The last grants of the 2025-26 term?

The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.

Every summer, before the justices leave town for the Supreme Court’s recess, they have one last impromptu conference in which they consider – and usually dispose of – all the cases relisted after their last scheduled conference. In recent years, that “mop-up” or “clean-up” conference has overwhelmingly happened the day the court hands down the last opinions of the term. This year, it happened the day before the court handed down the last cases.

The court had just 30 petitions and applications before them at the conference. Ten of them were new relists. Given the volume of cases and the shortness of time until the court will be issuing its next order list, I will have to be extremely summary.

Another round of gun cases?

The court was holding a number of cases for United States v. Hemani, which held that prohibiting a marijuana user from possessing firearms violated the Second Amendment. These cases all concerned whether laws prohibiting people under the age of 21 from possessing firearms violate the Second Amendment. They are National Rifle Association v. Glass, McCoy v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, West Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Bivens v. Second Amendment Foundation, and Picon v. United States.

After Hemani was decided, they released those holds and considered these cases at the June 25 conference. That would frequently be enough if the court was simply going to grant the petitions, vacate the judgment below, and remand to the lower courts for further consideration in light of Hemani. Maybe the justices simply need more time to decide what to do, or maybe they’ve decided Hemani won’t provide sufficient guidance to the lower courts and they need to grant review in one of the new cases.

Appeal waiver mop-up cases

These are not the most glamorous cases, but they’re thematically related. On the same day Hemani was decided, the court also decided Hunter v. United States, holding that agreements criminal defendants make with the government not to appeal sentences are unenforceable when they would result in a “miscarriage of justice.” Yesterday, the court for further consideration in light of Hunter. But it needs a little more time with two of the cases, Jones v. United States and . . . Jones v. United States. I’m not being careless (or at least not just being careless) – these really have the same caption. Nothing jumps out of the petitions from the Jones twins suggesting that the court will need to grant review to finish the work it started in Hunter; I think they probably just need more time because of some particular aspect of those cases.

An Epic sequel

Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc. is the latest chapter in the antitrust fight Epic launched over the App Store back in 2020. After a 2021 trial, the district court enjoined Apple under California’s unfair-competition law from barring app developers from telling customers about, and linking them to, cheaper ways to pay than through in-app purchases. The Supreme Court denied review of that injunction in 2024. Apple then filed a notice of compliance: it permitted links but imposed a 27% commission on link-out purchases and fenced them in with design and placement rules. The district court found that maneuver to be in civil contempt – and referred Apple and a testifying executive to federal prosecutors over testimony it considered false. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the contempt finding while sending the precise commission remedy back to the district court.

Apple’s raises two questions about the equitable power of the federal courts. The first is whether a party can be held in contempt for violating the “spirit” of an injunction that is silent about the conduct at issue, or whether contempt requires violating an order that clearly and unambiguously forbids it – a point on which Apple says the circuits are divided. The second is whether the 9th Circuit carved out an antitrust exception to last term’s Trump v. CASA by allowing an injunction Epic obtained for itself alone to sweep in millions of nonparty developers. Because the parties greatly expedited cert briefing to permit a decision before the court’s summer recess (the petition, opposition, and reply were filed in under three weeks), would-be amici largely had to sit this case out, but Apple points to the heavy amicus turnout in the court of appeals as a measure of the importance of the issues.

Another pork case

The court also has another challenge to a state pork-sales law. Triumph Foods v. Campbell involves Massachusetts’ law barring the sale of pork from breeding pigs confined in ways the state deems cruel. That obviously echoes National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, but this case comes in a somewhat different posture: The challengers include a federally regulated pork processor and farmers, and their lead argument is that Massachusetts’ law is preempted by the because it forces federally inspected facilities to segregate, track, process, and certify compliant pork. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit rejected that argument, reasoning that the law is a sales restriction rather than a regulation of slaughterhouse operations, and also rejected the challengers’ dormant commerce clause theories (barring states from restricting interstate commerce). Triumph has also asked the court at least to GVR in light of the recent decision in , which construed similar “in addition to or different from” preemption language.

Praying for a grant

Finally, Grand v. City of University Heights is a religious-land-use case that began as a pro se petition but has since attracted enormous amicus support and a counseled reply by heavy hitter Josh Rosenkranz. Daniel Grand is an Orthodox Jew, and his faith requires him to pray with a group of 10 men. Because he cannot drive on the Sabbath, he invited others to his home for a minyan. After a neighbor complained, the city sent a cease-and-desist letter and told him he needed a special-use permit for a “place of religious assembly.” Grand applied, then withdrew the application, and the lower courts held his First Amendment and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act claims unripe because the city never finally denied the permit. Grand asks whether the usual land-use finality requirement applies to claims that zoning threats chilled his religious exercise, or whether the injury was complete once the city told him to stop holding prayer gatherings at home.

That’s likely to be it for this term. Thanks for reading all these months. Hope to see you back here in the fall!

New relists

National Rifle Association v. Glass, 24-1185

Issue: Whether Florida’s law banning 18-to-20-year-olds from purchasing firearms violates the Second Amendment.