WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Wednesday, Feb. 26

The court will release one or more opinions this morning. Join us for live coverage at 9:45 a.m. EST. Following the opinion announcements, the justices will hear oral arguments in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services. 

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

• Her claim of anti-straight bias could upend discrimination law (Justin Jouvenal & Taylor Telford, The Washington Post)
• Supreme Court throws out Oklahoma death row inmate’s conviction over flawed trial (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News)
• U.S. Supreme Court tosses conviction of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip (Janelle Stecklein, Oklahoma Voice)
• Push for Supreme Court to Overturn Gay Marriage in Multiple States (Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek)
• The Supreme Court faces the absurdly difficult problem of where to put nuclear waste (Ian Millhiser, Vox)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Tuesday, Feb. 25

We are expecting one or more opinions from the court this morning. Join us for live coverage at 9:45 a.m. EST. Following the opinion announcements, the justices will hear oral arguments in Esteras v. U.S. and Perttu v. Richards. 

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

• ‘Indefensible’: Justice Thomas Slams Feres Doctrine After Supreme Court Decides Not to Hear Military Case (Patricia Kime, Military)
• Supreme Court turns back challenges to laws keeping abortion opponents away from clinics, patients (Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press)
• An Important Judicial Tool Mysteriously Goes Missing at the Supreme Court (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)
• Trump and GOP are ‘overreading’ a landmark Supreme Court decision as they target DEI, legal experts argue (John Fritze, CNN)
• Supreme Court splits argument time in battles over agency power (Pamela King, E&E News)

Coming up: On Wednesday, Feb. 26, the court again expects to issue one or more opinions from the current term. We’ll be live at 9:45 a.m. EDT.

SCOTUS NEWS

April session to feature religious charter school case and challenge to LGBTQ+ books in schools

The court’s 2024-25 term will close out its scheduled oral arguments on April 30 with a Catholic online school’s effort to become the nation’s first religious charter school. The court’s April argument calendar, which it released on Monday, features several other significant social issues, including whether a group of Maryland parents can opt to have their children exempted from lessons on LGBTQ+-themed storybooks and a challenge to the provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires coverage of, among other preventative medications, medication that prevents HIV infection.

The justices will hear 10 hours of oral arguments over six days, from April 21 to April 30.

ARGUMENT ANALYSIS

Supreme Court divided over death row right to DNA evidence testing

The Supreme Court on Monday was divided over whether a Texas man on death row has a legal right to sue, known as standing, to bring federal civil rights claims challenging the constitutionality of the Texas laws governing DNA testing. Ruben Gutierrez is trying to obtain DNA testing of evidence that he says would clear him, but it was unclear whether a majority of the justices agreed that his challenge should be allowed to move forward.  

Gutierrez was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville, Tex. Gutierrez concedes that he was involved in a scheme to rob Harrison of $600,000 in cash that she kept in her home, but he insists now that he never entered Harrison’s home and did not participate in her murder.

Gutierrez contends that DNA from several pieces of evidence — such as a hair and nail scrapings from Harrison’s finger and blood stains — would prove that he never went into Harrison’s home. And if that DNA evidence had been available, he argues, the jury would not have sentenced him to death.

SCOTUS NEWS

Court declines to step into series of disputes under consideration

The Supreme Court on Monday morning released a long list of orders from the justices’ private conference on Feb. 21 – the first regularly scheduled conference in nearly a month. Over dissents or statements from several justices, the court denied review in cases that they had considered repeatedly at their recent conferences.

The court did not add any new cases to their docket for the 2025-26 term. It also once again did not act on several high-profile petitions for review, including a challenge to Maryland’s ban on military-style assault weapons and a challenge to Rhode Island’s ban on large-capacity magazines. The justices will hold another conference on Friday, Feb. 28.

The justices declined to decide whether to limit or overrule its 1950 decision in Feres v. United States, which bars members of the military for suing the federal government for injuries that “arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to” military service.