SCOTUStoday for Monday, March 23

On Friday, the court released its ruling in Olivier v. City of Brandon, Mississippi. In a unanimous opinion from Justice Elena Kagan, the court held that a street preacher can sue to prevent future enforcement of the public demonstration ordinance that he was previously convicted of violating. For more on the ruling, see Kelsey’s opinion analysis in the On Site section below.

Also on Friday, the justices met in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected this morning at 9:30 a.m. EDT.

Today, the justices will hear argument in Watson v. Republican National Committee, on whether federal law requires not only that voters cast their ballots by Election Day, but also that election officials receive the ballots by then.

Tomorrow, the justices will hear argument in two cases: Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, on the rules pardoning omissions by bankrupt debtors; and Noem v. Al Otro Lado, on the rights of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ahead of today’s argument on deadlines for mail-in voting, the Associated Press visited “[t]he tiny Alaska Native village of Beaver,” where mail and household supplies arrive and depart by plane, to explore what’s at stake for Alaska in the Supreme Court case. “Many here worry that” the case “challenging whether ballots received after Election Day can be counted in federal elections could end Alaska’s practice of accepting late-arriving ballots. Alaska counts ballots if they are postmarked by Election Day and received within 10 days, or 15 days for overseas voters in general elections.” Republican Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s senior U.S. senator, told the AP that she thinks “there’s probably no other state where this ruling could have a more detrimental impact than ours.”

U.S. Catholic bishops have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in two immigration cases set to be argued during the March sitting, in which they make not just legal, but also moral arguments in favor of asylum seekers and against President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, according to USA Today. These briefs “could have a uniquely receptive audience,” because “[s]ix of the nine justices are practicing Catholics, and a seventh, Neil Gorsuch, was raised Catholic.”

During her appearance this month at the Library of Congress, Justice Amy Coney Barrett emphasized the American people’s role in defending the Constitution. “Respect for the law, reverence for the Constitution, really begins with American citizens. It’s really more of a trickle up than a trickle down,” Barrett said, according to the library’s coverage of the event. Barrett also addressed her relationship with her colleagues, highlighting the value of choosing collegiality day after day. “You really have to decide how you want to treat people … and then you have to follow through on the commitment that you make,” Barrett said.

In a column for The New York Times, Peter S. Canellos, the author of a forthcoming book on Justice Samuel Alito and the conservative legal movement, explored how life on campus at Princeton University changed between when Alito enrolled there in 1968 and Justice Sonia Sotomayor enrolled in 1972, as the recent introduction of female students led the school to rethink its “chaste rules of conduct and rigorous curfews” and “President Richard Nixon’s incursion into Cambodia” fueled a student strike over war. Alito was “in the cross hairs of protesters” as a member of the R.O.T.C. and, for that reason and others, has been “critical of his time at Princeton” since his graduation. Canellos contended that Alito went on to find a comfort in the “Federalist Society and other conservative institutions” that he did not experience at Princeton. Like Alito, Sotomayor had mixed feelings about Princeton while she attended, but she helped bring about its embrace of “[w]omen, nonwhite students and those who ‘march to different drummers,’” according to Canellos.