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

By a vote of 6-3 along ideological lines, the justices ruled that a federal appeals court was wrong when it ordered post-conviction relief for Danny Lee Jones, who contended that his Sixth Amendment right to have adequate representation by his lawyer was violated during the sentencing phase of his trial. Jones was convicted and sentenced… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated a lawsuit by the National Rifle Association, alleging that a New York official violated the group’s First Amendment rights when she urged banks and insurance companies not to do business with it in the wake of the 2018 shooting at a Florida high school. In a unanimous decision by… Read More

The Supreme Court will issue opinions in argued cases on Thursday morning. (I’ll be live-blogging the release of opinions over at SCOTUSblog.) The justices still have approximately 34 decisions left to release before they begin their summer recess at the end of June or beginning of July. Here, in brief, are summaries of the as-yet-undecided… Read More

Two weeks after the New York Times first reported that an upside-down American flag – popular among the “Stop the Steal” movement – flew outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel Alito in the days following the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, Alito rebuffed requests from Democratic lawmakers to recuse himself from… Read More

The justices agreed to take up a Clean Water Act case brought by San Francisco against the Environmental Protection Agency in a scheduled list of orders on Tuesday. The case was the only addition to the justices’ docket for their 2024-25 term. And over a dissent by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the justices declined to decide… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a ruling by a federal district court holding that a congressional district on the South Carolina coast was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, it sorted voters based primarily on their race. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the justices cleared the way for the state… Read More

The Supreme Court did not add any new cases to its merits docket for the 2024-25 term in a scheduled list of written orders on Monday morning. The justices denied review in over 60 cases, including a challenge to a Maryland county’s guidelines to provide support for transgender students. In John and Jane Parents 1… Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the structure used to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency tasked with enforcing consumer finance laws. By a vote of 7-2, the justices reversed a decision by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which had ruled that the agency’s funding… Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for Louisiana to use a new congressional map, containing two majority-Black districts, in the 2024 elections. In a brief unsigned order the justices blocked a ruling by a federal court that had barred the state from using the new map on the ground that legislators had relied… Read More

Over a written dissent by two justices, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a death penalty case asking them to weigh in on when jury selection begins and the defendant has a right to be present. The order in Sandoval v. Texas came as part of a list of orders from the… Read More