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

Since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia on February 13, the rate at which the Justices granted review in new cases has slowed significantly. But one new case that could make it on to the Court’s docket for next Term is Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, in which the federal government recently filed a brief… Read More

The Court’s release of six (!) opinions on Monday kept us busy, and it also gave us a better idea of which Justices might – the key word here is “might” – be writing which of the remaining opinions, at least through the Court’s January sitting. This is because the Justices make a very strong… Read More

The battle over the accommodation offered to religious non-profits that object to complying with the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate shifted back to the lower courts on Monday. In a brief, unsigned but unanimous opinion, the Justices essentially directed the Obama administration and the non-profits challenging the mandate to figure it out. But if they… Read More

In September 2014, former Virginia governor Robert McDonnell was sentenced to two years in prison for violating federal corruption laws. After a federal appeals court upheld his conviction and sentence, McDonnell asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow him to delay his prison sentence until after the Court had weighed in on his case. That… Read More

With the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada inside the Courtroom and thousands of demonstrators outside, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in the challenge to the policy known as “DAPA”: Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. The Obama administration issued DAPA in November 2014 after efforts… Read More

For many years, the Supreme Court did not weigh in on, or otherwise get involved in, states’ efforts to draw their legislative districts. The results weren’t pretty: even as large numbers of people moved from rural areas to more urban ones, legislative boundaries remained the same. This meant that, compared with their suburban and urban… Read More

Six years ago yesterday, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. And so perhaps it was only fitting that yesterday the ACA was back at the Supreme Court – now, for the fourth time. The issue before the Supreme Court stems from the requirement, imposed in regulations implementing the ACA, that employers… Read More

The case of Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods arose, as Chief Justice John Roberts suggested, from a “standard run-of-the-mill commercial dispute about a commercial accident” – specifically, a 1991 fire in a food-storage warehouse that led to the destruction of millions of tons of food. The question before the Court, however, centered on a… Read More

Waiting for yesterday’s oral argument in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstadt, the challenge to Texas’s efforts to regulate abortions, to begin, reporters joked that their coverage of the argument could basically be written in advance, following the now-familiar plotline of many high-profile arguments in recent years. On one side: the Court’s four more liberal Justices,… Read More

It’s not quite the fictional case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, but it’s not far off. In December 1991, a fire started in an underground storage facility owned and operated by Americold Services Corp. on the outskirts of Kansas City, Kansas. The fire burned for nearly two months, leading to the contamination and eventual destruction of… Read More