Good morning, and welcome to a new week and another opinion announcement day. We will be live blogging beginning at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
We are expecting eight more decisions in argued cases (which are likely – though not guaranteed – to come down by the end of this week), including Trump v. Barbara (birthright citizenship); Trump v. Slaughter (removal protections for heads of independent agencies); Trump v. Cook (Trump’s effort to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook); West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox (transgender athletes); and Watson v. Republican National Committee (mail-in voting).
At the Court
Orders from the justices’ June 25 conference are expected this morning at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
The justices’ financial disclosure reports for 2025 are scheduled to be released at noon EDT. However, we may not get all nine reports today, because justices sometimes apply for and receive extensions.
There will likely be at least one more opinion day after today. The court will offer an update after this morning’s opinion announcements.
Morning Reads
Trump administration asks US Supreme Court to endorse immigration detention policy
Nate Raymond, Reuters (paywalled)
The Trump administration has filed a petition for review asking “the U.S. Supreme Court to let it detain people arrested in its immigration crackdown without a chance to seek bond, even if they have lived in the country for years,” according to Reuters. The petition addresses a May decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which held “that the administration misinterpreted a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and that ... migrants were denied bond hearings in violation of their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.” “Two other appeals courts have endorsed the administration’s policy, a fact U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted as he urged the justices to intervene and resolve a ‘critically important question of immigration law’ that is fueling thousands of lawsuits by people challenging their detention.”
Supreme Court halts order to force reporter to reveal source or pay fine
Scott Nover and Julian Mark, The Washington Post (paywalled)
Late on Friday, the court “stayed an order that would have forced former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge to either disclose a confidential source or pay $800 a day in court sanctions,” according to The Washington Post. Chief Justice John Roberts paused the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “to give the Supreme Court time to consider Herridge’s request for emergency relief. He gave the opposing party in the case, Chinese American scientist Yanping Chen, until Wednesday to respond.” Chen alleges that Herridge “breached federal privacy law by identifying details about her in stories published beginning in 2017. Herridge refused to explain how she learned of a federal probe into Chen,” and “was held in contempt of court by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper after refusing to disclose her source.” The D.C. Circuit affirmed Cooper’s decision.
The Supreme Court Is Building Its Own Massive Police Force
Josh Gerstein, Politico
Over the past few years, “with little fanfare, the size of the Supreme Court’s police force has begun mushrooming,” according to Politico. “For years, the force sat at fewer than 200 officers, but now officials are aiming to more than double the ranks of the agents and officers who protect the justices and the Supreme Court’s building. The push for a rapid security buildout stems from the substantial threats to the justices at a moment of growing political violence in the U.S. and the sense that the system has just not been up to the task of keeping them safe.” “During a virtual recruiting event in April, a Supreme Court Police officer said” an assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022 “led directly to the ongoing surge in security.”
Fear grips Haitian communities after Supreme Court ruling unwinds protection from deportation
Gisela Salomon, Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos, and Claire Galofaro, Associated Press
On Thursday in Mullin v. Doe, the Supreme Court cleared the way for “the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disasters in Haiti and Syria.” In the wake of the decision, “fear ricocheted through those communities across the United States,” as about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians who had immigration protections through the Temporary Protected Status program began preparing for possible deportation, according to the Associated Press. “They don’t know if they can work, if their kids can go to school. Many are making preparations to leave their children who are U.S. citizens behind if they are sent away.”
Bayer’s Roundup Win Brings Company New Life—and Renews Breakup Speculation
Patrick Thomas, The Wall Street Journal (paywalled)
Over the past decade, Bayer has faced a “legal storm over Roundup weedkiller,” as users sought to hold the company liable for not warning them about the alleged link between the popular product and cancer. But now, after a major Supreme Court victory, the “clouds are parting,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The court “insulated Bayer against claims that it failed to warn people about potential cancer risks,” “eliminat[ing] what has been the most successful line of attack used by plaintiffs’ lawyers.” The ruling is expected to derail tens of thousands of ongoing cases, and it “also allows Bayer to challenge courtroom verdicts it lost that haven’t been finalized and paid, potentially saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Would Cameras Inside the Supreme Court Provide Sunshine, or a Stage?
Charles Hilu, The Dispatch (paywalled)
The Senate Judiciary Committee recently advanced a bill that “would direct the Supreme Court to allow television coverage of all of its open sessions, unless a majority of justices decides that doing so in a particular case would violate the due process rights of one of the parties involved,” according to The Dispatch, noting that such a move “has been under discussion for decades.” While proponents say the Cameras in the Courtroom Act would support “the noble goal of increasing transparency in government, those opposed fear that putting cameras in federal courtrooms would turn their proceedings into a spectacle and degrade the judiciary.”
On Site
From the SCOTUSblog Team
When justices wade into politics
Generally, Supreme Court justices refrain from explicitly commenting on politics. That custom, however, is not a hard-and-fast rule, and over more than two centuries, justices have at times set it aside while sitting on the bench. As the current court generates criticism from both sides of the aisle, Nora dove into the (somewhat) rare occasions when justices have openly done so.
