Good morning, and welcome to what’s expected to be the fourth opinion day of the month. We will be live blogging beginning at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
Also, to those of you who are in the legal profession, could you please fill out this brief survey about your work?
At the Court
On Monday, the court announced that it will hear argument in Younge v. Fulton Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, Georgia, on whether defendants may raise unpled affirmative defenses in a summary judgment motion. For more on Monday’s order list, see the On Site section below.
After the possible announcement of opinions this morning, the court will hear argument in Pitchford v. Cain, on a Mississippi man’s claim that he was sentenced to death in violation of the Constitution’s ban on racial discrimination in jury selection.
On Wednesday, we will be live blogging as the court hears argument in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case. Following the argument, the Advisory Opinions podcast will go live to discuss the case, which will be available on the SCOTUSblog homepage.
Morning Reads
Donald Trump Tears into ‘Dumb’ Supreme Court Justices
Giulia Carbonaro, Newsweek
On Monday morning, two days before the Supreme Court is set to hear argument on his executive order limiting access to birthright citizenship, President Donald Trump complained about the legal system’s treatment of his order in a Truth Social post. “Birthright Citizenship is not about rich people from China, and the rest of the World, who want their children, and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America. It is about the BABIES OF SLAVES!,” the president wrote. “Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!”
In their words: What judges have said about birthright citizenship
Associated Press
Ahead of Wednesday’s argument on birthright citizenship, the Associated Press compiled a list of quotes about the issue from judges and justices who have heard related cases. The list included an excerpt from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in Trump v. CASA, last term’s case on the universal injunctions putting Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship on hold. In the dissent, Sotomayor weighed in on the constitutionality of the order even though that wasn’t the question in front of the court. “Few constitutional questions can be answered by resort to the text of the Constitution alone, but this is one. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship,” she wrote.
Supreme Court declines to hear 'Tiger King' Joe Exotic's challenge after murder-for-hire conviction
Anders Hagstrom, Fox News
The Supreme Court on Monday denied a petition for review from Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known to Netflix viewers as Joe Exotic from “Tiger King,” Maldonado-Passage is challenging “his conviction for a murder-for-hire plot,” for which he “is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence,” according to Fox News. “Maldonado-Passage was convicted in 2019 of hiring two men to kill Carole Baskin, another prominent character in the viral [Netflix] documentary who had criticized his big cat zoo for years. He sought a retrial in 2023, claiming new evidence had come forward and that witnesses had recanted their testimonies.” A district judge denied this effort in a decision that was later affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
The Supreme Court Has Heard This One Before
Amanda L. Tyler, The Atlantic
In an essay for The Atlantic, Amanda L. Tyler compared this term’s birthright citizenship battle to a case from the 1940s challenging the citizenship of Japanese Americans. In Regan v. King, a group called the Native Sons of the Golden West contended that the 14th Amendment “gave citizenship exclusively to people born in the United States whose parents were also eligible for citizenship.” Lower courts sided against the Native Sons and the Supreme Court denied review without comment in May 1943. “Had the Native Sons prevailed in Regan v. King, the outcome would have stripped citizenship from tens of thousands of Japanese Americans born on U.S. soil—as well as countless others who could trace their lineage to ancestors who had immigrated and were not eligible for citizenship themselves,” Tyler wrote. Similarly, the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment would deny citizenship “not only [to] those categories of people it targets but also, on its broadest reading, potentially the child of every noncitizen immigrant and dual citizen.”
Why Isn't SCOTUS on Social Media? Our View: It Should Be
Cortez Collins, Fix the Court
In a column for Fix the Court, Cortez Collins called on the U.S. Supreme Court to “adopt an official social media presence,” noting that the Supreme Courts of Canada, Mexico, and the U.K. “have already embraced social platforms to communicate directly with the public.” The U.S. Supreme Court, Collins wrote is “one of the most powerful courts globally, yet one of the least digitally accessible. That gap matters. In an era where public trust in institutions is fragile, silence is no longer neutral. It is interpreted as distance.”
