Yesterday’s decision in The Hain Celestial Group v Palmquist resolves a technical problem about what to do when district courts make a mistaken ruling about their own jurisdiction. The final word – Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s opinion for a unanimous court – says that the lack of jurisdiction by the trial court means the whole case goes back to state court.

When a plaintiff files a lawsuit in state court asserting a claim that could be brought in federal court, federal law gives the defendant 30 days to remove the case to federal court. At issue in Enbridge Energy, LP v. Nessel is whether the federal statute imposing this deadline, 28 U.S.C. §1446(b)(1), allows a district court to extend (or “equitably toll”) this time limit.

We were live as the court released its opinions in Villarreal v. Texas and The GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal.

A divided Supreme Court sided with the federal government on Tuesday in U.S. Postal Service v. Konan, a dispute over mishandled mail. Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that a law protecting the U.S. Postal Service from lawsuits over lost or miscarried mail bars lawsuits over mail that was intentionally misdelivered.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in which she argued that the majority opinion provided the U.S. Postal Service far more protection from lawsuits than Congress had intended to give it. “It is not the role of the Judiciary to supplant the choice Congress made because it would have chosen differently,” she wrote.

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

A Supreme Court shortcut for deciding cases without full briefing and oral argument is experiencing a rebirth after languishing from disuse for several years.

The procedure is called summary reversal.

For decades the court used summary reversals to correct errors by lower courts. But the practice seemed to go dormant between 2021 and 2024. There is no clear explanation for why the use of summary reversals plummeted. But of late, summary reversals are back.