Thanks to all who joined us at our term-in-review event yesterday at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., which was presented by the ACLU. Scroll to the Closer Look section below for a brief overview of the discussion.
Plus, we’re now just one week away from the LinkedIn Live event featuring SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe and Briefly’s Adam Stofsky, which will begin at noon EDT on Thursday, July 16. They will discuss the most consequential decisions of the 2025-26 term. Register here.
Morning Reads
Trump announces long-shot bid to get Supreme Court to rehear birthright citizenship case
Dan Mangan, CNBC
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that he would seek “to get the Supreme Court to rehear the case in which it ruled against his executive order that sought to sharply restrict birthright citizenship,” according to CNBC. “I will be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY. This miscarriage of justice will destroy America if they don’t change their absolutely insane decision,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. CNBC noted that the court “has not agreed to rehear a ruling of a case already argued since 1965.”
Judge orders release of $5.8M Trump owes E. Jean Carroll
Ashleigh Fields, The Hill
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Wednesday rejected President Donald Trump’s request to delay payment of nearly $5.8 million to E. Jean Carroll until after the Supreme Court reconsidered the president’s appeal of the jury verdict, which came in a sexual abuse and defamation case filed by Carroll. “Kaplan said Carroll should receive the funds, which were placed in an escrow account while Trump appealed,” according to The Hill. “Trump’s lawyers appealed Kaplan’s ruling less than an hour after it was issued.”
Bayer seeks to end federal Roundup litigation after Supreme Court win
Dietrich Knauth, Reuters (paywalled)
On June 25, the Supreme Court sided with Bayer in a long-running dispute over pesticide labels, holding “that plaintiffs cannot sue Bayer by arguing that Roundup’s warning label failed to warn users about cancer risks.” Now, the company is seeking “to convince a federal judge to dismantle the federal litigation that consolidates nearly 4,000 lawsuits alleging that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer,” contending that the Supreme Court’s ruling “should lead to the dismissal of the consolidated federal litigation,” according to Reuters. “Plaintiffs’ attorneys countered that the Supreme Court ruling was limited to Roundup’s label, and does not affect the viability of other claims commonly asserted in Roundup personal injury lawsuits, such as design defect and negligence claims.”
‘Oyez, oyez.’ Supreme Court’s last official crier is dead at 102.
Cole Reynolds, The Washington Post (paywalled)
From 1952 to 1962, George Hutchinson cried “Oyez, oyez, oyez” in the courtroom to “announce[] the arrival of the justices.” “Hutchinson, who died June 14 at 102, was the last crier of the U.S. Supreme Court, tasked with carrying out ceremonial duties that were later turned over to the court marshal,” according to The Washington Post. Hutchinson first “joined the court in 1938 as a page, one of the knicker-clad young people who would assist the justices.” After serving in the Army during World War II, “he rejoined the court, working out of the marshal’s office and eventually taking the job of crier, which dates to the Supreme Court’s first meeting in 1790.” In that role, he would not only call the court to order, but also oversee the pages and pass messages to the justices during sessions, including baseball scores. “While working at the Supreme Court, Mr. Hutchinson went to school part time, earning a law degree at George Washington University and ultimately becoming a member of the Supreme Court Bar.”
After Supreme Court ruling, what's next in fight over trans athletes?
Maureen Groppe, USA Today
In its June 30 ruling on transgender athletes, “[t]he Supreme Court left open the question of whether states are required – rather than merely allowed – to keep transgender women and girls off female teams,” according to USA Today. “That legal issue is separately working its way up to the high court,” as are related disputes “over bathroom and locker room access for trans students.” “What that means is that we can continue to advocate for the rights of transgender students under Title IX in other areas,” said Chris Erchull, an attorney at GLAD Law, to USA Today. Conservative groups, on the other hand, are prepared to continue pushing back against these efforts. “Blue states with boys on girls’ podiums ... you’re next,” said Kristen Waggoner, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, in a social media post last week.
Why the Roberts Court Makes Easy Cases So Hard
Jesse Wegman, Major Questions with Jesse Wegman
In a post for his Substack, Jesse Wegman reflected on the court’s 5-4 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, exploring why the decision turned out to be so close. “The answer in this case was that four of the right-wing justices were willing to entertain a novel, convoluted reading of the phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ and to ignore or explain away more than a century and a half of settled law,” Wegman contended, adding that it is one of several recent cases in which several justices have appeared to put “‘off the wall’ arguments ‘on the wall.’”