On Site
Birthright citizenship: an animated explainer
On Monday, we released the second in a series of animated videos, done in partnership with Briefly, on some of this term’s most important cases. The new video offered an introduction to the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara.
Supreme Court refuses to hear case of Louisiana man sentenced to life imprisonment, “Tiger King” appeal
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to weigh in on a procedural question arising from a pregnancy discrimination case – specifically, whether a defendant can raise an affirmative defense (that is, a legal excuse or justification) later in the proceedings when it did not raise that defense in the answer to the plaintiff’s complaint. It also declined to address the case of a Louisiana man sentenced to life in prison, over a dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as the appeal by Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as “Joe Exotic” from the TV series “Tiger King.”
The dissent that questioned certain jury trials
In her In Dissent column, Anastasia Boden revisited 2024’s Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, in which the court held that a hedge fund manager who had been accused by the SEC of misleading investors was entitled to a jury trial. The three Jarkesy dissenters – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – “warned that requiring a jury trial would knee-cap efficient regulation,” Boden noted, but “the sky has not fallen” since the decision was released in June 2024.
Birthright citizenship: 20 questions for the solicitor general
In a Brothers in Law column, Akhil and Vikram Amar and Samarth Desai outlined 20 questions they would love to ask Solicitor General D. John Sauer about the Trump administration’s position in the birthright citizenship case.
The Box Count
If you regularly attend our opinion day live blogs, you’ve likely noticed that certain questions come up nearly every time. For example, do we know in advance which opinions are coming? (No.) Is live audio available from the courtroom during opinion announcements? (Also no.) And how many boxes are there? (It varies.)
The box question typically sparks a series of additional questions from blog newcomers and veterans alike. What are these boxes you’re speaking of? Why do they matter? And, more recently, do the boxes seem heavy or light?
Let us take those questions in order. First off, the boxes are literal boxes. They are made of light blue carboard and look something like this. The boxes are used by the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office to bring copies of soon-to-be-released opinions to members of the press. A member of the PIO team lifts them onto desks in the PIO’s outer office at 9:55 a.m. EDT, when the five-minute buzzer sounds. That means that, although reporters do not see the actual opinions before they are announced by the court shortly after 10:00 a.m. EDT, they do see the box(es) before then (which Amy reports on the live blog), prompting the box count discussion.
As to the second question, the box count is significant because it gives us a sense of how many opinions might be coming. If there is just one box, the court is unlikely to be releasing more than three short opinions – and, indeed, is likely only releasing one or two opinions – because copies of three long opinions wouldn’t fit in a single box. It follows that when there are two boxes, we can safely predict that at least three opinions are on the way.
In recent live blogs, we’ve also talked – it may be more accurate to say joked – about how heavy or “puffy” the day’s box seems to be. Amy describes whether it seemed to take more effort than usual for the box to be carried in. Much like the box count seeks to estimate how many opinions may be released, this metric is aimed at making a more educated guess about how many opinions a box contains.
Admittedly, tracking the box count (and box weight) only gets you so far on opinion days. Sure, learning that there are two or three boxes instead of one makes it clear that it will be a busy morning, but knowing the box count on Friday, Feb. 20 (one) didn’t mean we knew for sure that the tariffs decision was coming. The reporters at the court got that answer when Chief Justice John Roberts began announcing the tariffs ruling in the courtroom, which prompted staffers in the Public Information Office to hand out copies of the opinion to those gathered around the box.
Still, this tracking can bring a sense of control to chaotic opinion days, and, perhaps most importantly, it’s a fun aspect of one very serious institution.
SCOTUS Quote
JUSTICE ALITO: “Well, just out of curiosity, do you think we should ask Claude to decide this case?”
MR. UNIKOWSKY: “No. I – I adhere to the wise judgment of – of this Court.”
— Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties (2026)
The post SCOTUStoday for Tuesday, March 31 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.