SCOTUS NEWS

Justices add five cases out of clean-up conference

The Supreme Court on Tuesday added five new cases – two of which will be argued together – to its docket for the 2024-25 term. The justices declined to take up a number of notable cases, including challenges to Illinois’s regulation of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and a challenge to the power of federal administrative agencies, here the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Monday was one of the court’s final acts before the justices begin their summer recess. Between now and the end of September the justices will likely issue orders to dispose of requests on the emergency docket and to deal with various administrative and procedural questions, but they normally do not grant new petitions for review during the recess.

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Tuesday, July 2

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read:

• Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s historic decision granting Donald Trump immunity (John Fritze, Tierney Sneed, & Devan Cole, CNN)
• Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Tech Platforms’ Free Speech Rights (Abbie VanSickle, David McCabe, & Adam Liptak, The New York Times)
• The Supreme Court rules for a North Dakota truck stop in a new blow to federal regulators (Mark Sherman, The Associated Press)
• Trump Seeks to Toss NY Felony Conviction After Immunity Win (Zoe Tillman & Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg)
• 2023 Stat Review (Adam Feldman, Empirical SCOTUS)

RELIST WATCH

Fourteen new relists for the end-of-term mop-up conference

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 to consider – and usually dispose of – all the cases relisted after their last scheduled conference (which this year happened on June 20). In recent years, that “mop-up” conference has overwhelmingly happened the day the court hands down the last opinions of the term. True to form, the court held its mop-up conference on Monday after the last hand-downs, and the chief justice announced that orders would be released on Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m.  

The court considered 65 cases at that conference, most of them cases it had been holding for the court’s last few decisions in argued cases. Most noteworthy of those cases is a large group of cases involving the federal prohibition on felons possessing firearms, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), which the court was holding for United States v. Rahimi, in which the court held that a person found by a court to pose a credible threat to the safety of another can be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. In the wake of that decision, the United States has filed a brief asking that the court grant review in one of those cases, Garland v. Range. There are numerous other cases pending that raise the same issue. The Range case (and that issue) is a serious contender for merits review.

View from the court

A dramatic last day in the courtroom

As I reach the courtroom on Monday, Michael Dreeben of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office has already taken a seat in the bar section. He can be pretty sure he will get the opinion in Trump v. United States today. Smith, who was present for oral arguments in late April, is not here today. I don’t see John Sauer, who argued the case for former President Donald Trump either.

At about 10:50 a.m., Ashley Kavanaugh, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s wife arrives, along with one of their daughters and the justice’s parents, Everett and Martha Kavanaugh. A few minutes later, Jane Roberts, Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife, arrives and takes her seat in the VIP box.

This is the one day we know which decisions are coming, and when the justices take the bench (except Justice Neil Gorsuch, who is absent again today without explanation), Roberts announces that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has the opinion in perhaps the least anticipated of the three outstanding cases, Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Monday, July 1

The court will release the remaining opinions for the October 2023-24 term this morning. We will be live at 9:30 a.m. EDT. Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• Supreme Court set to rule on Trump immunity in election interference case (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News)
• The Trump immunity decision is about to drop. Here’s how it might go. (James Romoser, Josh Gerstein, & Kyle Cheney, Politico)
• US Supreme Court’s slow pace on immunity makes Trump trial before election unlikely (John Kruzel & Andrew Goudsward, Reuters)
• After landmark Chevron ruling, could workplace safety agency OSHA be the next Supreme Court target? (Maureen Groppe, USA Today)
• How the Supreme Court’s blockbuster ‘Chevron’ ruling puts countless regulations in jeopardy (Tierney Sneed, Jeanne Sahadi, Tami Luhby, Brian Fung, Ella Nilsen, Jen Christensen, & Katie Lobosco, CNN)