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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)

SCOTUS NEWS

Trump defends Vice President Vance’s bid to toss campaign finance law

By Amy Howe on May 20 at 3:00 pm

The Trump administration notified the court on Monday that it will refuse to defend a federal campaign finance law that restricts the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate, siding with the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The petition, which the justices are still considering whether to take up, was filed by the NRSC and Republican politicians, including the vice president in his capacity as then-senator from Ohio.

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.

EMERGENCY DOCKET

Supreme Court requires clerk to count votes by lawmaker censured for social media post about transgender athlete

By Amy Howe on May 20 at 4:52 pm

On Tuesday afternoon the Supreme Court required the Maine House of Representatives’ clerk to count votes by a lawmaker who was censured for a social media post regarding transgender athletes. The brief unsigned order granting the representative’s request would have been denied by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, the latter who wrote a dissent opposing the court’s ruling.

Advocates in Conversation

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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.   
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SCOTUS NEWS

Justices appoint lawyer to argue restitution case in the fall

By Amy Howe on May 20, 2025

A former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh was tapped on Thursday to defend a lower court ruling before the Supreme Court this fall in a Georgia man’s challenge to the federal government’s efforts to collect restitution from him. 

The Supreme Court appointed John Bash, a former assistant to the U.S. solicitor general who has argued 10 cases in the court to argue Ellingburg v. United States as a “friend of the court” in support of the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit — which ruled for the government — because the federal government has opted not to defend that court’s reasoning. 

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IN MEMORIAM

The quiet radicalism of Justice Souter

By Charles Barzun on May 20, 2025

This article is part of a series on the legacy and jurisprudence of the late Justice David Souter. 

Charles Barzun is a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, where he teaches Constitutional Law, Evidence, Jurisprudence, and Torts. He is currently working on a book on the American common law tradition. 

I met Justice Souter only once, in the summer of 2019. He agreed to meet with me to discuss the ideas in a law review article I had written about his judicial philosophy. When I arrived to meet him for lunch at a restaurant in Concord, N.H., he was already there, waiting for me. It turned out we were the restaurant’s only customers that afternoon. Our conversation lasted about two and a half hours, touching on everything from Souter’s time as a New Hampshire trial judge to the philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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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.

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