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

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

Warning of “severe disruption,” including the possibility that some parents might withdraw their children from school if a federal district court’s order mandating that a transgender student who identifies as a boy be allowed to use the boys’ restroom takes effect, a Virginia school board today asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put both the… Read More

There was no love for former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell personally at the Supreme Court today. His story was, according to Chief Justice John Roberts, a “tawdry” one “of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns.” But even though all eight Justices regarded McDonnell’s conduct (as well as that of his wife, Maureen) as “distasteful,” they could… Read More

The Court issued three opinions today, but those opinions don’t shed much additional light on which Justices might be writing in which cases. We have been waiting on two cases from the December sitting: Dollar General Stores v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Chief Justice John Roberts… Read More

In 2015, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of inmate Kevan Brumfield, who was convicted of the fatal shooting of an off-duty police officer. A deeply divided Court held that Brumfield was entitled to have his claim that he could not be executed because he is intellectually disabled considered on the merits…. Read More