Believe it or not, Supreme Court justices sometimes have jury duty. Justice Sonia Sotomayor “was among the nearly 250 city residents who reported for jury duty at the D.C. Superior Court” on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. “By noon, the jury office had notified the justice that she would not be needed,” but she stuck around “to have lunch with some of the judges.”
At the Court
On Thursday, the court released its opinions in Fernandez v. United States, Rutherford v. United States, Pitchford v. Cain, and Flowers Foods v. Brock.
- In Fernandez, which was decided 8-1, the court wrote on the avenue one must use to seek to challenge the validity of a conviction and concluded that doubts about the validity of a conviction do not qualify as “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for relief under a federal statute that authorizes district courts to shorten prison sentences. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion; Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment, joined by Justice Elena Kagan; and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone.
- The court also considered “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to shorten a sentence in Rutherford and held, 6-3, that a sentencing disparity created by Congress’ nonretroactive change to the mandatory penalties for using and carrying a gun during a crime of violence does not qualify as such a reason. Barrett wrote the majority opinion, and Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Kagan and Jackson.
- In Pitchford, the court held, 5-4, that the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably determined that Terry Pitchford, who is currently on death row in that state, had waived his opportunity to rebut the prosecutor’s asserted race-neutral reasons for peremptory strikes of four Black prospective jurors. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, and Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Barrett.
- In Flowers Foods, the court, in an opinion from Gorsuch, unanimously held that the Federal Arbitration Act’s exemption from compelled arbitration for workers “engaged in ... interstate commerce” can apply to a worker who transports goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey and who does not cross state lines or interact with vehicles that do.
After the opinion announcements, the justices met in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from Thursday’s conference are expected on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
The court has indicated that it may announce opinions on Thursday, June 4, at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging that morning beginning at 9:30 a.m.
Morning Reads
Court Orders Customs Chief to Address Compliance on Refunding Tariffs
Tony Romm, The New York Times (paywalled)
On Wednesday, the Court of International Trade “ordered Rodney S. Scott, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to appear at a hearing next month on the Trump administration’s handling of roughly $166 billion in tariff refunds,” according to The New York Times. “The unexpected demand ... hinted at a judge’s ongoing concern that the government has not fully complied with a directive to return all of the money amassed under duties that were declared illegal by the Supreme Court earlier this year.”
Supreme Court May Upend Congress Power Over Trump’s Iran War: Republicans
Mandy Taheri, Newsweek
As conflict continues in Iran, “Republicans defending President Donald Trump’s military actions” are contending that “a growing fight over the War Powers Resolution could ultimately land before the Supreme Court,” according to Newsweek. “The 1973 War Powers Resolution allows Congress to direct the president to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities not authorized by lawmakers.” In recent weeks, it has been raised by Democrats as a way to end military strikes against Iran, which were not authorized by Congress. Members of the Trump administration have described the resolution as unconstitutional. Newsweek noted that “[i]f the administration did try to bring a lawsuit over the War Powers Resolution to the Supreme Court, the court would first have to decide whether to hear the case. Historically, courts have often avoided ruling” in such disputes “by saying they are political questions better resolved by Congress and the president, or by finding lawmakers lacked standing to sue.”
A Low-Profile Supreme Court Ruling Stands to Change How Cities Build
John Surico, Bloomberg (paywalled)
One year ago, in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, the court “blunt[ed]” the powers of the National Environmental Policy Act, which “requires federal agencies to perform environmental impact statements (EIS) or environmental assessments (EA) to gauge the so-called upstream or downstream impacts of any project before work begins,” by limiting the scope of the environmental review required to satisfy it. Today, “cities and states interested in infrastructure projects are still trying to figure out” what the decision means for those projects, according to Bloomberg, but some experts believe they’ll face less government red tape than they did in the past. “Now we just want to tell the world: ‘You’ve been wanting to build. Now you can actually do it,’” said Sarah Feinberg, who served as an administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration under President Barack Obama.
Samuel Alito’s Son Has Been Quietly Working for Trump’s Treasury Department
Jose Pagliery, NOTUS
Justice Samuel Alito’s son, Philip Alito, “quietly landed a political appointee job as a lawyer in the Treasury Department early last year … posing a potential conflict of interest,” including in challenges to the Trump administration’s new anti-weaponization fund, according to NOTUS, which cited “four former government officials.” “Alito has been working as an attorney with the Treasury’s office of the general counsel, which provides legal and policy advice to Secretary Scott Bessent.” In a statement to NOTUS, the Treasury Department said that “Philip Alito is currently detailed from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia ... and his portfolio covers a broad range of topics. As a matter of both professional and personal judgment, Phil does not counsel on any matters reasonably expected before the Supreme Court.” Similarly, Patricia McCabe, the Supreme Court’s public information officer, told NOTUS in a statement that Philip Alito “has not worked on any matter related to the tariffs imposed by the federal government. As a result, Justice Alito has not recused in those cases.”
