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

The Supreme Court on Monday announced that it would add another case involving the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to block the release of sensitive national security information in litigation, to its argument calendar for next term. The court also turned down a challenge to the requirement that only men register for the… Read More

A group of Alabama real estate agents asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block a federal moratorium on evictions that was imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May, a federal district judge agreed with the group that the Centers for Disease Control does not have the power to impose the policy, but she… Read More

The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that Kathleen Arberg, the court’s longtime spokesperson, will retire on July 3. Arberg has spent 40 years working for the federal judiciary, with 38 of those years at the Supreme Court and 22 as the head of the court’s Public Information Office. Arberg came to the court in 1982… Read More

In the latest battle over restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Justice Neil Gorsuch rejected a request from two Denver-area churches to block the enforcement of Colorado’s disaster law. Denver Bible Church and Community Baptist Church had sought broad relief, asking the court not only to halt any COVID-19 restrictions based on the law that… Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a copyright clash over a fashion design and declined to revisit the authority of police officers to enter homes without a warrant. In an order list from the justices’ May 27 private conference, the justices added just one new case to their docket for next term: Unicolors,… Read More

Justice Stephen Breyer extolled the virtues of civics education and reaching out across ideological divides, arguing on Friday that when enough people want their elected officials to work together, they will do so. Breyer’s remarks, which the 82-year-old jurist made during a wide-ranging conversation with Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center, came on the… Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted a request by Oklahoma to allow the state to retain custody of a death-row inmate while the court considers whether to clarify the implications of last year’s decision holding that Oklahoma lacks jurisdiction over certain crimes committed on land reserved for Native Americans. The inmate, Shaun Bosse, was convicted… Read More

Over the objection of the court’s three liberal justices, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from a Missouri death-row inmate who is contesting the state’s method of lethal injection and wants to propose the firing squad as a more humane method of execution. Ernest Johnson is missing nearly a fifth of his… Read More

This post was updated on May 19 at 8:35 p.m. The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to block the execution of Quintin Jones, a Texas man who was sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of his great-aunt, Berthena Bryant. Shortly after the court’s unsigned order allowing the execution to go forward, Jones was put… Read More

The Supreme Court’s announcement that it would take up a challenge to Mississippi’s ban on abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy (covered in a separate article here) dominated coverage of Monday’s orders. But in the same set of orders, the justices also dismissed a trio of cases – American Medical Association v. Becerra, Oregon… Read More