SCOTUStoday for Thursday, September 25

Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in on Sept. 25, 1981, becoming the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Five women have been sworn in since then; four of them are still on the court.

Morning Reads

• How the Roberts Court became the Trump Court (Joan Biskupic, CNN) — President Donald Trump has been in office for less than five of Chief Justice John Roberts’ nearly 20 years on the court, but Trump is involved in many of the most pivotal moments of Roberts’ tenure, according to CNN. “Chief justices and presidents have predictably clashed in recent decades, but conflicts since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt have tended to be intermittent. The extraordinary relationship between Trump and Roberts is distinct for its duration and depth. The Supreme Court’s current docket is overwhelmed by Trump-related disputes, and those cases – the result of scores of legal challenges to Trump’s executive orders – have dramatically altered the justices’ routines and their attitude toward lower court judges.”
• Advocates warn Colorado ‘conversion therapy’ ban in Supreme Court case is ‘blatant censorship’ (Jack Birle, Washington Examiner) — On Oct. 7, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case on whether a Colorado law that prohibits counselors from providing “conversion therapy” to their clients violates the First Amendment’s free speech protections. “The state has lost cases involving Jack Phillips’s refusal to bake a cake for a gay wedding, something the state attempted to force him to do, and Lorie Smith’s refusal to create same-sex wedding websites, which Colorado also attempted to force her to do. Colorado lost both legal battles on First Amendment grounds,” according to the Washington Examiner.
• Will you see the Ten Commandments up in your child’s classroom? (Pooja Lodhia, ABC13 Houston) — A Texas law requiring “the Ten Commandments to be displayed on posters sized at least 16 by 20 inches in all public school classrooms” is on hold right now in 11 Texas school districts due to an ongoing legal dispute, according to ABC13 Houston. On Monday, a group of religious liberty organizations and families filed a new lawsuit that seeks to block implementation of the law in 14 other districts. One of the Texas lawsuits eventually could make it to the Supreme Court.
• YouTube to start bringing back creators banned for COVID-19 and election misinformation (Ali Swenson, Associated Press) — On Tuesday, YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, announced in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that it “will offer creators a way to rejoin the streaming platform if they were banned for violating COVID-19 and election misinformation policies that are no longer in effect,” according to the Associated Press. The letter also said “senior Biden administration officials” had pushed Alphabet “to remove pandemic-related YouTube videos that did not violate company policies.” “The Supreme Court last year sided with former President Joe Biden’s administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.”
• This Is About So Much More Than Lisa Cook (Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times) — In a column for The New York Times, Jamelle Bouie contends that the dispute over the Trump administration’s push to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from office, currently on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, “gets to the very foundations of the American political order.” “[T]he great claim of Trump and his allies is that he very much is the sovereign avatar of the people. And it’s a position that runs against the whole concept of American constitutional government, which seeks to limit the exercise of power.”

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• A response brief to the Trump administration’s emergency application asking the court to allow for the firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook is due today.
• The 2025 inaugural SCOTUSblog Summit is today. Look for coverage in tomorrow’s newsletter.
• A response brief to the Trump administration’s emergency application urging the justices to allow Trump to end protected status for Venezuelans is due on Monday.
• Also on Monday, the justices will gather for their “long conference” to address cert petitions that piled up during their summer recess. They are expected to grant between five and 15 of these.

A Closer Look: The Highest Court in the Land

If you Google “Does the Sup-”, the first suggested search is “Does the Supreme Court have a basketball court.” The second reads “Does the supreme court hear civil cases,” followed by “Does the Supreme Court make laws.” The American people, always asking the important questions. 

Jokes aside, the short answer to the above is yes, yes, and it’s complicated. Yes, the court does have a basketball court on the fifth floor, directly above the courtroom. Originally designed as storage in Cass Gilbert’s 1935 building, the space was converted into a gym in the 1940s. While not a regulation court – at 78 by 37 feet, with 14-foot-4-inch ceilings and plexiglass backboards added in 1984 – it features a hardwood floor from a renovation in 2015. Perhaps most important is the sign reading: “Playing basketball and weightlifting are prohibited while the court is in session.”

The basketball court, wryly referred to as “the highest court in the land,” has been known to host informal pickup games. Participants have ranged from security guards and librarians to Justices Hugo Black, Byron “Whizzer” White (a former NFL star who became known by his clerks for his elbows in the game), Clarence Thomas, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. Apparently, Kavanaugh impressed as a Kennedy clerk with his jump shot. Chief Justice John Roberts, a Rehnquist clerk, recalled White’s “solid granite” style on the old concrete floor.

Like all good things, the court hasn’t come without incident. White once injured himself but continued to demand that clerks play as usual, while Thomas tore his Achilles tendon in 1993 playing former clerk Karl Tilleman, a Canadian Olympian, and later remarked, “[Karl], I want you to remember for the rest of your life what you did to me.” Kagan, a 5’3” standout as Marshall’s clerk, injured her leg as a justice while playing, to which O’Connor – who had reserved the gym for a morning aerobics class – replied, “It would not have happened in aerobics.” 

In the spring of 1980, clerk Bill Murphy organized a chambers tournament, complete with a “Beat the Chief” banner. As a former Sotomayor clerk said, “It was sort of a place where everyone took off their uniforms and you couldn’t tell who was who. … You were just playing basketball.”

On Site

From Nora Collins

The Funniest Justice

Justice Stephen Breyer, the (often unintentional) comedian of much of the Roberts era, left the court in 2022 — leaving open the question: who is the reigning comedic champion today? After counting and categorizing 503 laughs from the 2022-23 term through the 2024-25 term using oral argument transcripts, Nora offers what could be the first window into the humor of the modern Roberts court. Read the analysis for a deep-dive into the typically opaque institution told through lighter exchanges — and maybe for a few laughs. 

Contributor Corner

In his latest Empirical SCOTUS column, Adam Feldman, author of the Substack Legalytics, explores dissenting votes on the emergency docket, highlighting common dissent coalitions.

Under time pressure and limited briefing, the justices’ patterns of dissent reveal who moves together when it matters most. The coalitions identified here show a durable left–right structure and the subtler instincts behind it. For readers trying to anticipate outcomes, this offers a practical picture of the court’s operational majority and its fault lines – insight you can’t get from merits votes alone.

You can access the rest of the piece here.