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

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

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a Turkish bank can be prosecuted in U.S. courts for its role in a conspiracy to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. The justices rejected the bank’s contention that because the Turkish government owns a majority share of the bank, known as Halkbank, it is immune from prosecution under… Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday revived the case of a man on death-row in Texas who is seeking DNA testing to provide evidence that he asserts will clear him. By a vote of 6-3, the justices reversed a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that Rodney Reed had filed his… Read More

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday in a case that asking the justices to decide how far employers must go to accommodate the religious practices of their employees. Federal law bars employees from discriminating against workers for practicing their religion unless the employer can show that the worker’s religious practice cannot “reasonably” be… Read More

There is no dispute that the Facebook messages Billy Raymond Counterman sent to local Colorado musician Coles Whalen made her feel afraid. For years, Counterman sent increasingly menacing messages in which he suggested that he had seen Whalen – who is identified only by her initials in court documents, but who has discussed the case… Read More

Employees of the U.S. Postal Service are famous for delivering the mail even in the worst conditions. But when Gerald Groff was hired to work as a postal carrier in 2012, postal carriers didn’t work on Sundays. That changed in 2013, when USPS signed a contract with Amazon to deliver the company’s packages, including on… Read More

This post was updated on April 14 at 4:14 p.m. Less than 10 months after the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, both the Biden administration and a drug manufacturer have asked the justices to temporarily block a ruling by a federal judge in Texas that suspended the Food and Drug… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for a 12-year-old transgender girl to continue to participate, at least for now, on a middle-school girls’ track team. In a brief unsigned order, the justices denied West Virginia’s request to be allowed to enforce a law that bars transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams… Read More