and that the case was not subject to adequate adversarial testing because Montoya Palacios sought summary affirmance under circuit precedent. Instead, they argue, the court should await a proper vehicle (such as the government’s anticipated petitions in Michelin or Daley, currently due in July).

Montoya Palacios responded that EAJA sets a deadline, not a “not-before” date; that timeliness is nonjurisdictional and was not raised by any party; and that summary affirmance is unsurprising when circuit precedent squarely forecloses the claim. Montoya Palacios argues that the issue is too urgent to wait for another vehicle, citing rapidly increasing numbers of immigration habeas cases and fee decisions dividing along circuit lines.

It seems likely that the Supreme Court will be resolving this issue during October Term 2026. It appears to be selecting the case or cases in which to do it.

Standing and parental rights

The Supreme Court and several justices have expressed concerns about state laws that affect parents’ involvement in their children’s gender identity and transitioning. Our next new relist, International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson, raises it in a new context: 2023 amendments to a Washington state law governing runaway youth shelters. Petitioners, a group of Washington parents, say those laws allow runaway minors seeking “gender-affirming treatment” to be referred for services without parental notice or consent, keep parents from learning their child’s location or condition, and delay reunification unless parents accept the state’s preferred approach. Washington describes them as “modest steps to address the crisis of transgender youth homelessness.”

The petitioners, backed by several organizations, challenged a trio of state laws, chiefly Senate Bill 5599 and House Bill 1406, directing Washington’s child-welfare agency to offer various behavioral-health services. The district court dismissed for lack of Article III standing. A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed, holding that the parents’ asserted injuries were not “actual or imminent,” but rather depended on numerous contingencies: a child would have to identify as transgender, run away, go to a licensed shelter, seek protected health care services, decline reunification services, accept referrals, and ultimately receive gender-affirming care. At most, the panel found, the parents “allege only that the looming ‘threat’ imposed by the Statutes has led them to alter their parenting styles so that the Statutes cannot affect them.” The court denied rehearing en banc over the dissent of three judges.

Petitioners contend that some judges are misusing standing doctrine as “an excuse … to avoid what they perceive as contentious constitutional questions.” They argue that “even though these laws do not regulate parents directly, parents of gender-confused children clearly … ‘might be considered an object of the [Washington] regulations,’” and thus have standing to challenge laws affecting them. They claim the decision below conflicts with decisions of the Supreme Court and the 5th Circuit. They are supported by so many amicus briefs (20) that the clerk’s office may decide it needs to start charging by the pound. Washington defends the decision as based on layers of contingencies, and emphasizes that the challenged laws impose no obligations on petitioners; do not authorize the state to take custody of children; and require Washington’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families to make good-faith efforts to notify parents and offer voluntary family-reconciliation services.

There is a lot here for the justices to sort through over the next week.

Yet another AEDPA split

Our last relist asks the justices to untangle yet another puzzle created by AEDPA when it was enacted 30 years ago. To appeal the denial of a federal habeas or 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion, a prisoner needs a certificate of appealability, which a judge may issue only upon a “substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right” – meaning that “reasonable jurists could debate” the claim.

Berry v. United States asks whether a COA should issue when the prisoner’s claim is foreclosed by his own circuit’s precedent but has been resolved in his favor by another circuit. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 5th, 6th, and 11th Circuits say no; the 9th and 10th Circuits say yes. Berry’s premise has a certain logic: a square circuit split is about the most concrete proof imaginable that reasonable jurists can debate something. In his case, the 11th Circuit saw it the other way, reasoning that “reasonable jurists will follow controlling law,” so binding circuit precedent ends the debate before it starts, whatever those misguided neighbors may think.

Here, Corey Berry pleaded guilty years ago to an 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) count predicated on attempted carjacking as a “crime of violence.” After the Supreme Court held in 2018’s United States v. Davis that § 924(c)’s residual clause was unconstitutionally vague and in 2022’s United States v. Taylor that attempted Hobbs Act robbery is not a “crime of violence” under its elements clause, Berry won authorization to file a second Section 2255 motion – only to lose under circuit precedent requiring him to prove his conviction rested only on the now-defunct residual clause. Berry didn’t try to satisfy that framework; he attacked it, and the same district judge who had taken his plea, and then the 11th Circuit denied him the COA that would allow him to appeal.

