The morning read for Monday, September 15

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

• On the Supreme Court’s Emergency Docket, Sharp Partisan Divides (Adam Liptak, The New York Times) — A new analysis prepared for The New York Times by professors Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin, and Michael J. Nelson shows that the Trump administration has a notably higher success rate on the emergency docket than the Biden administration did. “[T]he Trump administration [is] prevailing much more often than its predecessor had — 84 percent of the time, compared with 53 percent for the Biden administration. That is perhaps unsurprising, given that the court is dominated by six Republican appointees,” Adam Liptak wrote. He warned that the emergency applications filed under each administration dealt with different issues, so “true apples-to-apples comparisons are hard to come by,” and also noted that the Trump administration’s success rate in front of the court could drop once such cases return to the justices on the merits docket. “In general, Professor Epstein said that in cases involving the government, ‘partisan politics plays out far more in the emergency applications than in the merits cases.’”
• Trump administration unlawfully directed mass US worker terminations, judge rules (Nate Raymond, Reuters) — U.S. District Judge William Alsup continues to believe “that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in February unlawfully ordered numerous agencies to fire probationary employees en masse,” but he announced on Friday that he will not again order the Trump administration to reinstate the fired workers, in part because the Supreme Court has blocked several such orders in recent months, including one of his own, according to Reuters. “[T]he Supreme Court has made clear enough by way of its emergency docket that it will overrule judicially granted relief respecting hirings and firings within the executive, not just in this case but in others,” Alsup wrote in his Friday ruling. Rather than requiring workers to be reinstated, the judge ordered “19 agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury, to update the employees’ files by November 14” and make it clear that they weren’t fired due to performance issues.
• Man Indicted Over Threats to ‘Hunt’ Supreme Court and Federal Judges (Jenna Sundel, Newsweek) — A 72-year-old man has been indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota for “threatening to assault and murder a federal judge and a Supreme Court justice, as well as interstate transmission of threats to injure others,” according to Newsweek. The man, Robert Phillip Ivers, was arrested in Wayzata, Minnesota, earlier this month after advertising a manifesto on attacking judges in a public library. “The charges come as threats against federal judges are on the rise. The U.S. Marshals Service has recorded 513 threats to federal judges this fiscal year as of September 2. The Marshals Service recorded 509 total threats in the 2024 fiscal year,” Newsweek reported.
• Trump asks Congress for $58 million in security funding (Libbey Dean, NewsNation) — On a related note, the Trump administration “has requested Congress to spend an additional $58 million for the U.S. Marshals Service to expand security for the executive branch and Supreme Court justices,” according to NewsNation. The administration believes the additional funds are needed to address a surge in “threats against public officials.”
• Barrett addresses Charlie Kirk killing, calls for civility (Zach Schonfeld, The Hill) — Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke about political violence on Friday after being asked about Charlie Kirk’s death during an appearance at the University of Notre Dame, according to The Hill. She described it as “the most grotesque symptom” of a failure to respectfully disagree, stressing the need to “learn to have disagreements in a civil and collegial way.” Barrett was also asked about her own safety, The Hill reported. “I’m in very good hands, so I feel safe, but we do have round-the-clock security,” she said.