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Read more Justices urged to stop Texas from enforcing age-verification and parental-consent law on apps
At the Court
On Monday, the court added three cases to its oral argument docket for next term and denied several notable petitions for review. For more on Monday’s , see the Morning Reads and On Site sections below.
The court has indicated that it will next release opinions on Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging that morning beginning at 9:30.
After any opinion announcements on Thursday, the justices will meet in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday, June 22, at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
Morning Reads
Supreme Court won’t hear 98-year-old judge’s bid to end suspension
Zach Schonfeld, The Hill
On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it will not “take up the oldest active federal judge’s bid to end her suspension, which her colleagues issued after she refused their demands for mental fitness testing,” according to The Hill. “Pauline Newman, who turns 99 on Saturday and rejects the notion she is unfit to serve, sued her fellow judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit after they indefinitely prevented her from taking on new cases.” By rejecting her petition for review, the justices leave in place a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit holding that “federal district judges have no authority to hear lawsuits challenging judicial misconduct decisions.”
Supreme Court won’t hear tariff challenge, paving way for new Trump action
Maureen Groppe, USA Today
Approximately four months after striking down tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the court on Monday declined to get involved in a separate tariff battle dating back to 2018, when Trump invoked the 1974 Trade Act to impose tariffs on imports from China, according to USA Today. The act allows for such tariffs to be put in place after an investigation and hearings on “unfair trade practices,” but the challengers in HMTX Industries, LLC v. United States contended that it does not allow for these tariffs to be “dramatically ratchet[ed] up” amid a trade war with the targeted country. USA Today noted that the “justices’ decision not to review a ruling” upholding the tariffs on China “could embolden the administration as it seeks to replace many of the emergency tariffs” that were invalidated earlier this year.
U.S. Supreme Court rejects Texas death row inmate’s appeal challenging hypnosis testimony
Ellie Ashby, The Texas Tribune
The justices on Monday “rejected Texas death row inmate Charles Flores’ efforts to force the state’s highest criminal court to reconsider his appeal,” according to The Texas Tribune. “Flores argued that his 1999 conviction should be overturned under the Texas ‘junk science’ law because testimony from a key witness was improperly influenced by hypnosis performed by a police officer who was investigating” the murder Flores was ultimately convicted of committing. Flores asked the justices to order the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its holding that “he failed to meet the” junk science “law’s requirement that new evidence be previously unavailable, among other standards.”
Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, The New York Times
Citing “a secret memo” written by the White House staff secretary, The New York Times reported on Monday that the Trump administration last year seriously considered suspending habeas rights for unauthorized immigrants as part of a broader deportation push. “The suspension of habeas corpus has occurred just a handful of times in U.S. history, and always under the most dire circumstances of war or invasion. Yet to a greater degree than previously known, administration officials, encouraged by Mr. Trump, actively weighed taking that step in the early months of his second term.” In his memo to the White House chief of staff, Will Scharf counseled against that move, noting that it would “likely precipitate hazardous legal and constitutional battles.” “Even where Congress has explicitly suspended habeas corpus rights, the Supreme Court has held that some alternative process must be provided to defendants, with procedural safeguards akin to a habeas corpus action,” Scharf wrote.
How a great historian influenced the Supreme Court
Jason Willick, The Washington Post
In a column for The Washington Post, Jason Willick highlighted the late historian Gordon S. Wood’s influence on the Supreme Court. “Wood is cited in at least 24 opinions in 22 high court cases to support arguments about the Constitution’s meaning. The citations are overwhelmingly to his first book, ‘The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787,’ published in 1969, when Wood was 35,” and come in cases about such issues as “the president’s power to appoint federal officers” and “the constitutionality of term limits for members of Congress.” Willick noted that the “rise of Wood in Supreme Court advocacy is inseparable from the rise of originalism. … When the Constitution’s original meaning began to matter more in the law, the authority on early American political thought understandably attracted judicial attention from liberals and conservatives alike.” Wood died on June 7 at age “92 after he was hit by a car in Rhode Island.”
On Site
Court agrees to hear three new cases, including on the constitutionality of six-person juries
By Amy Howe
The court on Monday added three new cases, on issues ranging from hearings for noncitizens in immigration detention to the constitutionality of Florida’s six-person juries and the exceptions to the general rule on second petitions for federal post-conviction relief. The announcement came as part of a list of orders from the justices’ June 11 conference, which also included two dissents by Justice Samuel Alito from the denial of review in cases involving student speech and the constitutionality of a prosecutor’s comments in a capital murder trial.
