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

In its first opinion of the 2023-24 term in an argued case, the Supreme Court on Tuesday morning threw out a dispute over whether a self-appointed “civil rights tester” has a legal right to file a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act alleging that a hotel had failed to provide information about its accessibility… Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to reject a challenge to the constitutionality of a provision of a 2017 corporate tax reform law that taxes the undistributed profits from U.S. shares of foreign corporations that are majority American owned. The Washington state couple at the center of the case is seeking a refund of… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Tuesday in a challenge to the constitutionality of a provision of a 2017 corporate tax reform law. A Washington State couple went to court to challenge the law after it increased their tax bill by a one-time payment of roughly $15,000. The federal government says that if… Read More

It has been 27 years since the prescription opioid OxyContin first came on the market. The manufacturer of the drug, Purdue Pharma, promoted the drug as less susceptible to abuse, but OxyContin proved instead to be highly addictive. The result was a public health crisis and, eventually, thousands of lawsuits seeking trillions of dollars against… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Monday in one of the highest-profile bankruptcies in recent memory: Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, a challenge to the approval by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit of a multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy plan for Purdue Pharma, the maker of the opioid OxyContin. A division of the… Read More

The justices will kick off the December argument session on Nov. 27 with oral argument in a pair of consolidated cases, Brown v. United States and Jackson v. United States, involving the Armed Career Criminal Act. The ACCA extends the minimum sentence – from 10 years to 15 – for an individual who had been convicted of… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday morning added two additional hours of argument, in cases involving federal funding of health care services for Native Americans and the Armed Career Criminal Act, to its docket for the 2023-24 term. The announcement came on a list of orders released on Monday from the justices’ private conference on Friday,… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in January in a pair of cases asking the justices to overrule a landmark decision on deference to federal administrative agencies. Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo headline the calendar for the January argument session, which the court released on Friday morning. Relentless… Read More

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday denied Florida’s request to allow it to temporarily enforce a law that makes it a misdemeanor to allow children at drag performances. The brief unsigned order means that the state cannot apply the law anywhere in the state while a Florida restaurant’s challenge to the law continues. Three justices… Read More

In her 2019 testimony before a subcommittee on the House Committee on Appropriations, Justice Elena Kagan – ostensibly on Capitol Hill to discuss the Supreme Court’s budget – told lawmakers that Chief Justice John Roberts was studying a code of conduct for the justices. Four-and-a-half years later, with the court buffeted by revelations about the… Read More