After the federal government announced that it plans to resume executions in July after a pause of nearly 20 years, the Supreme Court today put the dispute over the lethal-injection protocol that the government plans to use in those executions on a fast track. In an order issued this afternoon, the justices instructed the federal… Read More

It has been eight years since the Obama administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which allows undocumented young adults who came to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation. In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would end the program, which it believed had… Read More

After just under three years (and three Supreme Court terms) on the job, Noel Francisco announced today that he would step down as the solicitor general of the United States, effective July 3, 2020. In a letter to President Donald Trump, Francisco wrote that he planned “to return to the private sector and spend more… Read More

With just over two weeks remaining before the deadline to request mail-in ballots for the upcoming primary runoff election, the Texas Democratic Party and a group of Texas voters have asked the Supreme Court to reinstate a ruling by a federal trial court that would allow all eligible voters in Texas to vote by mail… Read More

The justices revived the case of Terence Andrus, a Texas inmate who was sentenced to death for the 2008 shootings of two people during an attempted carjacking in a grocery-store parking lot. The lawyer who was appointed to defend Andrus didn’t meet with him for almost eight months, and then only met with him outside… Read More

The Supreme Court added two new merits cases to its docket for next term, even as the issues that it declined to take up dominated today’s orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices also asked the federal government for its views on a dispute between Texas and California over the latter’s ban… Read More

After considering a major case involving immigration — this time, an effort by the federal government to invalidate one of California’s so-called “sanctuary state” laws — at 12 consecutive conferences, the justices declined to add the case to their docket. Passed in 2017, S.B. 54 (known as the California Values Act) prohibits state and local… Read More

In late April the Supreme Court sent a challenge to the constitutionality of New York City’s ban on the transport of handguns outside the city back to the lower court without ruling on whether the ban was constitutional. By a vote of 6-3, the justices concluded that the case was moot – that is, no… Read More

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination “because of sex.” Today the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, ruled that even if Congress may not have had discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status in mind when it enacted the landmark law over a half century ago, Title… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The court added one new case to its merits docket for the term that begins in October. The justices once again did not act on two groups of high-profile petitions – one involving gun rights and the other involving qualified immunity… Read More