Good morning! It’s a new day and a new era for the SCOTUSblog website, which got a makeover last night. Read about the redesign in the Closer Look section below and don’t forget to join us this morning at 9:30 a.m. EDT for an opinion announcement live blog.
At the Court
Yesterday, the justices heard argument in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T, Inc., on whether the FCC violates the Seventh Amendment’s guarantee of a right to a jury trial when it imposes fines for violations of federal communications laws. For more on the dispute, see the On Site section below.
Also on Tuesday, the court denied a request for a stay of execution from Chadwick Willacy, who was sentenced to death in Florida for the 1990 killing of Marlys Sather. His execution took place hours later.
As noted above, the court has indicated that it may announce opinions this morning at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging beginning at 9:30 a.m.
After the possible announcement of opinions, the justices will hear argument in Blanche v. Lau, on the rights of lawful permanent residents who have been accused of committing a crime that puts them at risk of being removed from the country.
Morning Reads
Trump says ‘I’ll remember’ companies that don’t seek tariff refunds
Dan Mangan and Gabrielle Fonrouge, CNBC
During a Tuesday appearance on CNBC, President Donald Trump said “he will gratefully ‘remember’ U.S. companies that do not seek refunds for the tariffs he unilaterally imposed, which the Supreme Court later ruled were illegal.” “He was asked about a number of large companies, among them Apple and Amazon, that have not filed requests for refunds for the tariffs they paid, potentially because they are worried about ‘offending’ Trump.” “Actually, if they don’t do that, they’ve got to know me very well,” the president said. Trump also complained about the tariffs ruling during the interview, contending that the court should have made it clear that refunds were not required. “So, I’m not happy with the Supreme Court, I’ll be honest with you,” he said.
New Alito book reveals details on Jan. 6 case, flag controversy
Maureen Groppe, USA Today
In May 2024, The New York Times reported that an upside-down American flag was flown outside Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia home after the 2020 presidential election, noting that upside-down flags had also been “brandish[ed]” by some of those who swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In the wake of the Times report, Alito “rejected calls from critics that he recuse himself from cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, attack,” but “he did give up authorship of the court’s opinion that prosecutors had gone too far in bringing obstruction charges brought against some Capitol rioters,” according to USA Today’s coverage of a new book on Alito by Mollie Hemingway, Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. “Alito told Chief Justice John Roberts it would be better for the court if he did not write that opinion.”
Judge dismisses National Guard mobilization suit after Trump’s loss at Supreme Court
Hannah Meisel, Capitol News Illinois
On Monday, U.S. District Judge April Perry “officially closed the book on a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration last fall when the White House ordered 500 National Guard troops to Chicago,” according to Capitol News Illinois. “Perry, whose Oct. 9 temporary restraining order restricted any true deployment of the guardsmen to the streets of Chicago, declined to grant the state of Illinois’ and city of Chicago’s joint motion to keep the case alive in order to protect against any future National Guard mobilization orders from the administration.” The Supreme Court upheld Perry’s Oct. 9 order just before Christmas, holding “that the Trump administration had ‘failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.’”
Supreme Court sinks wrongful death suit against Andrew Cuomo for COVID nursing home fatalities
Charles Creitz, Fox News
The Supreme Court on Monday denied a petition for review addressing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s policies for nursing homes during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The “wrongful death case” was “brought on appeal by a Brooklyn man who blamed the Democrat’s COVID-era nursing home orders for his father’s 2020 death,” because the policies required nursing homes to accept transferees from hospitals regardless of whether or not they had COVID-19, thereby increasing residents’ risk of exposure, according to Fox News. A federal district court “dismissed the suit on qualified immunity grounds, which generally state that public officials cannot be prosecuted for actions taken in their official capacity,” and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit affirmed that decision.
Aftershocks from ‘The Shadow Papers’
Adam Liptak, The New York Times
In his newsletter for The New York Times, Adam Liptak discussed reactions to the Time’s publication over the weekend of “a trove of confidential memos from the justices.” Responses from law professors, Liptak noted, “have been all over the map. Some said the article shed much-needed light on what critics call the court’s shadow docket, in which the justices use truncated procedures to issue consequential rulings with scant or no reasoning. Others said we had merely confirmed their educated guesses” about how the court came to the decision discussed in the memos. Liptak specifically pointed to reactions from Will Baude and Steve Vladeck, who agreed that the leak of the memos was a big deal even though they disagreed on whether the content was surprising (Liptak described Baude as “The Skeptic”).
