Trump administration urges Supreme Court to pause order requiring payment of grants linked to DEI initiatives

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Friday morning read:

• US appeals court blocks Trump’s order curtailing birthright citizenship (Nate Raymond, Reuters)
• Why is the Supreme Court siding with Trump? Elena Kagan says the majority should explain. (Maureen Groppe, USA Today)
• Former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis asks Supreme Court to reverse same-sex marriage decision (Brooke Migdon, The Hill)
• Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Meet The October Term 2025 SCOTUS Clerks (David Lat, Original Jurisdiction)
• A little snark, a little sarcasm: How dissenting opinions catch our attention (Joan Biskupic, CNN)

ScotusCrim is a recurring series by Rory Little focusing on intersections between the Supreme Court and criminal law.

Please note that the views of outside contributors do not reflect the official opinions of SCOTUSblog or its staff.

Welcome to the second installment of ScotusCrim, a recurring column focused on criminal-law-and-related cases at the Supreme Court. Today I focus on juries and sentencing in criminal cases; and at the end I introduce a feature called “Out of My Lane” in which I hope to offer brief thoughts on non-criminal aspects of Supreme Court practice.

One of the cases the Supreme Court will hear during the 2025-26 term started with a haircut.

Damon Landor’s head was forcibly shaved in 2020 after he arrived at Raymond Laborde Correctional Center, part of the Louisiana prison system. Landor had shared legal documents showing that Rastafarian prisoners growing their hair for religious reasons had to be allowed to keep their dreadlocks, but a guard threw the papers in the trash and called the warden, who ordered the guards to proceed with the cut.

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Thursday morning read:

• Judge orders Kilmar Abrego Garcia released from criminal custody (Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, Politico)
• Fox News Poll: Approval of SCOTUS at 5-year high, rebounding from record low in 2024 (Victoria Balara, Fox News)
• Former death row inmate Richard Glossip denied bond as he awaits retrial in Oklahoma (Nolan Clay, The Oklahoman)
• Proponents hope to make Ten Commandments next Supreme Court test of religion in schools (Lexi Lonas Cochran, The Hill)
• What the Supreme Court’s parental opt-out ruling means for schools (Naaz Modan, K-12 Dive)

A tech industry group came to the Supreme Court this week, asking the justices to temporarily block Mississippi from enforcing restrictions on minors’ access to social media against several major social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, X, Reddit, and YouTube. The group, NetChoice, told the justices that if the state is allowed to enforce the restrictions, some users of social-media websites will face an “immediate loss of First Amendment rights,” while the websites will suffer “enormous, ‘nonrecoverable’ compliance costs” – which for “at least one member” could exceed its overall budget.

Mississippi passed the law, known as House Bill 1126, in 2024. The law imposes parental-consent requirements for young people to create social-media accounts, requires social-media sites to verify users’ ages before allowing them to create accounts, and requires sites to “make commercially reasonable efforts to develop and implement a strategy” to shield young people from being exposed to harmful material and content that promotes (for example) self-harm, bullying, and substance abuse.