Skip to content
EMERGENCY DOCKET

Supreme Court allows Trump to end protected status for group of Venezuelan nationals

By Amy Howe on May 19 at 3:02 p.m.

In an order on Monday afternoon, the justices paused a district court ruling that had blocked the Trump administration from terminating deportation protection for over 300,000 Venezuelan citizens living in the United States. The order left open the possibility of Venezuelans bringing individual challenges.

The ceiling over the Supreme Court building entrance

The Trump administration asked the justices to lift a court order barring the government from terminating a portion of the TPS designation for Venezuelans. (Mark Fischer via Flickr)

IN MEMORIAM

The quiet radicalism of Justice Souter

By Charles Barzun on May 20 at 10:55 am

To honor Justice David Souter, who died on May 8, we are publishing a series of tributes on his legacy and jurisprudence. Charles Barzun reflects on Souter’s efforts to reason through hard legal questions. For Souter, he writes, any assessment of the facts and legal principles of a case reflects our values, and our values reflect the society in which we live. In Souter’s writing, social change, moral values, and legal reasoning all came together.

ARGUMENT ANALYSIS

No clear decision emerges from arguments on judges’ power to block Trump’s birthright citizenship order

By Amy Howe on May 15 at 4:21 pm

During over two hours of oral arguments on Thursday, in a case involving President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship, no clear picture emerged of how the justices will resolve a dispute over whether federal judges can issue nationwide orders to block a policy as legal challenges move through lower courts.

SCOTUS NEWS

Justices appoint lawyer to argue restitution case in the fall

By Amy Howe on May 20 at 11:42 am

The court on Thursday appointed John Bash of Texas to defend a lower court ruling in favor of the government in a Georgia man’s challenge to the government’s effort to collect restitution from him, after the Trump administration earlier this month declined to do so. The practice of appointing outside attorneys is not unusual, but during the 2024-25 term the court appointed five of them and has already appointed counsel for a third of the cases scheduled for the fall.

Advocates in Conversation

2024-Jan-Snow-Banner-4B-scaled
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu discusses City and County of San Francisco v. EPA, in which the court is considering whether the Environmental Protection Agency violates the Clean Water Act when it imposes generic prohibitions in a permit for a city’s water discharges, without specifying explicit standards for discharges.   
Read More

More news

WHAT WE’RE READING

The morning read for Tuesday, May 20

By Zachary Shemtob on May 20, 2025

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read:

Coming up: On Thursday, May 22, the court expects to issue one or more opinions from the current term. We’ll be live at 9:30 a.m. EDT that day for the opinions.

WHAT WE’RE READING

The morning read for Monday, May 19

By Zachary Shemtob on May 19, 2025

Hi, everyone! I am very excited to be joining SCOTUSblog as its executive editor. Please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected], even if just to say hello.

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

Coming up: On Thursday, May 22, the court expects to issue one or more opinions from the current term. We’ll be live at 9:30 a.m. EDT that day for the opinions.

EMERGENCY DOCKET

Trump asks justices to lift judge’s order pausing mass federal layoffs

By Amy Howe on May 16, 2025

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, asking the justices to temporarily block an order by a federal judge in San Francisco that bars the Trump administration from implementing an executive order and a related memorandum calling for large-scale reductions in the federal workforce – the elimination of jobs, followed by the transfer or firing of the employees who did those jobs. 

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court that the order by Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Illston has “caused mass confusion throughout the Executive Branch.” “Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has ever intended to make federal bureaucrats ‘a class with lifetime employment, whether there was work for them to do or not,’” Sauer wrote.

Continue Reading
EMERGENCY DOCKET

Supreme Court again bars Trump from removing Venezuelan nationals

By Amy Howe on May 16, 2025

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon extended its ban on the removal from the United States of Venezuelan men currently in immigration custody in the northern region of Texas. In an eight-page unsigned opinion, the justices sent the case back to a federal appeals court for another look and blocked the Trump administration from removing any of the men from the United States under an 18th-century wartime law until the appeals are resolved. 

The court instructed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to determine the kind of procedures to which detainees are entitled to challenge the removals. But it indicated that the procedures that the government used in April, when it was ready to carry out removals before the Supreme Court stepped in, were not enough to satisfy the Constitution’s guarantee of fair treatment. 

Continue Reading
OPINION ANALYSIS

Supreme Court revives excessive force suit against officer in deadly Houston-area traffic stop

By Amy Howe on May 16, 2025

The Supreme Court on Thursday revived a lawsuit filed by the mother of a Texas man who was shot and killed during a traffic stop by a police officer on a highway outside Houston. 

Roberto Felix of the Harris County Constable’s Office pulled Ashtian Barnes, who was Black, over because his girlfriend’s rental car, which he was driving to pick up her daughter from day care, had unpaid tolls. When Barnes began to drive away, with the driver’s door still open, Felix jumped on the running board and fired twice on Barnes, killing him at the scene. 

Barnes’ mother, Janice Hughes Barnes, filed a civil rights lawsuit, but her suit was dismissed when a lower court found that the officer had not used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Eight years after her son’s death, she then brought the case to the Supreme Court. 

Continue Reading