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

Last year the UK Supreme Court heard three days of argument on whether Prime Minister Boris Johnson acted properly when he asked Queen Elizabeth II to suspend the country’s parliament in the run-up to the deadline for Britain’s exit from the European Union. When the country’s highest court ruled that the government had shut down… Read More

Eight years ago, in a case called Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, the Supreme Court recognized a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws, reflecting the idea that religious institutions normally have the sole right to determine who can act as their ministers. The justices ruled in that case that the exception barred a lawsuit… Read More

In some ways, next week’s consolidated oral argument in Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania and Trump v. Pennsylvania will be like 2016 all over again. In the middle of a presidential election season, the justices will once again weigh in on the battle over the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate, which… Read More

On March 4, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in June Medical Services v. Russo, a challenge to a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have the right to admit patients at nearby hospitals. That morning, the chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, Bridget Mary McCormack, took to Twitter to playfully… Read More

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in a challenge to New York City’s ban on the transport of licensed handguns outside the city. Because the city had repealed the ban last summer, a majority on the court agreed with the city that the challengers’ original claims are moot – that is, no longer… Read More

In 2003, Congress passed the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, which has provided billions of dollars to fund efforts to combat HIV/AIDS overseas. Among other things, the law contains a requirement that organizations receiving funds to fight HIV/AIDS “have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking.” Seven years ago, the… Read More

UPDATE: Justice Samuel Alito has called for a response to the businesses’ request for a stay of the governor’s shutdown order. It is due on Monday, May 4, at noon ET. Yet another pandemic-related emergency filing reached the Supreme Court tonight. A group of Pennsylvania businesses led by the Friends of Danny DeVito, a committee… Read More

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices did not act on two cases that have been repeatedly relisted in recent weeks, a death-penalty case from Texas and the federal government’s challenge to one of California’s “sanctuary state” laws, which prohibit state and local law-enforcement officials from… Read More

Today the Supreme Court ruled that health-insurance companies that lost money offering policies on the “health benefit exchanges” established by the Affordable Care Act are entitled to compensation for their losses. The decision was a major victory for the four insurers, which argued that they are owed hundreds of millions of dollars, and a defeat… Read More

The Supreme Court sent a major Second Amendment case back to the lower courts today, ruling that the challenge to a New York City restriction on the transport of guns is “moot” – that is, no longer a live controversy – because the city changed the rule last year. But some of the court’s more… Read More