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

Today may have been only the second day of the Supreme Court’s new term, but it may also prove to be one of the biggest. The justices heard oral argument in Gill v. Whitford, a challenge to the redistricting plan passed by Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2011. A federal court struck down the plan last… Read More

A challenge to two Missouri abortion requirements has ended its trip to the Supreme Court – at least for now. Attorneys for Planned Parenthood notified the Supreme Court tonight that they were withdrawing their request to block a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit after that court ruled in the… Read More

Last week the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference on September 25 – often known as the “long conference” because the justices are returning from their summer recess and must review all of the petitions that have accrued in their absence. Today the justices issued a second set of orders from that… Read More

In the first oral argument of the new term, a divided Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold employment agreements that require an employee to resolve a dispute with an employer through individual arbitration, waiving the possibility of proceeding collectively. The conflict among the justices could be captured by two exchanges this morning. The first came… Read More

The state of Missouri today urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the dispute over two of the state’s abortion requirements. Last week, Planned Parenthood asked the justices to reinstate a lower court’s order blocking the state from enforcing those requirements, arguing that the requirements are identical to two Texas regulations that the Supreme… Read More

[This post was updated at 12:45 p.m. to include more thorough discussions of  Byrd v. United States,  McCoy v. Louisiana,  Rosales-Mireles v. United States,  Hall v. Hall  and the trio of cases consolidated under  Dalmazzi v. United States.] This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from its September 25 conference, adding 11 new cases (for… Read More

Just a few days before taking the bench to hear the first oral arguments of the October Term 2017, the Supreme Court today released the hearing list for the October sitting. Monday’s removal of the challenges to President Donald Trump’s March 6 executive order freezing travel to the United States by nationals of six Muslim-majority… Read More

When District of Columbia police officers Andre Parker and Anthony Campanale responded to reports of unauthorized goings-on at a supposedly vacant home nearly a decade ago, they probably didn’t expect the evening’s events to lead to all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s exactly what happened in District of Columbia v. Wesby,… Read More

Today the Supreme Court announced that it had removed the challenges to President Donald Trump’s March 6 executive order, sometimes known as the “travel ban,” from its argument calendar for October. In a one-paragraph order issued this afternoon, the justices also directed the parties to file briefs by October 5 addressing whether the challenges are… Read More

(This post was updated at 3:13 p.m. to account for the court’s September 25 order granting motions for divided argument by the U.S. solicitor general and the National Labor Relations Board.) When the justices return to the bench on Monday, October 2, they will hear arguments in a trio of consolidated cases – Epic Systems… Read More