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

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether an Oregon city can enforce its ban on public camping against homeless people. The announcement came as part of a short list of orders released from the justices’ private conference earlier in the day adding five new cases to the court’s merits docket. The court’s ruling… Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared sympathetic to an Arizona man who contends that his constitutional rights were violated when an expert witness testified for the prosecution about drug analysis performed by another forensic scientist. Jason Smith alleges that the expert’s testimony contravened the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives defendants in criminal cases the… Read More

Despite a suggestion by Justice Neil Gorsuch that there was “radical agreement” in a California man’s challenge to the constitutionality of the “traffic impact mitigation” fee that he was required to pay when building his home, the justices appeared divided at oral argument on Tuesday. There may have been something approaching a consensus that (contrary… Read More

Jason Smith claims that when an expert witness testified in Arizona’s drug possession case against him using drug analysis performed by a former state employee, it violated his constitutional rights. The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Wednesday in his case, Smith v. Arizona. The Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause provides that “in all criminal… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday heard oral argument in a dispute over whether a lawsuit filed by an Oregon man who was placed on the No Fly List can go forward when the government has removed him from the list and pledged not to return him to it “based on the currently available information.” After… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon granted a request from Idaho and the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to temporarily put on hold a ruling by a federal district court that would require emergency rooms in the state to provide abortions to pregnant women in an emergency. The justices agreed to weigh in on the question at… Read More

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to review a ruling by a Colorado court that barred former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s Republican primary ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. In a brief, unsigned order issued on Friday afternoon, the justices granted a… Read More

A pair of challenges to controversial social media laws in Texas and Florida and a dispute over whether to freeze the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to reduce ozone levels across the United States headline the Supreme Court’s February 2024 argument calendar, which was released on Friday morning. The justices will hear 10 hours of oral… Read More

When George Sheetz applied in 2016 to build a single-family home on property that he owned, the California county where he lived required him to pay a “traffic impact mitigation” fee, totaling more than $23,000, before it would issue the permit. The county issued the fee to cover costs that the new construction was likely… Read More

In a filing on Wednesday former President Donald Trump told the justices that the “Colorado Supreme Court has no authority to deny” him a place on the state’s ballot in the 2024 presidential election. Trump asked the justices to overturn a ruling by the state supreme court that would leave him off Colorado’s primary ballot… Read More