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

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block limits imposed on in-person church attendance because of the coronavirus pandemic. The plea renews a dispute over restrictions on worship services while some secular businesses remain open. The Supreme Court rebuffed similar challenges over the summer, but this is the first… Read More

After roughly two hours of oral argument in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, it appeared likely that the Affordable Care Act will survive yet another effort in the courts to dismantle it. Although there may be five votes to strike down the ACA’s individual mandate – the provision in the law that directs virtually all… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday morning issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices added two new cases, consolidated for one hour of oral argument, to their merits docket for the term. Monday’s list was also the first set of regularly scheduled orders in which the court’s newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett,… Read More

Claiming that it “is currently unclear whether all 67 county boards of elections” in Pennsylvania are following instructions to segregate mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, Republicans on Friday asked the Supreme Court to order election boards to keep those ballots separate and to refrain from counting them while the Republicans’ legal challenge to… Read More

Pennsylvania election officials urged the Supreme Court to deny the Trump campaign’s motion to join the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s appeal of a state court ruling that requires election officials to count mail-in ballots received by Nov. 6. The campaign went to the court on Wednesday afternoon, telling them that the outcome of the presidential election… Read More

Telling the court that “the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next President of the United States,” the campaign of President Donald Trump went to the Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon. In a 10-page filing in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, the president’s campaign asked to join the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s appeal of… Read More

If the justices – like many of us – were up late on Tuesday night watching election returns, it was hard to tell when they took the virtual bench on Wednesday morning to hear oral argument in an important case involving a clash between religious freedom and laws and policies that protect LGBTQ rights. When… Read More

Since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the Supreme Court has reviewed six cases testing various parts of the law or the regulations that flow from it. One week after Election Day, the court will hear oral argument in a seventh. The newest challenge, California v. Texas, will be the second time the… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday on what states must do before imposing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for defendants who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes. After nearly an hour and half of oral argument by telephone, it was not clear how the… Read More

The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for defendants who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes. Four years later, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court made clear that Miller’s ban on mandatory life-without-parole sentences applies retroactively to convictions that had become… Read More