It was a busy Monday at the court, to say the least. Keep reading to catch up on all the action.
At the Court
The court on Monday cleared the way for Alabama to use its 2023 congressional map, which had been blocked by a federal district court for discriminating against Black voters. Specifically, the Supreme Court vacated a lower court ruling barring Alabama from using the map and asked the court to reconsider the dispute in light of Louisiana v. Callais. Find Amy’s analysis of the decision in the On Site section below.
Last week, in response to requests from Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reinstating the requirement that the abortion pill mifepristone be dispensed only in person. That pause was set to expire on Monday at 5 p.m. EDT, but Alito extended it until 5 p.m. on Thursday.
Later Monday afternoon, Virginia asked the court on its interim docket to reinstate its new congressional map. For more on the request, see the On Site section below.
Also on Monday, Texas asked the court to vacate a stay of execution granted to Edward Lee Busby by the 5th Circuit. For more on the case, see the Morning Reads section below.
The court has indicated that it may release opinions on Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging that morning beginning at 9:30.
Additionally, the justices will meet in a private conference on Thursday to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
Morning Reads
Trump criticizes 2 Supreme Court justices by name over tariff ruling
Eric Mack, Fox News
President Donald Trump criticized Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett by name in a lengthy Sunday afternoon Truth Social post, asserting that their vote to strike down his tariffs hurt the country. “I ‘Love’ Justice Neil Gorsuch! He’s a really smart and good man, but he voted against me, and our Country, on Tariffs, a devastating move. How do I reconcile this? So bad, and hurtful to our Country,” the president wrote. “I have, likewise, always liked and respected Amy Coney Barrett, but the same thing with her. They were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly!” Trump concluded, “Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day, but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!! Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide.”
For Trump, Court Loss Is Latest Twist in Ever-Shifting Tariffs
Lazaro Gamio and Tony Romm, The New York Times (paywalled)
After the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled last week that Trump had exceeded his authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 in imposing “a 10 percent tax on most imports from around the world,” The New York Times put together a timeline showing the president’s shifting tariff strategy and the role courts have played in forcing changes to it. “Many of the president’s tariffs — the sky-high rates that he first imposed on what became known as ‘Liberation Day’ last year — were struck down by the Supreme Court in February,” the Times noted. Since then, the administration has imposed the temporary Section 122 tariffs that are at the center of the current lawsuit and moved toward imposing longer-term Section 301 tariffs, which require “investigations into the trade practices” of targeted countries (those investigations are currently under way). “We always do it a different way,” Trump has said of his trade policies. “We get one ruling, and we do it a different way.”
Federal appeals court temporarily halts execution of Texas death row inmate Edward Busby
Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune
As noted above, the 5th Circuit temporarily halted Texas’ planned execution of Edward Busby on Thursday. Judge Stephen A. Higginson, one of the two judges in the majority, cited “concerns over his eligibility for capital punishment because of intellectual disability,” noting that “Busby’s appeal could be significantly shaped by a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a separate case,” Hamm v. Smith. “That case, originating from Alabama, could determine how courts consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ tests in determining a defendant’s eligibility for the death penalty,” including in Busby’s case, which also involves multiple IQ scores and various types of intelligence assessments. “Busby was sentenced to death out of Tarrant County in 2005 for the kidnapping and murder of 78-year-old Laura Crane after he robbed her and suffocated her by wrapping her face with tape.”
Justice Breyer: It's up to us whether the American experiment succeeds
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, USA Today
In a forward for a forthcoming book, The Promise of America: Reflections on Our Enduring Ideals, which was reprinted by USA Today, retired Justice Stephen Breyer reflected on the values laid out in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and challenged everyday Americans to work to ensure the American experiment succeeds. “Our Nation’s canonical documents ... lay out America’s founding principles: liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, government by consent, the separation of powers, and basic human rights. The American people have over time called upon their government to live up to those principles,” Breyer wrote.
On Site
Court News
Court clears way for Alabama to use congressional map blocked by lower court as racially discriminatory
The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that a lower court had blocked on the ground that it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The justices threw out the lower-court order barring Alabama from using the map, which it had adopted in 2023, and sent the dispute back to the lower court for another look. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from Monday’s decision, in a four-page opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Interim Docket
Court extends temporary order allowing access to abortion pill by mail
Mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortions, will remain widely available throughout the United States, at least for now. In a pair of brief orders, Justice Samuel Alito extended the temporary pause – known as an administrative stay – that he had placed on a ruling by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which would require mifepristone to be dispensed in person. That pause, which had been scheduled to expire at 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, will now last at least until 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, May 14.
