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

The Supreme Court may eventually hear the case of a transgender teen who wants to be able to use the boys’ bathrooms at his Virginia high school, but it will not do so this term. In the wake of a February 22, 2017, document from the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice that revoked the… Read More

This week 31 members of the Supreme Court bar — lawyers who argue regularly before the court — sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a letter expressing their “strong support” for Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy left on the court by last year’s death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Characterizing themselves… Read More

The Gloucester County School Board and the Virginia teen known as G.G., who identifies as a boy and wants to be able to use the boys’ bathroom at Gloucester High School, don’t agree about much. But today they both told the Supreme Court that their dispute should go forward even after the federal government revoked… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court handed a partial victory to a group of Virginia voters who argued that the 12 state legislative districts in which they live were the result of racial gerrymandering. The justices agreed with the challengers that a lower court had applied the wrong legal standard when it upheld all 12 districts,… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from last week’s private conference. The justices added three new cases to their merits docket for the next term, but – like last week – the most interesting development may have come in a death penalty case in which the court denied review. A week ago, it was… Read More

At today’s oral argument in Packingham v. North Carolina, a challenge to a state law that imposes criminal penalties on registered sex offenders who visit social networking sites, Justice Elena Kagan suggested that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter were “incredibly important parts” of the country’s political and religious culture. People do not merely… Read More

In April 2010, Lester Packingham’s traffic ticket was dismissed, prompting him to take to Facebook to celebrate. He posted that “God is Good! How about I got so much favor they dismissed the ticket before court even started? No fine, no court costs, no nothing spent . . . Praise be to GOD, WOW! Thanks… Read More

One day before lawyers for a transgender teen who identifies as a boy and wants to use the boys’ bathroom at his Virginia high school are due to file their brief in the Supreme Court, the Trump administration today withdrew guidance, issued by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015 and 2016, on the use… Read More

When Stacy and Brent Fry obtained a goldendoodle for their five-year-old daughter, E.F., in 2009, they could not possibly have imagined that they would find themselves, seven years later, at the U.S. Supreme Court. But that is exactly where they were at the end of October, listening to the justices debate their case. The case… Read More

When a Texas jury was deciding whether to sentence Duane Buck to death for the 1995 murders of his former girlfriend and another man, the key question in their deliberations was whether Buck was likely to be violent in the future. Buck’s attorney put Dr. Walter Quijano, a psychologist, on the stand, where Quijano testified,… Read More