As noted above, the court has indicated that it may announce opinions this morning. You may be wondering where it made that announcement and (as we are frequently asked on the live blog) if we here at SCOTUSblog know which opinion(s) to expect.
The answer to the second question is no: The Supreme Court does not announce ahead of time which cases will be decided on a particular day. Indeed, even the parties don’t know in advance when they will get a ruling in their case. The only time we have a good sense of which opinions will be issued is the very last opinion day of the term (simply by process of elimination). Based on past practice, this day typically falls at the end of June, although we can’t say for sure. (In 2024, for example, the final opinion day was in early July.)
As for opinion days, the court announces these – typically several days in advance – on the calendar on its website, where they appear as dark blue “non-argument” days (unless they overlap with a red argument day). The court also indicates in its “Today at the Court” feature that it “may” announce opinions on that particular day.
Earlier in the term, from November through April, the justices schedule opinion days as needed, almost always on previously scheduled argument days and on days, like today, when the justices were scheduled to take the bench to address other business, like Supreme Court Bar admissions. While the court can schedule an opinion day between sessions, its general practice has been not to do so. During May and June, the height of opinion season, there is usually at least one opinion day per week.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, opinions were released only on the court’s website, but now, the justices are again in the courtroom to release them (although the courtroom audio is not available live). The court posts opinions on its website as the justices announce them in the courtroom.
As stated above, the court does not announce in advance how many opinions it will release. But the method it uses to number the opinions, known as the R-number system, serves as an unofficial but reliable signal that the court has released its final opinion for the day.
Here’s how the system works: When opinions are eventually published in the U.S. Reports, the official bound version of the court’s opinions, they are published chronologically, with the opinions for a particular day published in order of the justices’ seniority. The R number, which appears to the left of the opinion date/docket number/case name on the court’s website, refers to the order in which the opinion will appear in the U.S. Reports. But because opinions are announced in order of reverse seniority, the opinions on the court’s website can’t be assigned an R number until all of the opinions have been posted. So, the posting of the R numbers on the court’s website is a sign that it has finished issuing opinions for that day.
If a case is not decided by the end of the term, it will ordinarily be reargued, although it is rare for the court to order this. Reargument usually only occurs when the justices consider a second round of argument necessary for either clarifying a legal issue raised in the case or reaching a consensus. This term, the only case to have been reargued was Louisiana v. Callais, in which the court is considering whether to curtail a major provision of the Voting Rights Act.