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

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a major ruling that upheld a controversial California animal-welfare law. In a deeply splintered vote that did not break down on traditional ideological lines, the justices rejected an argument by pork producers that the law, known as Proposition 12, violates the Constitution by regulating the pork industry outside California…. Read More

The Supreme Court put the execution of Richard Glossip on hold on Friday afternoon to give the justices time to consider the Oklahoma man’s appeals. Glossip was scheduled to be executed on May 18. The court’s brief unsigned order came four days after Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a highly unusual brief supporting Glossip’s… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon asked lawyers involved in a major election law case to weigh in on whether the court can still hear the case in the wake of a recent ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court, which reversed its earlier decision in the underlying redistricting dispute that sparked the case. In… Read More

Nearly 40 years ago, in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that courts should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute as long as that interpretation is reasonable. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider its ruling in Chevron. The question comes to the court in a case brought… Read More

Geraldine Tyler, a 94-year-old grandmother, lost her Minneapolis condo when she failed to pay the property taxes for several years. Tyler does not dispute that Hennepin County could foreclose on the $40,000 property and sell it to obtain the $15,000 in taxes and costs that she owed it. But she argued that the county violated… Read More

Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday night “respectfully decline[d]” an invitation from Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing next week. Durbin had asked Roberts to testify about Supreme Court ethics rules and potential reform. Durbin’s letter to Roberts followed an April 6 ProPublica report on Justice Clarence… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear its final oral argument of the term on Wednesday, in the case of a 94-year-old Minnesota grandmother. Geraldine Tyler does not dispute that the county government could seize her condominium after she failed to pay her property taxes for several years. But what the county can’t do, she contends, is… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday morning agreed to weigh in on a question arising out of the widespread use of social media – specifically, whether public officials are acting as government officials, and therefore can violate the First Amendment, when they block people on their personal social media accounts that they use to communicate with… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday night granted a request from the Biden administration and a drug manufacturer to put on hold a ruling by a federal judge in Texas that suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, part of a two-drug protocol used to end pregnancies in their early stages. The battle over… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Wednesday in the case of a Colorado man who was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for stalking based on the Facebook messages that he sent to  local musician Coles Whalen. At issue in the case is how courts should determine what constitutes “true threats,” which are not… Read More