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

In an argument calendar released on Friday afternoon, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear oral arguments in seven cases over five days. The justices will tackle a wide range of issues, from the Environmental Protection Authority’s power to regulate greenhouse gases to an effort by a group of states to defend a controversial… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday morning agreed to immediately put into effect last week’s ruling in the battle over a Texas law banning almost all abortions in the state. But the justices rejected a request from abortion providers to send the case back to the friendlier confines of a federal district court in Texas, instead… Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday morning granted three more cases from the justices’ private conference last week. The announcement that the justices will take on issues relating to arbitration, trains, and congressional power followed two other sets of orders from the Dec. 10 conference, but the decision to grant a second tranche of petitions from… Read More

Less than two weeks after the Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case urging the justices to overturn their landmark rulings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the state of Arizona asked the court to allow it to enforce a law that bars doctors from performing abortions if the sole reason… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down two requests to block New York’s vaccine mandate for health care workers. Two groups of health care workers are challenging the mandate, arguing that it violates their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion. But over the public dissents of three conservative justices, the court denied the workers’… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday added three new cases to its docket for the 2021-22 term. After the court’s rulings in a pair of cases challenging a Texas law that bans almost all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy on Friday morning, the new grants on Friday afternoon had a decidedly lower profile. The… Read More

Nearly six weeks after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases challenging a Texas law that bans almost all abortions in the state, the justices on Friday limited – but did not fully eliminate – the ability of abortion providers to continue their challenge in the lower courts. The court ruled that the… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a request from an Oklahoma death-row inmate to put his execution on hold while questions about the constitutionality of the state’s lethal-injection protocol are resolved. Bigler Jobe Stouffer has been sentenced to die on Thursday morning for the 1985 murder of schoolteacher Linda Reeves. Lawyers for the 79-year-old inmate… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Wednesday in a challenge to a Maine program that pays tuition for some students to attend private school when their own school district does not operate a public secondary school. Two Maine couples argue that the state’s refusal to provide funds for students to attend schools that provide… Read More

On Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a challenge to a Maine program that pays for some students to attend private schools. Two families that want to send their children to Christian schools in the state argue that the state’s exclusion of schools that provide religious instruction from the program violates the… Read More