On Friday, we will debut a new newsletter section called “Ask Amy.” In it, as you might have guessed based on the name, SCOTUSblog’s very own Amy Howe will respond to queries about the Supreme Court. Please send any burning questions to scotusblog@thedispatch.com.
At the Court
On Friday, the justices met in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected this morning at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
On Saturday, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, two companies that manufacture the abortion pill mifepristone, came to the court, asking the justices to pause a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that reinstated the requirement that the drug be dispensed only in person. For more on their requests, see the On Site section below.
The court has not yet indicated when it will next release opinions.
Morning Reads
Tennessee and Alabama take steps to redraw House maps in wake of Supreme Court ruling
Joe Walsh, CBS News
Two days after the Supreme Court released Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday, “[t]he Republican governors of Tennessee and Alabama called state lawmakers into special sessions on Friday, initial steps in what could be a scramble across multiple southern states to redraw congressional maps” in response to the ruling, according to CBS News. “Depending on how state officials proceed and whether courts intervene, legislators may try to split up Tennessee’s sole Democratic district and eliminate one of Alabama’s two blue seats.” Tennessee’s primaries are currently scheduled for Aug. 6, and Alabama’s “are set for May 19.” “Beyond Alabama and Tennessee, legislators in Mississippi are planning to hold a special session to redraw the state’s Supreme Court districts. Some state officials have suggested also redrawing the state’s U.S. House maps to unseat Democratic Rep. Benny Thompson,” but “Mississippi has already held its primary elections.”
Voters Sue Over Louisiana Governor’s Move to Delay Primary
Nick Corasaniti and Emily Cochrane, The New York Times (paywalled)
Voters, a Democratic candidate for Congress, “and key voting rights groups filed multiple lawsuits against Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana on Friday over his order to suspend the state’s House primary, arguing that he had overstepped his executive powers by delaying the election to give lawmakers time to draw a new congressional map,” according to The New York Times. The lawsuits “could further upend Louisiana’s rapidly shifting election calendar amid a dizzying series of developments since the Supreme Court rejected Louisiana’s map as an illegal racial gerrymander.” “I will do everything in my power to protect the integrity of our elections and uphold the Constitution,” the governor said in a social media post on Friday.
The Supreme Court keeps overturning precedent. It swears that it’s not
John Fritze, CNN
During a public appearance last year, Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back against claims that the court was “too eager to kick decades-old precedent to the curb,” highlighting data showing that the court “had taken aim at far fewer precedents than any of its modern predecessors,” according to CNN. “I think people have a misunderstanding about how much the current court is overruling precedent,” Roberts said. But some court watchers believe Roberts – and researchers – are failing to “account for instances in which the court has pummeled a precedent without explicitly killing it,” arguing that last week’s Callais ruling is an example of this phenomenon. “[I]n Callais, there’s no question the court has completely rewritten the framework prior cases had established for interpreting the” Voting Rights Act, said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University.
Gorsuch says Supreme Court is ‘working’
Ashleigh Fields, The Hill
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the Supreme Court’s “system is working pretty much as it has for a very, very long time” amid debates over how the court does its work and tensions between the justices. “Americans file about 50 million lawsuits a year, and you give us the 70 hardest ones, where lower court judges have disagreed about what the law means about a statute or a provision of the Constitution dictates in a particular case – there are nine of us. Can you get nine people to agree on where to go to lunch?,” he said. “All right, we’ve been appointed by five different presidents over 30 years, and yet we’re able to resolve those cases unanimously, about 40 percent of the time.” “I don’t expect,” Gorsuch continued, “to persuade my colleagues in every case. I know we’re going to disagree.” Gorsuch also addressed how the court balances privacy and transparency. “I think it’s great we have the audio of the court that’s available to you in real time. Anybody can listen to our arguments. But do we need time to actually talk quietly with one another, to find those places where we can reach agreement? Yeah, we do, and that’s nothing new,” he said.
Judge blocks Trump from ending temporary protected status for Yemen
Erik Uebelacker, Courthouse News Service
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho “blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary protected status for Yemeni nationals – just three days before its termination was set to take effect next week,” according to Courthouse News Service. He held that the Department of Homeland Security had “failed to adhere to the proper procedure” for reviewing a country’s TPS designation. “Ho’s ruling came just days after the U.S. Supreme Court took up the government’s appeal of similar rulings that blocked it from ending TPS protections for more than 350,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians.” The judge noted that “[o]rdinarily, this court might wait for the Supreme Court’s guidance before ruling on this case,” but said time was of the essence because of the “imminent termination.”
