SCOTUStoday for Wednesday, February 11

“It takes a while to write.” No, that’s not what I said when my editor asked me when I would finish this edition of SCOTUStoday, it is what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told “CBS Mornings” yesterday when asked why the Supreme Court hadn’t yet released its ruling on tariffs. “There are lots of nuanced legal issues that the court has to thoroughly consider,” Jackson said. “The court is going through its process of deliberation. The American people expect for us to be thorough and clear in our determinations and sometimes that takes time.”

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• On Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied a request for a stay of execution from Ronald Palmer Heath. Hours later, Heath, who was sentenced to death in Florida after being convicted of killing Michael Sheridan during a robbery, became the second person executed in the United States this year.
• The court could rule at any time on an interim docket case on California’s policies for parental notification if a student chooses to use different names or pronouns.
• The court has not yet indicated when it will next release opinions. If the court follows its typical pattern, the earliest the next opinion day may be is Friday, Feb. 20, when the justices are next scheduled to take the bench.
• The court will next hear arguments on Monday, Feb. 23, the first day of its February sitting.

Morning Reads

• Appeals Court Lets Trump Revoke Deportation Protections for 60,000 More Migrants (Chris Cameron, The New York Times)(Paywall) — On Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit cleared the way for the Trump administration “to move forward with ending deportation protections for more than 60,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua,” who had previously been granted Temporary Protected Status, according to The New York Times. The unsigned ruling pointed to the Supreme Court’s interim docket orders allowing the administration to remove protected status from Venezuelan nationals. “We are not writing on a blank slate,” the 9th Circuit panel wrote. “[W]e have been admonished that the court’s stay orders must inform” future decisions.
• Samuel Alito Opens Up About Antonin Scalia and the Path from Roe to Dobbs (James Rosen, Politico) — Long before he was a Supreme Court justice, Samuel Alito was one of the many “Tri-State lawyers” who convened in Washington, D.C., in 1986 to celebrate Justice Antonin Scalia after he was sworn in, according to Politico. A photo of the handshake Alito and Scalia shared that day “hangs today in Alito’s chambers,” reminding Alito of the friend and colleague he lost 10 years ago this month. “I so often wish he were still here. He started so much and it would have been good to have him around to see it to completion,” Alito told Politico. He added that he drew inspiration from Scalia when writing the majority opinion in Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade. “I flatter myself to think that he wouldn’t have written it very differently. And the language, to a degree, may be influenced by him,” Alito said.
• GOP defectors help spike House measure to block tariff disapproval votes (Justin Papp, CNBC) — House Republican leaders on Tuesday did not gather enough support for a measure that would have blocked “challenges to President Donald Trump’s tariffs through the summer,” which failed 214-217, according to CNBC. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, had said earlier in the day that the measure was “logical” since the Supreme Court has not yet ruled in its tariffs case. “That process has been playing out. I think it’s logical to allow that to continue. The president’s trade policies have been a great benefit to the country,” he said.
• Ketanji Brown Jackson says Supreme Court justices “get along well”: “A model for learning how to disagree” (Caroline Linton, CBS News) — In addition to addressing the upcoming tariffs ruling during her Wednesday appearance on “CBS Mornings,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke about her relationship to her colleagues on the court. She said the justices “get along well” and serve as “a model for learning how to disagree without being disagreeable,” according to CBS News. “We’re sort of always thinking about the law in different ways. And so we have learned how to adapt to being in an environment with people who have very strongly held but different views,” Jackson said.
• Oklahoma board rejects Jewish charter school, braces for a court battle (Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice) — As expected, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board on Monday “rejected a proposal to open a Jewish charter school” in the state, citing “an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that rejected the concept of a state-funded religious school,” according to Oklahoma Voice. The U.S. Supreme Court left that Oklahoma ruling in place last year when it deadlocked 4-4 (due to the recusal of Justice Amy Coney Barrett) over a previous proposal for a religious charter school. The founders of Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School “plan to file a legal challenge in federal court.”

A Closer Look: The Supreme Court Police Department

The federal judiciary emerged from Congress’ recent budget battles with boosted security funding that is expected to enable the Supreme Court to transfer more “residential security responsibilities” to the Supreme Court police from the U.S. Marshals Service.

While the U.S. Marshals Service is the Justice Department agency that protects the federal judiciary and the justices as needed, its effort to provide “24/7 security at the justices’ private residences” beginning in 2022 has reportedly “strained the agency’s resources,” prompting the judiciary to propose a bigger role for the Supreme Court police.  

So what is the Supreme Court of the United States Police Department?

The department is distinct from the Marshals Service (which began protecting federal judges in 1889 following an assault on Justice Stephen Field), but confusingly, the Marshal of the United States Supreme Court heads the Supreme Court police. Unlike the Marshals Service, however, the Supreme Court police answer to the court itself rather than to the president or attorney general.

The department was established in 1935. The Supreme Court police were tasked with providing protection for the recently completed Supreme Court building, the justices themselves, employees, guests, and visitors. The original force consisted of only 33 officers (known as guards), who were commissioned as Special Police Officers by the District of Columbia (and as such, had the power of arrest).

In June 1949, legislation was passed – modeled after the 1946 act authorizing the creation of the Capitol Police Force – allowing the Marshal of the Supreme Court, under the direction of the chief justice, to designate employees as Special Policemen. Per Congress, this gave the Supreme Court police legal status to enforce laws in the Supreme Court building and on its grounds.

By 1955, the force still had the same number of officers but was starting to evolve into a more professional unit. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger requested in 1982 that Congress pass a law to clarify the status of the Supreme Court police, and as of that year, legislation was passed which designated Supreme Court police as federal law enforcement officers.

Today, the mission of the Supreme Court police is to (in its own words) “ensure the integrity of the Constitutional Mission of the Supreme Court of the United States, by protecting the Supreme Court, the Justices, employees, guests, and visitors.” As such, they are responsible for protecting the building and the justices (both domestically and internationally), and maintaining order and security within the court. The department also has specialty units, from the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Team to the Background Investigations Unit, which are “available to officers depending on time-in-service, completion of training, and experience.”

Chief Stephanie Whitam was appointed as chief of the Supreme Court police in 2025, having formerly served as the deputy chief of police since Aug. 2021. (The deputy chief of police position is currently vacant, it appears.) For those curious: The department’s website lists openings with a salary range between $86,530-$147,928 per year, with a $50,000 incentive payment for entry-level hires who sign a service agreement of three years.

The Supreme Court police have their own distinctive gold badges and have had white and blue uniforms since 1963. In a recent “Officer Spotlight” LinkedIn post, the department quotes Officer Rob Smith, who is a special agent with the Supreme Court police’s Dignitary Protection Unit. “Wherever the Chief Justice goes, I’m with him,” Smith said.

SCOTUS Quote

“Federal judges are not referees at prize fights but functionaries of justice.”

— Justice Felix Frankfurter in Johnson v. United States

On Site

From the SCOTUSblog Team

An interim docket with long-term effects

The Supreme Court’s recent interim docket rulings on new congressional maps in Texas and California illustrate an important, and often underappreciated, aspect of this docket: even if the rulings are theoretically only temporary, they can have lasting, if not permanent, consequences. Here are other cases that, although on the interim docket, have had such effects.

No invitation necessary: when the solicitor general weighs in unsolicited

In a column for SCOTUSblog, John Elwood explored the emergence of uninvited amicus briefs by the solicitor general at the certiorari stage. “Historically,” he noted, “such briefs were exceptional. But during the second Trump administration, they have become noticeably more frequent.”