Covering the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in (mostly) Plain English

This morning the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Texas in a dispute alleging that the state’s lawmakers had drawn redistricting maps to discriminate against some of the state’s black and Hispanic residents. By a vote of 5-4, the justices threw out almost all of a ruling by a three-judge federal district court that would… Read More

[This post was updated at 2:39 p.m. to provide more details on, among other things, the cases that the justices granted today.] Three weeks ago, the justices threw out a ruling against a Colorado baker who had refused on religious grounds to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. By a vote of… Read More

Today the Supreme Court ruled that the simultaneous service of military officers on both the criminal courts of appeals (CCAs) for the armed forces and the United States Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) does not violate a longstanding rule that bars active-duty military officers from holding a second job that requires presidential nomination and… Read More

[NOTE: This post was updated with additional analysis at 1:22 p.m.] Over 40 years ago, the Supreme Court outlined what has come to be known as the “third-party doctrine” – the idea that the Fourth Amendment does not protect records or information that someone voluntarily shares with someone or something else. Today the Supreme Court… Read More

The Supreme Court issued four opinions in merits cases today, bringing the number of remaining decisions down to 10. Interestingly, all four of today’s decisions came from the court’s April sitting, which narrows the field of remaining authors (including for Trump v. Hawaii, the travel ban challenge) considerably.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would not decide whether the state legislative maps drawn in 2011 by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature are the product of partisan gerrymandering – the practice of drawing district lines to favor one party, at the other party’s expense – and therefore unconstitutional. Instead, the justices sent the Wisconsin… Read More

The justices are expected to take the bench on Thursday, June 21, to issue opinions in argued cases. There are 14 cases left for them to decide; this post briefly summarizes those cases (in the order in which they were argued). Carpenter v. United States (argued November 29, 2017): Timothy Carpenter was charged with being… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices added five new cases to their merits docket for next term, and they called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in a challenge to California’s ban on foie gras, but they did not act on Arlene’s Flowers… Read More

Last summer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Gill v. Whitford, a partisan-gerrymandering challenge to the state legislative maps drawn by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature, one of the most important cases of the term. The court heard oral argument in the case in October; two months later, it agreed to take on Benisek v. Lamone, a partisan-gerrymandering… Read More

The Supreme Court issued six new rulings in argued cases this week: four on Monday, and two more yesterday. The new opinions mean that 19 cases now remain undecided, but they did not shed a lot of new light on who might be writing those outstanding opinions.