By Zach Schonfeld and Sophie Brams | Wednesday, June 24
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By Zach Schonfeld
Wednesday, June 24
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Reading the Supreme Court tea leaves
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Anticipation is growing as the Supreme Court leaves many of its biggest decisions to the end.
Imminent rulings include President Trump’s birthright citizenship order, his firing power, transgender athlete bans, mail-in ballots, campaign finance, deportation protections and more.
The justices’ self-imposed deadline to finish their work by the end of June is fast approaching on Tuesday.
In this final stretch, the court’s unwritten traditions leave plenty of clues as to what may come. None of these are hard-and-fast rules. They are tea leaves, nothing more.
The next opinions are expected Thursday beginning at 10 a.m. EDT. Here’s our tipsheet:
Expect to hear a lot more from Roberts, Alito and Kavanaugh
The justices split up the majority opinions from the term roughly evenly. So, expect most justices to end up with six, and a few with seven.
Based on what’s in so far, three conservative justices have some catching up to do:
CURRENT MAJORITY OPINION COUNT
Justice Neil Gorsuch: 7
Justice Clarence Thomas: 6
Justice Sonia Sotomayor: 6
Justice Amy Coney Barrett: 6
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: 6
Justice Elena Kagan: 5
Chief Justice John Roberts: 3
Justice Samuel Alito: 3
Justice Brett Kavanaugh: 3
It suggests Roberts, Alito and Kavanaugh are still working on several more majority opinions behind the scenes.
Others — like Gorsuch and Jackson — may already be done.
Potential authors for the big cases
For each month’s argument session, the justices similarly split up the majority opinions evenly.
Let’s look at the October arguments, for example, as all the decisions are now in hand. There were 10 cases. The justices each handled one majority opinion, and Jackson picked up a second one to complete the slate.
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| October case name |
Majority opinion author |
| Villarreal v. Texas |
Jackson |
| Berk v. Choy |
Barrett |
| Chiles v. Salazar |
Gorsuch |
| Barrett v. United States |
Jackson |
| Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections |
Roberts |
| Postal Service v. Konan |
Thomas |
| Bowe v. United States |
Sotomayor |
| Ellingburg v. United States |
Kavanaugh |
| Louisiana v. Callais |
Alito |
| Case v. Montana |
Kagan |
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Based on the opinions so far5, here’s look at which justices could be writing the big cases still pending:
December (Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh): Two cases are left; both are major ones. The first involves President Trump’s bid to expand his firing power at independent agencies and the other is a GOP-backed challenge to a campaign finance law.
January (Roberts, Alito, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett): All four cases that remain from January’s session are politically charged. One is a constitutional challenge to a Hawaii gun law, two involve transgender athlete bans and the final case is Trump’s firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook.
March (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Barrett): Three cases remain. In March, the court heard arguments on Trump’s birthright citizenship order, whether states can accept late-arriving mail ballots and if a now-rescinded asylum policy was legal.
April (Alito, Kagan, Kavanaugh): Three decisions are left. In April, the justices heard arguments on Trump’s bid to curtail temporary deportation protections for certain countries, the constitutionality of geofence warrants and Roundup’s bid to end state-court lawsuits over its weedkiller labeling.
Multiple big decisions in one day aren’t unprecedented
Last year, the Supreme Court handed down several major decisions on the final opinion day.
In a matter of minutes, the justices clawed back federal judges’ ability to issue nationwide inunctions, upheld Texas’ age-verification law for online porn, ruled parents could opt out their children from instruction that uses books with LGBTQ themes and upheld a multibillion dollar internet subsidy program.
In 2024, the final stretch was also a rush.
On the penultimate day, the court clawed back federal agencies' power, invalidated the use of a charge levied against scores of Jan. 6 defendants and ruled cities can ticket homeless people for camping in public.
One day before that, the court ruled in a high-profile abortion case, blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Good Neighbor” rule and halted Purdue Pharma’s massive opioid bankruptcy deal.
Will the justices go into July?
After that rush, the court’s work wasn’t done. The justices went into the first day of July to hand down their landmark ruling granting Trump broad criminal immunity.
It was one of two times in recent memory the justices broke their self-imposed deadline to hand down all their opinions by the end of June.
The other time was in 2020, when the pandemic upended operations and forced the court to work into the second week of July.
