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

The Supreme Court on Monday was divided over whether a Texas man on death row has a legal right to sue, known as standing, to bring federal civil rights claims challenging the constitutionality of the Texas laws governing DNA testing. Ruben Gutierrez is trying to obtain DNA testing of evidence that he says would clear… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday morning released a long list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Feb. 21 – the first regularly scheduled conference in nearly a month. Over dissents or statements from several justices, the court denied review in cases that they had considered repeatedly at their recent conferences. The court did… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday left in place for now an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that instructed President Donald Trump to temporarily reinstate the head of an independent federal agency tasked with protecting whistleblowers from retaliation. The justices did not act on a request from the Trump administration to block the… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Feb. 24 in the case of a man on Texas death row who has long tried to obtain postconviction DNA testing on evidence that he says would exonerate him. Ruben Gutierrez was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville, Tex. Gutierrez… Read More

The Supreme Court’s March argument session will include a dispute over a congressional voting map that created a second majority-Black district in Louisiana, a challenge to an accessibility program by the Federal Communications Commission in which the justices have been asked to revive the so-called “nondelegation doctrine,” and the review of a decision by the… Read More

The Trump administration on Friday notified the Supreme Court that, in its view, a Tennessee law banning the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors does not violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. But although that position is a change from the one advanced by the Biden administration when the justices… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon agreed to pause the briefing in a challenge to a Biden-era rule intended to streamline the process for reviewing requests for student loan forgiveness from borrowers whose schools defrauded them or were shut down. In a brief unsigned order, the justices granted a request from Acting Solicitor General Sarah… Read More

Shortly after being sworn into office on Jan. 20 for a second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Going forward, Trump instructed, people born in the United States will not be automatically entitled to citizenship if their parents… Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday appointed two outside attorneys to defend the lower-court decisions in two cases in which the federal government has declined to do so. In a brief order on Tuesday afternoon, the justices tapped Michael Huston to argue in Parrish v. United States, which they added to their docket for the 2024-25… Read More

The Supreme Court will weigh in on whether a Georgia family whose home was mistakenly raided by an FBI SWAT team can sue the federal government for the error. Just over six hours after the justices issued a list of orders from their Jan. 24 conference, and three days after they granted three cases from… Read More