Berry now seeks Supreme Court review. He argues that “[w]here, as here, the circuits have divided on a legal issue, that issue is by very definition one that ‘reasonable jurists could debate.’ After all, they have in fact already debated it.” Several amici sharpen the systemic worry: a group of former federal judges and the criminal-defense bar note that COA denials grounded in circuit precedent quietly strangle the appeals that let the Supreme Court resolve splits in the first place. The government, for its part, largely sidesteps the 11th Circuit’s reasoning and characterizes the circuit conflict as a “limited disagreement” with no real-world consequences. And it adds some vehicle objections, claiming that Berry procedurally defaulted his claim and that it is time-barred. Berry answers that the decision below relied on neither defense, and so neither should be resolved by the Supreme Court before addressing the issue he petitioned on: this is, after all, “a court of review, not of first view.”

This one might have legs.

New Relists

International Partners for Ethical Care, Inc. v. Ferguson, 25-840

Issue: Whether parents have standing to challenge a law or policy that deliberately displaces their decisionmaking role as to “gender transitions” of their children, and in so doing creates present and likely future impediments to their ability to parent their children as they deem best for them.

(Relisted after the June 18 conference.)

Montoya Palacios v. Liggins, 25-1223

Issue: Whether, under the Equal Access to Justice Act, “any civil action” encompasses an action seeking a writ of habeas corpus to challenge civil immigration detention.

(Relisted after the June 18 conference.)

Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota, 25-1017

Issues: (1) Whether the National Voter Registration Act or a federal consent decree prohibits Arizona from requiring voter-registration applicants to produce “satisfactory evidence” of U.S. citizenship when registering with a state registration form; and (2) whether the NVRA prohibits Arizona from implementing a program within 90 days of a federal election to cancel the registrations of voters who are not U.S. citizens.

(Relisted after the June 18 conference.)

Petersen v. Mi Familia Vota, 25-1019

Issues:(1) Whether the National Voter Registration Act or a prior consent decree precludes Arizona from requiring documentary proof of citizenship and residence when applicants use its state-specific form to register to vote in federal elections; (2) whether the NVRA preempts Arizona’s prohibition on mail-in voting by registrants who have not provided proof of citizenship; and (3) whether the district court clearly erred in concluding that H.B. 2243, a related law that requires elections officials to check various databases to identify non-citizen or non-resident voters, was not motivated by discriminatory animus.

(Relisted after the June 18 conference.)

Arizona v. Promise Arizona, 25-1022

Issues: (1) Whether Article III allows an organization to sue when an unknown number of its unidentified members “may be” injured; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit improperly reweighed evidence of discriminatory purpose while reviewing the district court’s finding for clear error.

(Relisted after the June 18 conference.)

Berry v. United States, 25-7026

Issue: Whether a certificate of appealability under 28 U.S.C. § 2253 should be granted where the issue that the petitioner seeks to raise on appeal has been resolved against him by binding circuit precedent but has been resolved in his favor by another circuit.

(Relisted after the June 18 conference.)

Returning Relists

Gator’s Custom Guns, Inc. v. Washington, 25-153

Issue: Whether ammunition feeding devices with the capacity to hold more than ten rounds are “Arms” presumptively entitled to constitutional protection under the plain text of the Second Amendment.

(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18 conferences.)

Duncan v. Bonta, 25-198

Issues: (1) Whether a ban on the possession of exceedingly common ammunition feeding devices violates the Second Amendment; and (2) whether a law dispossessing citizens, without compensation, of property that they lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the takings clause.

(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18 conferences.)

Viramontes v. Cook County, 25-238

Issue: Whether the Second and 14th Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.

(Relisted after the Dec. 5, Dec. 12, Jan. 9, Jan. 16, Jan. 23, Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18 conferences.)

National Association for Gun Rights v. Lamont, 25-421

Issue: Whether a ban on the possession of AR-15-style rifles and firearm magazines with a capacity in excess of 10 rounds violates the Second Amendment.

(Relisted after the Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18 conferences.)

Grant v. Higgins, 25-566

Issue: Whether the Second and 14th Amendments guarantee the right to possess semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the AR-15.

(Relisted after the Feb. 20, Feb. 27, Mar. 6, Mar. 20, Mar. 27, Apr. 2, Apr. 17, Apr. 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18 conferences.)

Smith v. Kind, 25-943

Issue: Whether, when a government official acts in an obviously unconstitutional manner, that is sufficient for the violation to be clearly established, or it is a violation clearly established only if there is binding precedent in a factually indistinguishable case.

(Relisted after the Apr. 17, April 24, May 1, May 14, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18 conferences.)

Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc., 25-770

Issues: (1) Whether a defendant’s systematic omission of qualifying and limiting language from a plaintiff’s recorded statement constitutes proof of actual malice under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan sufficient to survive summary judgment; (2) whether the actual malice standard established in Sullivan, or as extended by its progeny, should be discarded altogether or at least as to private citizens who are public figures; and (3) whether this court should modify Sullivan’s clear-and-convincing and burden-of-proof evidentiary standards.

(Relisted after the May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18 conferences.)