Next week’s argument in M&K Employee Solutions v. Trustees of the IAM National Pension Fund presents a technical question of great monetary significance – how to calculate what a business owes if it withdraws from a multi-employer pension plan.

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.

This Friday’s conference marks the Supreme Court’s last real chance to grant petitions in time for argument at the court’s April sitting – the last sitting of this term. The court already has an unprecedented 91 relisted cases in contention for those slots. This week it added 17 more relisted cases raising 10 distinct legal issues. Grants could come as soon as Friday.

Courtly Observations is a recurring series by Erwin Chemerinsky that focuses on what the Supreme Court’s decisions will mean for the law, for lawyers and lower courts, and for people’s lives.

What will be the fate of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the Supreme Court’s 2020 landmark ruling protecting gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals from employment discrimination? Over the last year, the court has failed to follow the logic of Bostock in upholding discrimination against transgender individuals. And at the oral arguments on Jan. 13, in two cases involving state laws barring transgender girls and women from participating in sports that correspond to their gender identity, the oral arguments gave the strong sense that a majority of the justices are likely to uphold the state laws, making even more salient the question of what will be left of Bostock.

In a surprisingly sweeping opinion issued Wednesday, a five-justice majority in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections held that a federal congressional candidate had a legal right to sue, known as standing, in federal court to challenge an Illinois law that allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as many as 14 days later. Reversing lower federal court rulings that denied Rep. Michael Bost (R-Ill.) standing to sue, the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts adopted a categorical rule upholding candidate standing based on a candidate’s inherent interest in “the integrity of the election” and the “democratic process.” 

The Supreme Court on Wednesday debated whether New Jersey’s public transit agency can be sued in state courts in New York and Pennsylvania. The New Jersey Transit Corporation argues that it is an “arm” of the state and therefore is immune from lawsuits elsewhere, but after a little over an hour of arguments, it was not clear whether a majority of the justices agreed.