Less than three weeks ago, the Supreme Court declined to get involved in a partisan-gerrymandering challenge to Pennsylvania’s federal congressional maps. Today that state’s Republican lawmakers returned to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to block what they characterized as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s “intentional seizure of the redistricting process.” During their first trip to… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court released its April argument calendar, which includes oral argument in Hawaii’s challenge to the travel restrictions imposed on nationals from eight countries in President Donald Trump’s September 24, 2017, order. A few hours later, a second set of challengers asked the justices to join their case with Hawaii’s and consider… Read More

Republican legislators scored a partial victory on redistricting tonight as the Supreme Court agreed to block part of a decision by a three-judge federal court invalidating the state’s legislative maps. The lower court had ruled that several state legislative districts were the product of racial gerrymandering, while others violated state law, but today the justices… Read More

The Supreme Court today received yet another request to intervene in a state’s redistricting battle – this time from Republican legislators in Pennsylvania, who asked the justices to temporarily block a ruling by the state’s supreme court invalidating the state’s federal congressional map. A divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ordered the legislature to draw new… Read More

Less than a week ago, the Supreme Court granted a request by North Carolina Republicans to block (at least temporarily) an order by a three-judge federal court in that state that would have required the state legislature to submit a new federal congressional map today. The federal court ruled that the state’s Republicans had engaged… Read More

The Supreme Court released the calendar for its March sitting, which begins on March 19. The justices will hear nine hours of oral argument over six days, with three of those days featuring two hours of argument each and the other three slated for just one hour each. One of the highest-profile cases of the… Read More

In June 2012, President Barack Obama signed a policy known as “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (popularly known as DACA), a program that allows undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation. Today the federal government went to the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene immediately in… Read More

Last week a three-judge federal court in North Carolina struck down the state’s federal congressional map, ruling that Republicans had drawn the map to give themselves an advantage over Democrats – specifically, the court stressed, to guarantee Republicans’ “domination of the state’s congressional delegation.” The court ordered the state legislature to come up with a… Read More

(Note: This post was updated to add additional discussion of today’s order list, beginning after the discussion of Animal Sciences Products.) With time running out to add new cases to its merits docket for this term (at least without expedited briefing schedules), the Supreme Court announced this afternoon that it would take on 12 new… Read More

The Fourth Amendment and vehicle searches dominated oral arguments at the Supreme Court today. First up was Byrd v. United States, in which the justices are considering whether the driver of a rental car who was not included as an authorized driver on the rental agreement, but had the renter’s permission to use the car,… Read More