Contributor Corner
Hunter v. United States – the most important criminal case of the term
In his SCOTUSCrim column, Rory Little revisited the court’s June 18 ruling in Hunter v. United States, explaining why it may portend “seismic shifts in criminal law.” “The lopsided [8-1] vote in Hunter masks deep divisions ... and a three-justice concurrence by Justice Neil Gorsuch suggests broad implications for much of our current criminal justice system,” Little wrote.
Podcasts
Advisory Opinions
SCOTUS Ends Judicial Review of Temporary Protected Status
Sarah Isgur and David French react to the court’s rulings in two major immigration cases and a case on Hawaii’s restrictions on concealed-carry permit holders.
Amarica’s Constitution
No Coffee for You
After a recent discussion on private vs. state action, Akhil Amar and Andy Lipka return to the topic to address a recent incident in New York regarding U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman’s banishment from a coffee shop because of his political stance. They also reflect on the court’s ruling in Wolford v. Lopez, in which the justices considered similar questions.
Divided Argument
Mechanical / Animal
Dan Epps and Will Baude run through Supreme Court opinions from last week, focusing on two cases – Wolford v. Lopez and Pung v. Isabella County – that look unrelated but turn on the same question: when may a state rewrite background property law to limit a constitutional right?
A Closer Look
The Evolution of Opinion Releases
You might recall from a previous closer look that the busiest opinion day in Supreme Court history appears to have occurred during Chief Justice Melville Fuller’s court in 1889, with 50 decisions. But how has the actual release of opinions changed over time? The answer: dramatically.
Throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, there was no printed text distributed to the press (or anyone else) on decision day. Rather, the justices read out their opinions in full, and reporters would then write down what they heard. Indeed, the availability of the earliest decisions was only made possible by “individuals acting solely on an entrepreneurial basis” who compiled decisions and then sold the volumes for profit.
The first such volume was published in 1790 by Alexander Dallas. However, Dallas’ work quality was inconsistent, with his four reports “often characterized by omissions, errors, and publishing delays.” Dallas’ fourth volume, for example, contained Supreme Court decisions issued through the August 1800 term, but was not published until 1807. The work of the court’s second reporter (and nephew of President John Adams), William Cranch, involved similar delays and inaccuracies. Fortunately, under the third reporter, Henry Wheaton, timeliness and reliability improved considerably, in part because Justice Joseph Story agreed (anonymously) to give Wheaton written opinions or notes that he had prepared.
In 1817, Congress created a statutory, salaried (at $1,000 a year) Reporter of Decisions position for Wheaton, but even then, he was still responsible for printing costs and sold the volumes of opinions commercially. For a time, Wheaton was also the only person allowed to print and profit from the court’s rulings – until the court itself decided in 1834’s Wheaton v. Peters that no Reporter “possessed a copyright for its work product.” With this, opinions ceased being Reporters’ personal property and became the public’s.
On March 14, 1834, the court issued an order requiring the justices to file their opinions in written form, so the justices sent their original written opinions to the Reporter, who would thensend them (having now been compiled, typed, and printed by said reporter) to the clerk for preservation once the term’s volume was published. A “subsequent order” in 1843 then reversed the sequence (directing that opinions go first to the clerk for recording and only then to the Reporter).
Still, the printed text was not necessarily “perfect.” Through the Taney era, justices read their opinions aloud and then turned the manuscripts over to the clerk and the Reporter, but some justices kept revising these (at times substantially, such as in the Dred Scott case) in the interval before publication.
In 1874, Congress appropriated $25,000 to create the United States Reports as the official archive of Supreme Court opinions. The earlier reports, starting with Dallas’, were retroactively numbered as volumes 1-90. With this, the U.S. government assumed responsibility for the printing and sale of the U.S. Reports, which it began publishing in 1876. But because the official bound U.S. Reports volumes lagged by years, several companies stepped in and started publishing “Supreme Court Reporter” series in a (relatively) more timely manner – for instance, West Publishing Company began its “Supreme Court Reporter” (with the unofficial opinions) with the 1882 term. That said, the Government Printing Office served and serves as the sole official publisher (with the Reporter compiling and publishing the U.S. Reports).
In 1935, after an Associated Press reporter inaccurately characterized a series of cases, the court finally began giving journalists full printed opinion proofs (“bench opinions”) as soon as the justices announced them from the bench. This new “hand-down” protocol meant that “immediately before a Justice announced a decision in the Courtroom, the Clerk of the Court directed messengers to hand copies to a small group of journalists stationed in front of the bench.” The journalists would then send these copies through pneumatic tubes located near them to the press room. Chief Justice Warren Burger had the pneumatic tubes (and the reporter seats immediately in front of the bench) removed in 1971, although he had a syllabus (summary) added to each opinion when they were released, instead of when they were later published.
Starting in the 1990s, copies of opinions became electronically available the day they were announced through the court’s “Project Hermes.” And on April 17, 2000, the Supreme Court launched its official website and began posting each opinion online within hours of its being read in the courtroom. Today, as Supreme Court watchers are well aware, such posting occurs within mere seconds of opinion announcements.
SCOTUS Quote
“Political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago[.]”
— Justice Samuel Alito in Mullin v. Doe (2026)