Justices urged to stop Texas from enforcing age-verification and parental-consent law on apps
By Amy Howe
A student group and a trade association have asked the court on its interim docket to restore orders by a federal judge in Austin, Texas, that bar the state from enforcing a law that imposes age-verification and parental-consent requirements on minors’ access to apps and paid content within those apps. Half the states have similar age-verification requirements for minors.
The dissent that became a statute
By Anastasia Boden
In her In Dissent column, Anastasia Boden highlighted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., a 2007 case in which the court held that Lilly Ledbetter’s sex discrimination claims over being paid less than men working the same job were foreclosed because they were filed too late. In her dissent, Ginsburg noted that “the ball is in Congress’ court” when it came to addressing the issues raised in the case. Congress did indeed act two years later, passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
The Box Count
As we enter the heart of opinion season, we thought it would be helpful to revisit past Closer Looks on how SCOTUSblog covers opinion announcements. This piece was originally published on March 31.
Read more Court agrees to hear three new cases, including on the constitutionality of six-person juries
If you regularly attend our opinion day live blogs, you’ve likely noticed that certain questions come up nearly every time. For example, do we know in advance which opinions are coming? (No.) Is live audio available from the courtroom during opinion announcements? (Also no.) And how many boxes are there? (It varies.)
The box question typically sparks a series of additional questions from blog newcomers and veterans alike. What are these boxes you’re speaking of? Why do they matter? And, more recently, do the boxes seem heavy or light?
Let us take those questions in order. First off, the boxes are literal boxes. They are made of light blue carboard and look something like this. The boxes are used by the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office to bring copies of soon-to-be-released opinions to members of the press. A member of the PIO team lifts them onto desks in the PIO’s outer office at 9:55 a.m. EDT, when the five-minute buzzer sounds. That means that, although reporters do not see the actual opinions before they are announced by the court shortly after 10:00 a.m. EDT, they do see the box(es) before then (which Amy reports on the live blog), prompting the box count discussion.
As to the second question, the box count is significant because it gives us a sense of how many opinions might be coming. If there is just one box, the court is unlikely to be releasing more than three short opinions – and, indeed, is likely only releasing one or two opinions – because copies of three long opinions wouldn’t fit in a single box. It follows that when there are two boxes, we can safely predict that at least three opinions are on the way.
In recent live blogs, we’ve also talked – it may be more accurate to say joked – about how heavy or “puffy” the day’s box seems to be. Amy describes whether it seemed to take more effort than usual for the box to be carried in. Much like the box count seeks to estimate how many opinions may be released, this metric is aimed at making a more educated guess about how many opinions a box contains.
Admittedly, tracking the box count (and box weight) only gets you so far on opinion days. Sure, learning that there are two or three boxes instead of one makes it clear that it will be a busy morning, but knowing the box count on Friday, Feb. 20 (one) didn’t mean we knew for sure that the tariffs decision was coming. The reporters at the court got that answer when Chief Justice John Roberts began announcing the tariffs ruling in the courtroom, which prompted staffers in the Public Information Office to hand out copies of the opinion to those gathered around the box.
Still, this tracking can bring a sense of control to chaotic opinion days, and, perhaps most importantly, it’s a fun aspect of one very serious institution.
SCOTUS Quote
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: “Counsel, is – this group or gang, all of them had gold teeth and faded hair cuts?”
MR. SHANMUGAM: “There were five other suspects who had gold teeth or – and low-cut haircuts. Three of the other individuals who were primarily in the frame for this murder had those characteristics …”
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: “In short, faded hair cuts and gold teeth were not a unique characteristic.”
MR. SHANMUGAM: “They were not uncommon in the 1990s.”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “… They’re uncommon to me.”
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE SCALIA: “These were not gold teeth that were implanted, right? They – what was it? Some kind of a mouthpiece of gold?”
MR. SHANMUGAM: “I have to admit that my familiarity with this practice is perhaps not that much greater than yours …”
Read more The dissent that became a statute
JUSTICE SCALIA: “I’m sorry to hear that.”
— (2011)