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

The Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out an effort by Arizona and 12 other states with Republican attorneys general to defend a contentious Trump-era immigration policy known as the “public charge” rule after the Biden administration refused to do so. In a brief unsigned ruling, the justices dismissed the case as “improvidently granted” – an… Read More

With two dozen cases from its 2021-22 term still undecided, the Supreme Court on Tuesday released the first argument calendar for its 2022-23 term. During the argument session that begins on Oct. 3, the justices will hear oral argument in important cases involving issues such as voting rights, the Clean Water Act, and a challenge… Read More

Nearly two years to the day after sending the case of Texas death-row inmate Terence Andrus back to the Texas courts for another look, the Supreme Court on Monday morning declined to take up Andrus’ latest case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor (joined by the other two liberal justices) dissented from that decision, writing that “Andrus’ case… Read More

The Supreme Court had a busy Monday morning, issuing five opinions in argued cases. The large tranche of opinions means that the justices have now issued 38 opinions, leaving 24 for the justices to release before they leave for their summer recess. Some of the 24 as-yet-undecided cases are high-profile ones involving issues like abortion,… Read More

The announcement that a California man armed with a gun and a knife had been arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home and charged with attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice overshadowed the court’s release, earlier that day, of its decision in Egbert v. Boule, holding that an innkeeper on the U.S./Canada border cannot sue… Read More

Justice Amy Coney Barrett received $425,000 last year as part of a book deal reportedly worth $2 million, while Justice Neil Gorsuch received just over $250,000 in book royalties. The news came in financial disclosures released on Thursday by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the administrative agency of the federal judiciary. The justices… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for a Pennsylvania county to count mail-in ballots that do not comply with a state law requiring voters to write the date on the ballot’s envelope. Although the case arose from a single local judicial race, it raised broader issues about how federal voting-rights protections apply when… Read More

This article was updated on June 8 at 3:41 p.m. A California man was charged with attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice after he was arrested early Wednesday morning near the Maryland home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. According to an affidavit filed by an FBI agent to support a criminal complaint filed in federal… Read More

With the release of three opinions on Monday morning, the justices still have 30 decisions left to release – just under half of the Supreme Court’s docket for the term. We are still waiting on the court’s opinions in high-profile cases involving abortion, gun rights, and religion, but the justices are also tackling issues such… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday morning added one new case to its docket for the 2022-23 term, a technical dispute over the binding nature of the statute of limitations for a federal property law. The justices also invited the federal government to submit its views in a dispute over immunity for corporations that work on… Read More