On Site
SCOTUS Outside Opinions
The Supreme Court’s quiet coup
In a column for SCOTUSblog, Sen. Christopher A. Coons, David Beier, and Ray Brescia highlighted recent Supreme Court rulings on voting rights laws, administrative expertise, and executive authority over independent agencies, contending that, with these decisions and others, “the Roberts Supreme Court is systematically stripping away power from Congress.”
SCOTUS Outside Opinions
Revisiting which Supreme Court cases are actually the most important
In a column for SCOTUSblog, Eric McKee reflected on how best to determine which cases are the most important, building on his previous suggestion to simply count the number of “friend of the court” briefs that were filed. His refined method involves weighting the brief filers “by how often the court has actually cited them” in order to de-emphasize briefs that are merely “expressive” and “break[] no new ground.” Based on this, McKee found that “only a third of the very top cases – and only about a fifth of all above-median cases – were decided along ideological lines.”
Podcasts
Amarica’s Constitution
Unitary Duality - Guests Steven Calabresi and Vikram Amar
The Supreme Court recently ruled in two cases framing unitary executive theory. So it’s entirely appropriate that Akhil Amar and Andy Lipka are joined by two experts on the topic – Steve Calabresi and Vik Amar – to discuss it.
A Closer Look
SCOTUSblog’s 2025-26 Term-in-review Event
Our term-in-review event on Wednesday at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center was all about key takeaways from a blockbuster term, such as the role of history in the birthright citizenship ruling and the status of the Roberts court.
The event began with a fireside chat between Zach Shemtob, SCOTUSblog’s executive editor, and Cecillia Wang, the ACLU’s national legal director. Wang, who argued the birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court, described that experience, as well as other major cases from the term that the ACLU was involved in, including the disputes over the Voting Rights Act, transgender athletes, the Second Amendment rights of habitual drug users, and the Temporary Protected Status program.
Wang said that, on a scale of 1 to 10, she was at “99” in terms of nerves before the birthright citizenship argument, but that the anxiety fell away once she was actually standing in front of the justices. She also noted that it “didn’t matter” to her that President Donald Trump attended the argument, becoming the first sitting president to do so, because she felt his attendance “had nothing to do with” her and “everything to do with his agenda to put the justices on the spot and put the solicitor general on the spot.” Wang further explained that she had done plenty of moots as part of her preparation and was not surprised by any of the justices’ questions. If anything, Wang remarked, she was surprised that the discussion “stayed at a pretty high level in terms of principles.” It was as if everyone involved in the argument knew that the “American public and the world” was listening, Wang said.
The second session of Wednesday’s event featured Johns Hopkins professor Martha S. Jones, whose research into views on birthright citizenship in early America was cited by multiple justices in the birthright citizenship case. Jones noted that “history mattered a great deal in the ways in which the court came to think about” that case, emphasizing that justices not only integrated the work of contemporary historians into their writings, but “also read the primary materials that were in our footnotes.” “To me, this was a remarkable insight into how deep the court was willing to go to interrogate, understand, and incorporate history into what they did,” Jones said.
The event ended with a live taping of the Advisory Opinions podcast, hosted by Sarah Isgur. Isgur was joined by David French, law professor Akhil Amar, and David Lat. Together, they discussed whether it’s best to review the work of the court term-by-term or across a longer time horizon and how debates over the separation of powers came to dominate conversations about the court (at times crowding out debates about culture war issues).
The group also wrestled with the court’s relationship with historical research, emphasizing the justices’ growing use of originalism, a method of constitutional interpretation focused on the text of the Constitution and the history of its enactment and amendments. Isgur closed out the conversation by asking if the tariffs case or the case on the president’s authority to remove the heads of independent agencies was the big case of the term. Amar and French said tariffs, noting that it articulated the boundaries of congressional and presidential power, while Lat went with Trump v. Slaughter, arguing that it will have a profound effect on the federal government, whereas Trump might successfully re-impose tariffs based on alternative statutes.
Stay tuned for additional coverage of the event in the coming days.
SCOTUS Quote
JUSTICE BREYER: “In Morales, since I can mock my own opinions, I wrote at the end, ‘it's not – when it's too tenuous, remote or peripheral.’ That's singularly unhelpful.”
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE BREYER: “It seems to – there –”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “I thought so at the time.”
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE BREYER: “Yes, you were right.”
— Dan's City Used Cars, Inc. v. Pelkey (2013)
