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

The Supreme Court will decide whether a group of Maryland parents can opt to have their children exempted from LGBTQ-themed storybooks. The justices on Friday afternoon granted Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which a coalition of parents from Montgomery County, Md., contend that requiring their children to participate in instruction that violates their religious beliefs violates… Read More

This post was updated on Jan. 17 at 12:44 p.m. The Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously upheld a federal law that will require TikTok to shut down in the United States unless its Chinese parent company can sell off the U.S. company by Jan. 19. In an unsigned opinion, the justices acknowledged that, “for more… Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday was divided over a challenge to a Texas law that requires pornography sites to verify the age of their users before providing access. Last year a federal appeals court in New Orleans allowed the state to enforce the law, holding that it was rationally related to the government’s interest in… Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday grappled with the case of Patrick Daley Thompson, a former Chicago alderman and member of Chicago’s most storied political dynasty. Thompson served four months in a federal prison for making false statements to bank regulators about loans he took out and did not repay. He contends that the federal law… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to Maryland’s handgun licensing regime, as well as a pair of cases seeking to hold oil and gas companies responsible for damage caused by climate change. The announcement came as part of a list of orders released from the justices’ private conference on Friday. The… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared sympathetic to a retired Florida firefighter who is seeking to sue her former employer under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Karyn Stanley, who worked for the fire department in Sanford, Fla., for two decades before Parkinson’s disease forced her to retire at the age of 47, contends that the… Read More

A trade group for the adult entertainment industry will appear at the Supreme Court on Wednesday in its challenge to a Texas law that requires pornography sites to verify the age of their users before providing access – for example, by requiring a government-issued identification. The law applies to any website whose content is one-third… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday evening added three new cases to its docket for the 2024-25 term. The cases, which involve issues ranging from the constitutionality of appointments to an HHS task force to student loan forgiveness and mootness in tax cases, are likely to be among the final cases argued during the current term…. Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday was divided over the constitutionality of a federal law that would require social-media giant TikTok to shut down in the United States unless its Chinese parent company can sell it by Jan. 19. During two hours of oral arguments, the justices raised questions about whether the law at the center… Read More

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday evening cleared the way for President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal sentencing to go forward on Friday morning. In a brief unsigned order issued just after 7 p.m., the justices rejected Trump’s plea to halt the sentencing proceeding in his New York hush money case, where he was convicted on 34… Read More