This term, 12 argued cases remain pending. That’s roughly on par with recent years, though the exact comparison depends on how you count.
If the court does spill into July 1 again, Gorsuch already has plans that night. He’s slated to be interviewed by former GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina about his new book in Williamsburg, Va.
Justices don’t always physically attend opinion drops when they don’t have a case to announce that day, so Gorsuch doesn’t necessarily have to be on the bench. But he could make both; it’s a 2.5-hour drive without traffic.
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‘Pride Night’ delivers curveball for MLB
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A recent Pride Month celebration at a San Francisco Giants game has thrown a curveball at Major League Baseball.
The controversy began when three Giants players — Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker — wore the team’s rainbow-logo hats but with Bible verses written on them. The trio was hit with verbal warnings for violating the league’s uniform rules, which prohibit players from attaching or displaying personal messages on their playing gear unless they receive prior approval from the commissioner’s office.
A fourth player, pitcher Sam Hentges, opted not to wear the colorful cap at all. He was not issued any kind of warning.
No fines or disciplinary action are expected against the players.
But that hasn’t put the debate to rest, with the league now facing accusations of religious discrimination from conservatives at the state and federal levels.
The Justice Department said last week that it was referring the matter to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) for potential violations of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
We caught up with Jonathan Segal, a partner in the employment group of Philadelphia-based law firm Duane Morris LLP, to discuss the probe.
Mainly at issue is a provision of Title VII that requires employers to consider “reasonable accommodations” if a work requirement conflicts with a known religious belief, unless doing so would create a substantial undue burden.
The law doesn’t require that workers use any “magic words” to seek an accommodation, but in most cases, they must at least ask for one. That may matter in this case, according to Segal.
“Did these employees make a request in advance? What was the response of Major League Baseball? If they didn't make a request in advance, did Major League Baseball say anything to them in the moment? All those facts we don't know,” he said.
Segal also noted that an employers’ accommodation doesn’t have to be the “preferred” one, only reasonable.
“It would seem to be that if the Giants had said no as to putting verses on your hat, but yes, you can wear another hat, as one player did, they would be in a much stronger position,” he said.
On the flip side, Segal opined that the federal government and the Giants players could make a selective enforcement argument given that the league previously allowed “Black Lives Matter” patches on uniforms.
“The question becomes: If someone has made an exception in the past, does that carry on forever?” he said.
More broadly, a court may be faced with the question of whether MLB enforcing its uniform policy against these players infringes on their religious expression.
“I think a court could say even if this was religious discrimination, there was no harm,” Segal contended. “What the government's going to say is that the actions of Major League Baseball have a chilling effect, so individuals may be afraid to ask for accommodations, even if though they may need them.”
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- Federal appeals court blocks CFPB job cuts: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has blocked the Trump administration from immediately slashing the workforce at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), sending the case back to district court.
- Judge rules against bans on using SNAP for soda: A federal judge in D.C. has overturned efforts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ban Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from using their benefits to purchase soda.
- Federal citizenship database to verify voter rolls struck down: A federal judge in D.C. stuck down the Trump administration’s use of a centralized database containing Social Security numbers, information about voters’ citizenship status and other sensitive data to verify state voter rolls.
- Fast-track deportations: A federal appeals court sided with the Trump administration in its effort to fast-track deportations for undocumented immigrants under an expedited process typically reserved for recent arrivals at the southern border.
- Anti-weaponization fund case moving forward: A lawsuit brought against the Department of Justice (DOJ) over the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund is moving forward after DOJ officials declined to declare in writing to a judge that the proposal was dead.
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- Justice Clarence Thomas swore in Andrea Lucas as chair of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Thomas was appointed to the role by former President Reagan in 1982 and held the position until 1990.
- Wednesday is the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landmark 6-3 ruling that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
- Napa-based Hoopes Vineyard filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court to halt a nearly $4 million judgment the owner says will force the family winery into liquidation and is excessive in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Napa County brought the suit over claims its tastings exceeded the scope of a small winery exemption issued in the 1980s.
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Cases the Supreme Court is taking up — or passing on — this term.
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In: Damages against government officials
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The court took up one new case for its next term, Nielsen v. Watanabe. We previewed it last week as one to watch.
It’s the court’s latest opportunity to strictly limit its 1971 decision, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which in certain circumstances allows damages lawsuits against individual federal officials for violating people’s constitutional rights.
