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

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared to side with the federal government in a dispute over the constitutionality of the structure of a task force within the Department of Health and Human Services. The case came to court as a dispute over a 2019 decision by the group, known as the U.S. Preventive Services Task… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday morning added one new case, involving a Texas woman’s claim against the U.S. Postal Service, to its docket for the 2025-26 term. The announcement came as part of a list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Thursday, April 17. The court granted U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, in… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in the first of two cases in April involving religion and public schools. In Mahmoud v. Taylor a coalition of parents from Montgomery County, Md., contend that requiring their children to participate in instruction that includes LGBTQ+ themes violates their religious beliefs and thus their First… Read More

Over a dissent by two of the court’s conservative justices, the Supreme Court temporarily barred the Trump administration from removing a group of Venezuelan men currently in immigration custody in the northern region of Texas under an 18th century wartime law. The prohibition came in an unusual overnight order that followed a Friday evening appeal… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Monday in yet another dispute over the separation of powers. The case is a challenge to the constitutionality of the structure of a relatively obscure section of the Department of Health and Human Services. But although the issue may sound like a technical one, the court’s ruling… Read More

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on May 15 on the federal government’s request to be allowed to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States, which dates back to the post-Civil War era. The court left in place orders… Read More

Calling the situation “untenable,” the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon, asking the justices to block orders by federal judges in Washington, D.C., that instructed government officials to allow board members at two independent agencies to remain in office despite President Donald Trump’s attempts to fire them. Soon after, Chief Justice… Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday paused an order by a judge in San Francisco that would require the federal government to reinstate more than 16,000 workers who were fired by six agencies earlier this year. A group of nonprofits challenging the layoffs argued that the terminations by the Office of Personnel Management violated several different… Read More

The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a pair of orders by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that had barred the government from removing noncitizens who are designated as members of a Venezuelan gang under a March 15 executive order issued by President Donald Trump. By a vote of 5-4, the justices declined to address… Read More

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Monday morning, asking the justices to block an order by a federal judge in Maryland that instructed the federal government to return a Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador, where he is being held in a maximum-security mega-prison, to the United States by Monday evening…. Read More