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

When the Supreme Court returns to the bench in the fall, it will hear oral arguments on a variety of high-profile issues, including protection under federal employment laws for LGBT employees and the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program, known as DACA, which allows undocumented immigrants who came to… Read More

Speaking at the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in June, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told her audience that Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 2018 retirement was “the event of greatest consequence for the current Term, and perhaps for many Terms ahead.” Less than three weeks later, Ginsburg’s assessment proved accurate… Read More

Earlier this month, New York City sent a letter to Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court, to inform the justices that a challenge to the city’s ban on transporting guns outside the city limits is moot – that is, no longer a live controversy. The Supreme Court did not accept the letter, perhaps… Read More

The battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico continued to unfold today. Last week the federal government asked the Supreme Court to put on hold a district court’s order that prohibited the government from using $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for construction of the wall. This… Read More

John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford but became a leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing by the time he retired in 2010, died today at a Florida hospital of complications following a stroke that he suffered yesterday. He was 99. In a statement released by the Supreme Court’s Public Information… Read More

The battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border came to the Supreme Court today, as the federal government asked the justices to block a lower-court order that barred the government from using $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for construction of the wall.

This afternoon President Donald Trump announced that his administration will end its battle to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. The news came two weeks after the Supreme Court blocked the government from including the question, with the court’s four liberal justices joining Chief Justice John Roberts in ruling that the reason… Read More

The Supreme Court released the calendar for its November sitting today. On November 12, the justices will hear oral argument in what promises to be one of the biggest disputes of the term: the challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to terminate the program known as “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” or “DACA,” which allowed… Read More

[Note: This post has been updated to include the district judge’s order in the case, issued on Friday afternoon.] Eight days after the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration’s stated reason for including a question about citizenship on the 2020 census was a pretext, lawyers for the federal government told a federal district judge… Read More

[UPDATE: The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association responded to the city’s letter, calling it “both premature and procedurally improper.” On July 8, the Supreme Court’s electronic docket indicated that the letter had not been accepted for filing.]  In January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to New York City’s ban on… Read More