There’s a long history of the justices reining in lower judges who’ve tried to expand when Bivens claims are permitted.
See here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Those are just the examples since 2000.
In the latest case, a defendant seeks damages for an alleged violation of his Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. He fractured his tailbone in a prison gang fight, and officials didn’t send him to a hospital.
The Eighth Amendment is a rare instance where the high court has previously allowed a Bivens suit. In 1980, the court allowed a claim after an inmate died in prison due to an asthma attack; this new defendant says his case is the same. The nurse being sued says it’s different, emphasizing the new defendant didn’t die on the scene and had an alternate remedy.
Meanwhile, the justices took up another case, McCarthy v. Hernandez. But with this one, they issued what’s called a “summary decision,” meaning they forwent putting it on the calendar next term and instead ruled immediately.
The ruling reinstates Pedro Hernandez’s murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy whose Manhattan abduction garnered national attention.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices said a lower court overstepped in wiping it. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
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The court turned away two cases implicating the Fourth Amendment this week. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito wanted to hear both.
In the first, City of Los Angeles v. Estate of Daniel Hernandez, the city and its police department sought qualified immunity in a lawsuit filed by the estate of a man who was shot six times and killed by an officer in 2020 while armed with a knife. The court left in place a ruling reviving the suit.
Thomas and Alito didn’t explain their vote for that case, but they did for the second one, United States v. Carter. We previewed it on June 10.
The Trump administration sought review of a ruling that considered a defendant’s perspective as a Black man to analyze whether police violated his Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Alito, joined by Thomas, called it an “important question for both doctrinal and practical reasons.”
“Under the test, officers will need to quickly assess a person’s race, and if officers and courts must craft special rules for black persons, what about dark-skinned Latinos, other Latinos, and members of other minority groups?” Alito wrote.
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Petitions for the Supreme Court to take up cases that we are keeping an eye on
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- Parental rights & transgender youth: Five sets of parents and two organizations want the Supreme Court to revive their challenge to laws in Washington state that instruct shelters to not inform parents of a child’s arrival if they are seeking “gender-affirming treatment.” Lower courts said the parents had no legal standing to sue, but the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has taken interest in the broader issue. The case is International Partners for Ethical Care v. Ferguson.
- Attorneys’ fees from the government: The Equal Access to Justice Act allows people who prevail against the federal government in a “civil action” to recover attorneys’ fees in certain circumstances. A Salvadoran man who successfully brought a habeas corpus petition challenging his immigration detention argues he’s entitled to such funds. The Trump administration says lower courts rightly ruled that his petition didn’t qualify as a “civil action.” Regardless, all sides agree the issue has divided the judiciary, and the Supreme Court should take it up. The case is Palacios v. Liggins.
- Eminent domain: When the government seizes an owner’s property for public use, the Constitution guarantees the owner “just compensation.” The Natural Gas Act delegates the authority to private companies, enabling them to condemn property to construct new pipelines. But when the private sector takes the reins, lower courts are divided about how to calculate the proper compensation. The Trump administration has urged the justices to take up the issue. The case is Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission, Inc.
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Don’t be surprised if additional hearings are scheduled throughout the week. But here’s what I’m watching for now.
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- Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, the alleged ringleader of a foiled plot to attack the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House, will have a detention hearing in Nebraska.
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- The Supreme Court will release opinions.
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- Former national security adviser John Bolton will appear in a federal courtroom in Maryland for a rearraignment hearing, where he is expected to plead guilty to one count of retention of national security information. He is accused of improperly handling national defense information contained in his diaries.
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- Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally shooting United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will appear in federal court in New York
- Supreme Court justices’ and other federal judges’ 2025 financial disclosures will be made public.
- The Supreme Court will release an order list with announcements on cases it will take up for next term.
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- A status hearing will be held in the Justice Department’s case against Elias Rodriguez, who has pleaded not guilty to 13 federal charges in connection with the fatal shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in May 2025. Rodriguez is facing the death penalty.
- A federal judge in D.C. will hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by former MSNBC host Katie Phang against acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over his alleged violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Phang is seeking a court order that would compel the Justice Department to produce “all of the documents covered by the law” and remove many of its redactions.
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We’ll be back next Wednesday with additional reporting and insights. In the meantime, keep up with our coverage here.
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