Interim Docket
Virginia asks Supreme Court to allow it to reinstate congressional map that would advantage Democrats
Lawyers for Virginia Democrats and Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones asked the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon to allow the state to use a new congressional map in the 2026 elections. The lawyers contended that a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court invalidating an amendment to Virginia’s constitution giving the Virginia General Assembly the power to enact new maps was “deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.”
From the SCOTUSblog Team
The serious decline in petitions before the Supreme Court
Over the past approximately two decades, the number of petitions for a writ of certiorari filed each year at the Supreme Court has been declining. And the drop is especially pronounced if you look just at “in forma pauperis,” or “IFP,” petitions, which come from litigants who were not required to pay the court’s $300 filing fee or print their briefs in booklet form. Nora explored what might be going on here.
From the SCOTUSblog Team
Justice Samuel Alito opens up about oral arguments, judicial security, and his writing process
During an appearance last week at the 5th Circuit Judicial Conference, Justice Samuel Alito showed his sense of humor with jokes about his childhood pastimes and family dog, expressed dissatisfaction with life in Washington, D.C., and offered a glimpse into the inner workings of his chambers and the Supreme Court.
A Closer Look
Supreme Court Counsel
Perhaps reading our previous Closer Look about “the other jobs at SCOTUS” prompted some of you to wonder what the Supreme Court’s legal counsel actually does (well, in writing that piece, it at least made us curious).
The Supreme Court’s Legal Office was established in 1973 as part of Chief Justice Warren Burger’s efforts to improve the court’s efficiency and continuity in work. Members of the office operate as in-house counsel for the court by providing legal services for the institution itself. The head of the legal office is known as court counsel, and that position is currently held by Ethan V. Torrey, who has been in the role since 2014. (The prior court counsel, Scott S. Harris, became the clerk of the court.)
There are some relatively recent events involving this office. In 2022, Torrey authored a letter addressed to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Henry Johnson, Jr., which responded to an information request about potentially unethical conduct by Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito. The initial letter from Whitehouse and Johnson described a “judicial lobbying campaign” conducted by a conservative religious group which involved taking the justices and their wives to expensive dinners, as well as hosting the justices in their homes. The letter also urged the court to adopt a code of conduct and updated financial disclosure requirements.
Torrey’s response letter described the current code of conduct and financial disclosure rules for federal judges that the justices rely on. Specifically, the letter highlighted that the code of conduct “prohibits outside activities that reflect adversely on the judge’s impartiality” and only allows judges to be reimbursed for “extrajudicial activities” when the payment source “does not give the appearance of impropriety.” Additionally, Torrey noted that the financial disclosure policy was consistent with a statute that had been recently enacted requiring that federal judges’ (including the justices’) financial disclosures be available in an online public database.
Another ethics-related letter came from Torrey later that same month, in which he responded on behalf of the court to allegations that Alito had shared the outcome of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby – which struck down a federal regulation requiring employers to provide female employees with free contraception – with an anti-abortion activist over dinner three weeks before the opinion was announced. In the letter, Torrey indicated that Alito denied the allegations, that there was no evidence they were true, and that there were no facts to suggest that any of Alito’s actions violated the court’s ethics standards.
Most recently, Torrey defended Chief Justice John Roberts (in his official capacity as presiding officer of the federal judicial conference) and the federal courts’ administrative office (a judicial agency which provides a wide array of support services to the federal courts) in a lawsuit filed by America First Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm. This was somewhat notable as a break from the norm of the court and the justices being represented by the Department of Justice.
The case itself was filed in April of last year. In its complaint, America First alleged that the federal judicial conference (the policymaking body for the federal courts) and the administrative office of the courts violated the Freedom of Information Act by failing to provide records of certain communications. In its FOIA request, America First requested “all records referring to or relating to” Thomas and Alito and “all communications with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Representative Hank Johnson, or any of their staff” from April 2023 onward. According to the complaint, America First believed that White and Johnson had been attempting to “chill the judicial independence” of Thomas and Alito by “falsely accus[ing]” them of ethics violations and that the requested records contained information about undisclosed ethics violation allegations brought by members of Congress to the defendants against Thomas and Alito.
In July, a motion to dismiss was filed with Torrey listed as counsel, which argued that FOIA does not apply to the judicial conference or the administrative office. The district court agreed, granting the motion and dismissing the case because it found that the defendants were not “agencies” within the meaning of FOIA and therefore are not subject to that statute.
SCOTUS Quote
“It would be consistent with my public image if I told you that I spent the summer catching flies so we could pull the wings off the flies.”
— Justice Samuel Alito (2026)