On Site
Court appears skeptical of right to jury trial in FCC proceedings
By Amy Howe
The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a challenge by telecommunications carriers AT&T and Verizon to the constitutionality of fines that the Federal Communications Commission imposed against them for violations of federal communications laws. During nearly 80 minutes of argument, some justices were sympathetic to the companies’ plight, but they also appeared receptive to the FCC’s argument that the orders notifying the companies of the penalties are not binding until the Department of Justice brings a lawsuit to enforce them.
Justices seem receptive to SEC’s use of disgorgement in securities enforcement
By Ronald Mann
Monday’s argument in Sripetch v. SEC suggested the possibility of something that has not happened in a lot of the court’s recent cases – a Supreme Court decision rejecting a challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s exercise of certain of its powers.
What the New York Times got wrong – and right – about the emergency docket
By Taraleigh Davis
In her debut In the Interim column, Taraleigh Davis reflected on the Supreme Court memos obtained and published by The New York Times over the weekend and how the Times presented them. While she agreed that the ruling discussed in the memos was significant, Davis argued that “the emergency docket was long in effect” before that case and that “the nature of the court’s deliberations on it were hardly unprecedented.”
Justice Thomas’ wrong-headed attack on progressivism
By Erwin Chemerinsky
In his Courtly Observations column, Erwin Chemerinsky explored Justice Clarence Thomas’ speech last week at the University of Texas, explaining why he believes it was “wrong-headed.” “A conservative Supreme Court justice broadly condemning progressive ideas, and claiming they are responsible for the worst atrocities of the last century, is the antithesis of helping to find common ground,” Chemerinsky wrote.
Podcasts
The Chief Justice Didn’t Hate President Obama
Sarah Isgur and David French push back against The New York Times’ reporting on the birth of the shadow docket, discuss Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s apology after criticizing a fellow justice in personal terms during a speech at the University of Kansas School of Law, and interview Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt about McGirt v. Oklahoma.
SCOTUSblog’s New Look
As you may have noticed, the SCOTUSblog website looks a little – well, OK, a lot – different today. We have entirely redesigned it to better showcase our expansive coverage of the Supreme Court.
So what did we do? Many things. But here are some examples:
- Perhaps most obviously, we’ve dramatically improved the user experience, both aesthetically and structurally. Our prior homepage was wonderful but getting … dated. The new homepage reads more like a magazine than a blog; that is, it allows readers to locate our expanded content not only based on what was recently published but in a much more intuitively appealing way.
- We’ve differentiated between News and Commentary. Many of you are interested in straight-up court news and developments from Amy and the team. Others are interested in analyses and opinions from our top-notch recurring columnists. And many of you are interested in both. The website now reflects this along the top Navigation Bar – separating out these distinct types of content while making it easier to navigate between them.
- We’ve expanded our calendar and live coverage, making SCOTUSblog the one-stop shop for any upcoming arguments, announcements, or notable events at the Supreme Court.
- We’ve created handy landing pages for almost everything, whether for podcasts, authors, series, or recurring columns.
- We have substantially improved our case pages. These feature all the relevant data for each case, the proceedings below, and additional information for practitioners and casual SCOTUSblog readers alike.
- We have set up the infrastructure to significantly enhance our statistics, which we will roll out in the coming weeks. Specifically, this will allow readers to track how each justice votes and what coalitions they vote in and provide a host of other key court metrics not available anywhere else.
- And we have vastly improved our mobile user experience – which we’ve not only worked to make more visually appealing but easier for readers to scroll through and quickly locate whatever aspect of the court they are interested in.
We look forward to hearing from you about what you think we’ve done right, what can be improved, and any other features you feel would make for a further improved site. Oh, and as with any website alteration, there will be bugs – especially as we all really get to know the new site.
As always, thank you for your readership and all your help in keeping SCOTUSblog alive and thriving!
SCOTUS Quote
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: “… So again, if you had to decide right now do you go through the anti-Bush crowd or the pro-Bush crowd? Guns are going off, explosions. Which way do you go?”
MR. WILKER: “I truly don't know the answer to your question because I'm not –”
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: “Really?”
MR. WILKER: “– a security expert. I don't know where the guns are coming from. I don't know what the –”
JUSTICE SCALIA: “You're the farthest thing from a security expert if you don't know the answer to that one.”
— Wood v. Moss (2014)
Recommended Citation: Kelsey Dallas, A big day for SCOTUSblog, SCOTUSblog (Apr. 22, 2026, 9:00 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/04/a-big-day-for-scotusblog/