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

The Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate requires most employers to provide their female employees with health insurance that includes access to certain forms of contraceptives. In 2017, the Trump administration issued new rules that expanded an exemption from the mandate to allow private employers with religious or moral objections to opt out of providing coverage… Read More

The Supreme Court released opinions in three cases this morning, which means that there are just five decisions remaining for the term. The court has not yet announced when it will next release opinions, and it is already running historically late. As law professor Steve Vladeck has noted, the last time the justices released decisions… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court unanimously rejected two challenges to the constitutionality of so-called “faithless elector” laws, which penalize or remove presidential electors who fail to vote for the candidate they have pledged to support. The rulings came with just under four months remaining before the 2020 election. The Supreme Court heard arguments in May… Read More

Tonight a divided Supreme Court granted a request by Alabama to temporarily freeze a lower-court ruling, issued as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, that would make it easier for voters in the state to cast absentee ballots in the state’s upcoming primary election runoff, which is scheduled for July 14. By a vote of… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference yesterday. The justices granted five new cases, for a total of four additional hours of argument. The biggest news from the order list was the announcement (which I covered in a separate post) that the court will weigh in on whether the Department… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference yesterday. The justices added another high-profile case to their docket for the fall, involving a dispute over efforts by members of Congress to obtain secret materials from the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller submitted a report last year to Attorney General… Read More

The Supreme Court announced today that its next day to release opinions will be Monday, July 6. With seven (or eight, depending on how you count them) decisions left to release, it seems entirely possible that Monday may not be the last day of the term. As law professor Stephen Vladeck noted, this year is… Read More

In 2015, the Montana legislature created a scholarship program that provided a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donations to private scholarship organizations. Those organizations used the money to fund scholarships for children to attend private schools – which, in Montana, are primarily religious schools. In 2018, the Montana Supreme Court struck down the tax-credit program, holding… Read More

With today’s release of the opinions in Seila Law v. CFPB and June Medical Services v. Russo, both of which were part of the court’s February argument session, there is now only one outstanding decision that predates the court’s historic May argument session: Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, argued in January. Justice Brett Kavanaugh… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The court did not grant any new cases for oral argument in the fall, but with another conference now scheduled for Wednesday, more grants could come as soon as Thursday morning. The justices invited the federal government to file briefs in… Read More