Announcement of opinions for Wednesday, March 25

In a list of orders released on Monday morning, the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by a federal appeals court, holding that a Vermont police officer is entitled to qualified immunity from a lawsuit brought by a nonviolent protester who was injured during a sit-in at the state’s capitol. The justices also denied review in the case of a Texas man on death row seeking DNA testing that he says could prove his innocence. The court’s three Democratic appointees dissented in both cases. One of those justices, Sonia Sotomayor, also dissented from the denial of review in the case of a Texas journalist who was arrested, Sotomayor wrote, “for doing something journalists do every day: posing questions to a public official.”

 The justices did not act on several high-profile petitions for review that they have repeatedly considered at their private conferences, including petitions challenging state bans on assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, a Fourth Amendment case involving a police officer’s justification to stop a car, and the FBI’s efforts to invoke the state-secrets privilege.

“The text is the law, and it is the text that must be observed,” Justice Antonin Scalia famously insisted at page 22 of a notable book on legal interpretation. “Only the written word is the law,” Justice Neil Gorsuch has opined in a watershed opinion. “Fidelity to the law means fidelity to the text,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett has proclaimed in an important endowed lecture. “We’re all textualists now,” Justice Elena Kagan has observed in a famous exchange at Harvard Law School.

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared ready to overturn a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by, and then received within five business days of, Election Day. After just over two hours of oral argument in Watson v. Republican National Committee, a majority of justices seemed to agree with the challengers – which included the Republican Party of Mississippi and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi – that the Mississippi law conflicts with federal laws that set the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the “election day.”

Because more than a dozen states have similar laws, the court’s ruling – which is expected by late June or early July – could have significant implications for federal elections, beginning as soon as November.

Nuts and Bolts is a recurring series by Stephen Wermiel providing insights into the mechanics of how the Supreme Court works.

Supreme Court watchers are accustomed to poring over the words and phrases written by the justices in their many decisions. Much less attention is paid to the bottom line.

In the Supreme Court there are two steps to the bottom line: the judgment and the mandate.

A unanimous court on Friday sided with a Mississippi street preacher who sued to block future enforcement of a public demonstration ordinance that he was previously convicted of violating. A lawsuit like his, “seeking purely prospective” – that is, a forward-facing – “remedy,” is not barred by Heck v. Humphrey, a 1994 ruling limiting the challenges convicted criminals can bring against the law under which they were convicted, wrote Justice Elena Kagan in Olivier v. City of Brandon, Mississippi.