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

The Supreme Court heard oral argument this morning in the dispute over the Trump administration’s decision to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. The federal government says that the Department of Justice wants data about citizenship to better enforce federal voting rights laws. But the challengers in the case counter that asking… Read More

[Editor’s Note: This post was updated at 11:50 a.m. to include discussion of CITGO Asphalt Refining Co. v. Frescati Shipping Co., Barton v. Barr and Putnam Investments v. Brotherston.] The Supreme Court announced today that it will weigh in next term on whether federal employment discrimination laws protect LGBT employees. After considering a trio of… Read More

In 2013, police officers found Gerald Mitchell wet, shirtless and covered in sand on a beach in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Mitchell was slurring his words, and he told police that he had parked his car nearby “because he felt he was too drunk to drive” he said he knew that if you were charged with DWI… Read More

In early February, the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions in the state to have the authority to admit patients at a nearby hospital. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four more liberal justices in granting a request from abortion providers to bar the… Read More

Before returning to the bench this morning, the justices issued orders from last week’s private conference. They did not add any new cases to their merits docket for next term, and they asked the U.S. solicitor general to weigh in on an appeal filed by Arkansas attorney general Leslie Rutledge. Rutledge has requested review of… Read More

The justices aren’t back on the bench until tomorrow, but early Friday morning they cleared the way for an Alabama execution to proceed. I cover last week’s order and look ahead briefly at next week at the court in this week’s podcast.

Last week’s opinion in a Missouri inmate’s challenge to the state’s plan to execute him by lethal injection revealed deep divisions among the justices on capital punishment. Those rifts were on full display again early this morning, as the court’s conservative majority granted Alabama’s request to allow an execution in that state to go forward…. Read More

In March 2018, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that the 2020 census would ask whether each person being counted by the census is a U.S. citizen. Ross explained that the Department of Justice’s civil rights division wanted the data to better enforce federal voting rights laws, and he characterized the decision as routine: From… Read More

Today the Supreme Court rejected a claim by a death-row inmate that executing him by lethal injection would violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment because of the likelihood that he could wind up choking on his own blood. By a vote of 5-4, the court cleared the way for Russell Bucklew’s execution,… Read More

The Supreme Court issued orders this morning from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices added just one new case to their merits docket for next term: Kansas v. Glover, in which the court agreed to decide whether, for purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for a police… Read More