On Site
Court News
Justice Barrett targeted in “swatting” incident
Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the target of a “swatting” incident – a false call reporting gunshots intended to provoke a response from law enforcement officials – on Wednesday night, according to a report on social media that was later confirmed by police in Fairfax County, Virginia, in a statement to the National Review.
Opinion Analysis
Supreme Court sides with death row inmate in challenge to racial discrimination in jury selection
The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a Mississippi man’s conviction and death sentence. By a vote of 5-4, the court in Pitchford v. Cain agreed with Terry Pitchford that the judge at his 2006 trial had not properly analyzed whether the prosecutor in Pitchford’s case violated the Constitution’s ban on racial discrimination in jury selection.
Contributor Corner
How often do courts actually cite emergency docket orders?
Taraleigh Davis analyzed the “precedential weight” of the Supreme Court’s emergency docket orders. She found that 53% of 475 substantive emergency applications filed between 2000 and 2024 have been cited by at least one federal court as of October 2025, and contended that a “precedent system is developing through practice, case by case, citation by citation, without the transparency that normally accompanies precedent-setting.”
A Closer Look
Justice Joseph Story
The youngest associate justice in Supreme Court history, Joseph Story, was also by some accounts one of the most consequential. Born in September 1779, in Marblehead, Massachusetts, – a coastal town north of Boston – Story was the son of a physician who had participated in the Boston Tea Party.
Story enrolled at Harvard at 16 (he was forced to leave his primary school early due to conflicts with one of his classmates and the schoolmaster), and studied hard to the detriment of his health (he would be afflicted by stomach problems throughout the rest of his life). Story nevertheless managed to finish second in his Harvard class in 1798, and then read law under Samuel Sewall, who would go on to become chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Story was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1801 and built a reputation in commercial and maritime law. Personal hardship followed him through these early years: his first wife died a little over six months into their marriage, and his father died a few months later. His second marriage brought seven children, though only two survived to adulthood; the deaths of his children sent Story into spells of deep depression, and he memorialized such losses in poetry.
Before returning to law, Story spent time in the political arena – serving in the Massachusetts Legislature beginning in 1805, winning a seat in Congress in 1808, and eventually becoming Speaker of the Massachusetts House in 1811 – all before turning 32. He ultimately decided to leave politics, saying party allegiance forced him to sacrifice his own views.
President James Madison nominated Story in November 1811 to fill the vacancy left by Justice William Cushing’s death, and Story was confirmed just three days later. At 32, Story is the youngest person ever to join the court. He also ranks among the longest-serving justices in the court’s history. Although Madison had hoped Story would serve as an ideological counterweight to Chief Justice John Marshall, he became one of Marshall’s closest intellectual allies on the bench instead, siding with him on nearly all of the era’s landmark decisions. Story’s judicial philosophy was grounded in what he called “legal science” – a conviction that the uniform application of law would make the nation stronger. (Andrew Jackson, suspicious of Story’s support of nationalism, reportedly called him “the most dangerous man in America.”)
Story authored a fair number of opinions between 1816 and 1823, with him and Justice William Johnson writing 113 between them (because Chief Justice John Marshall took the lion’s share, the remaining four justices were left with just 65). One of Story’s first significant opinions came in 1816’s Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, in which he authored the opinion establishing the Supreme Court’s appellate authority over state courts in federal matters – a ruling now regarded as “a fundamental principle in the function of the Supreme Court.”
Story’s record on slavery is complicated, given that he personally regarded the institution as repugnant to the principles of justice and humanity but felt constitutionally bound to uphold it; this produced two pivotal decisions late in his career. In 1841’s United States v. The Amistad, Story wrote the majority opinion freeing a group of Africans who had seized a Spanish slave ship, reasoning that because they had been illegally kidnapped, they were free individuals entitled to their liberty. (As a sidenote, Story was portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film adaptation of the Amistad case by Justice Harry Blackmun — the only known instance of one Supreme Court justice portraying another on screen). The next year in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, Story authored the opinion upholding the federal Fugitive Slave Act and striking down Pennsylvania’s protective state law, which critics have argued gave slavery a constitutional foothold it had not previously held so explicitly.
Story’s influence was also apparent off the bench. Beginning in 1829, while still serving as an associate justice, he became a professor of Law at Harvard. His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, published in 1833, “set forth a philosophy of judicial restraint,” became a staple in American law schools, and was cited in two 1980 Supreme Court cases. Future Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that Story had “done more than any other English-speaking man in this century to make the law luminous and easy to understand.”
Story died unexpectedly on Sept. 10, 1845, at the age of 65, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery, where he had delivered a dedication address years before. In 2009, Story was commemorated on a stamp souvenir sheet issued nationally by the U.S. Postal Service – per the USPS: “Joseph Story ranks as one of the nation’s most influential jurists … [h]is devotion to the uniform enforcement of federal regulations by all the states helped establish the preeminence of the Supreme Court.”
SCOTUS Quote
JUSTICE SCALIA: “ … That at least is logical. I'm not sure it's right. But it's logical.”
MR. KRAMER: “Well, I'm halfway there.”
— Smith v. United States (2012)