FTC to Judiciary: Ban Judges, Justices and Staff from Prediction Markets
Fix the Court
Fix the Court “is calling on the federal judiciary to ban its judges, justices and staffs from participating in prediction markets” in a letter to the Supreme Court and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. “There is little doubt that judges’ and justices’ participation in prediction markets on issues that impact them – cases and potential retirements, especially – would likely violate the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges and the Supreme Court Code of Conduct, respectively. Such participation would also violate the ethical codes that law clerks and other judiciary staff sign on to,” the letter said. In an article about the letter, Fix the Court noted that, “[c]urrently, on both Kalshi and Polymarket users can place bets on which justice will retire next, who their replacement will be and how [a] handful of cases currently before the Supreme Court will turn out.”
On Site
Interim Docket
Court issues temporary order allowing access to abortion pill by mail
On Saturday, two companies that manufacture mifepristone came to the court, asking the justices to pause a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a lawsuit by Louisiana that reinstated the requirement that the drug, which is used in about 60% of abortions nationwide, be dispensed only in person. The companies, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, both told the justices that the 5th Circuit’s order was “unprecedented.”
From the SCOTUSblog Team
When justices turn on each other
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Clarence Thomas have all been in the news lately for calling out one or more of their colleagues during public appearances. Their remarks raise a natural question: Are moments like these truly rare in the court’s history? The short answer is yes – but they are not entirely without precedent.
Contributor Corner
State and federal courts jockey for power in the Roundup case and other mass public harms
In her Clear Statements column, Abbe R. Gluck reflected on the significance of Monsanto Company v. Durnell, “a complex dispute over whether a federal law governing pesticide labeling and registration prevented a Missouri jury from awarding $1.25 million” to a pesticide user. In addition to potentially affecting tens of thousands of other lawsuits over Monsanto’s labels, “the case raises bigger picture questions about the future of aggregate public harms litigation and federalism that we will surely see again,” Gluck wrote.
A Closer Look
The Junior-most Justice
Sworn in as the court’s 116th justice on June 30, 2022, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson currently serves as the junior-most member of the court. We’ve written about the responsibilities (and panda perks) of the chief justice, but what about the court’s junior-most justice? While the chief justice presides over Senate impeachment trials of the president, acts as chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution, and issues a report each year on the state of the federal judiciary (among other things), being the newest member of the bench carries with it a distinct – if more understated – set of responsibilities.
First and foremost is the door. As Jackson explained during a September 2025 discussion of her memoir Lovely One at the University of Virginia School of Law, as “the newest justice, one of the things you have to do in conference is you have to answer the door, because the conference is just the nine of us, no assistance, no anybody else. And when someone knocks, you have to get up. [I]nevitably one of my colleagues has left their glasses, or Justice Barrett needs a scarf or a shawl. It’s cold in there. So you spend a lot of time answering the door.”
Justice Elena Kagan, who held the position for several years before Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court in 2017, described this to Gorsuch as “the most important junior justice responsibility.” Indeed, one junior-most justice in the 1950s referred to himself as “the highest-paid doorkeeper in the world.” Justice Stephen Breyer said he would instinctively rise to answer the door “like a Pavlovian dog” even after Justice Samuel Alito joined the court as its newest member.
The second core responsibility also lies within the justices’ private conference – the junior justice serves as the de facto note-taker and recorder of the conference. In this, the justice listens to everyone else speak in descending order of seniority (the chief justice goes first, the most junior last), takes notes of the discussion, and then “giv[es] orders” or communicates relevant aspects of the discussion (such as which cases have been granted) to the necessary court staff members. This role used to lie with the chief justice until the Burger court. (Kagan noted that the note taking can get disrupted by the door-opening). Jackson described this role as that of “the secretary” who makes sure “people [] know what we voted on.”
The third assignment for the junior justice is to serve on the court’s cafeteria committee, a monthly responsibility that involves fielding complaints about everything from seasoning levels to menu options to overseeing operations of the ground-floor cafeteria open to employees, visitors, and the public. Jackson introduced electronic ordering via apps, eliminating long lines for court staff who previously had to queue alongside tourists. “[W]e’ve made some great strides,” Jackson said. “[C]ourt staff [before] had to stand in the lines with all of the tourists to get their sandwich. And I was like, what is happening here? So we actually can order from apps on our phone now. And that is a great development.” Kagan introduced a frozen yogurt machine, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh a pizza oven.
But there is a limit to the “hazing,” especially when it comes to how much the most-junior justice’s vote counts. “Each of us has one vote and I think each person listens to the other precisely the same way whether you are junior or next to junior or you are the Chief,” Breyer said. “I don’t see a disadvantage or an advantage, frankly.”
SCOTUS Quote
JUSTICE BREYER: “ … But what I'm trying to figure out here is what's the case law on what should be a very common situation. If you give it to a third party, your fake check, insufficient funds. You just want the money from the third party. But you know the bank is likely to honor it.”
MR. RUSSELL: “Well, if – if I can quibble with that last piece of the sentence. Ordinarily, if you give a check that goes to a bank and there's not sufficient funds, they bounce the check. They don't honor it. So –”
JUSTICE BREYER: “All right. Try two –”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “That's certainly been my experience.”— Loughrin v. United States (2014)