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

The Supreme Court released its November argument calendar today. The Justices will hear ten hours of oral argument over six days: two hours each on Monday and Tuesday, followed by one hour on Wednesday, during the two weeks of the sitting. All of the cases in the November sitting (which begins on October 31) were… Read More

A closely divided Court today denied North Carolina’s request to allow the state to enforce three provisions of its controversial 2013 election law when voters go to the polls for this fall’s general elections. The state needed five of the eight Justices to agree to halt a lower court’s ruling that blocked the law, but… Read More

Urging the Justices to resolve the dispute over the use of school bathrooms by trangender students “once and for all,” today a Virginia school board asked the Supreme Court to examine a decision by a federal appeals court in favor of a transgender student who identifies as a boy and wants to be allowed to… Read More

Earlier this year, the Court threw out former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell’s conviction on federal corruption charges and sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Both sides then asked the court of appeals to put the case on hold for thirty days. The court of appeals agreed, instructing… Read More

Earlier this month, North Carolina asked the Justices to halt a lower-court ruling that blocked the implementation of its controversial 2013 election law – including provisions requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID, reducing the number of days when voters can go to the polls before Election Day, and eliminating preregistration for young voters…. Read More

Arguing that not only its own voter identification law but virtually all others could be endangered if a lower-court decision is permitted to stand, yesterday North Carolina asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block part of that ruling. Now represented by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, the state filed an emergency appeal seeking to… Read More

This fall the Court will hear oral arguments in a dispute that began as a battle over a playground – or, to be precise, the surfaces of the playground at the daycare and preschool operated by a Missouri church. The church argues that its exclusion from a state program that provides grants to help non-profits… Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the dispute between a Virginia school board and a transgender student who identifies as a boy. In June, a federal district court in Virginia ordered the Gloucester County School Board to allow “G.G.” to use the boys’ bathroom at Gloucester High School until the case can be fully litigated…. Read More

Three days after attorneys for a seventeen-year-old transgender student urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the student’s dispute with a Virginia school board, the school board today filed its reply. It once again urged the Court to block a federal district court’s order that would require schools in Gloucester County, Virginia, to allow… Read More

A Virginia school board has “utterly failed” to show that it will suffer lasting harm if “G.G.,” a seventeen-year-old transgender student, is allowed to use the boys’ restroom until the Supreme Court can rule on the school board’s request to review the dispute on the merits, attorneys for the student told the Court in a… Read More