Tradition continued Tuesday night at Garces Memorial High School, where the Catholic school’s Class of 2026 was the first of the local high schools to hold its commencement ceremony this season, as it has for many years. Soon-to-be graduates gathered…Read more

The first known law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty in Kern County was Tehachapi Constable Richard S. Mettler, who was shot and killed Nov. 6, 1873 while attempting to serve a murder warrant near Havilah in…Read more

A rare procedural move at Tuesday morning’s Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting, and the unusual vote that followed it, appears to have left the county’s Family Justice Center without access to a critical service provider — and no simple…Read more

An Anaheim man has been identified as the victim of a plane crash Thursday near Ridgecrest.Read more

Cases and Controversies is a recurring series by Carolyn Shapiro, primarily focusing on the effects of the Supreme Court’s rulings, opinions, and procedures on the law, on other institutions, and on our constitutional democracy more generally.In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. There is so much incisive commentary about this devastating opinion that I hesitate to attempt to add to it. You likely already know that the opinion effectively overrules the provision of the VRA designed to ensure that minority voters are able to have meaningful representation in multimember elected bodies, it turns the Reconstruction Amendments on their heads by making them vehicles for race discrimination, and it drastically restricts Congress’ authority under the 15th Amendment. You may know that it effectively reverses a 2023 case and turns two of Alito’s dissents into law. You probably know that the court denies doing any of these things. And you undoubtedly know that this opinion, which is an electoral gift to the Republican Party, has already triggered yet another round of congressional redistricting to eliminate districts that were drawn to comply with Section 2, thereby eliminating a slew of safe Democratic seats, and that the impact at the state and local level will be extreme.So I’ll take a slightly different tack, which is to consider one tactic that might ameliorate at least some of the harm Callais is already causing. I believe that Democrats absolutely must make restoring and protecting democracy, and in particular multiracial democracy, their top priority. To do so, I think they should (among many other things) turn to the guarantee clause, which provides that “[t]he United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The clause provides an opportunity. (That said, as I’ll revisit at the end of the column, no single law or constitutional provision will fix what ails our country and our democracy. Think of this column as describing just one tool in the toolbox and encouraging others to be even more creative.)To understand both the argument I’m making and some of what makes Callais so devastating requires going back to a 2019 case, Rucho v. Common Cause. In Rucho, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that extreme partisan gerrymandering was not a question that the federal courts could address. It was, the court said in a 5-4 decision, a “political question” that was not susceptible to federal judicial resolution because it was too difficult to identify “judicially manageable standards for deciding such claims.”There was a lot wrong with Rucho’s reasoning. For one thing, as Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in her dissent, federal courts in fact had been converging on precisely such a set of standards. Nonetheless, the Rucho majority said several important and accurate things about partisan gerrymandering. First, it described the Constitution’s assignment of authority over congressional districting, noting that although states have the power to determine “the Times, Places, and Manner” of congressional elections, Congress itself can “make or alter” those regulations. The court recognized that under this provision, known as the elections clause, Congress can outlaw extreme partisan gerrymandering in congressional districting. (Congress can do a lot of other things too with respect to congressional elections. For example, it could mandate ranked choice voting, multimember districts, and/or proportional representation, all of which would ameliorate some of the worst effects of partisan gerrymandering, to different degrees.) Rucho also noted that states themselves can address partisan gerrymandering, as some already had.Finally, the Rucho court explicitly stated that it was not “condon[ing] excessive partisan gerrymandering.” “Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,” it said, explaining further that “the fact that such gerrymandering is ‘incompatible with democratic principles,’” does not mean that federal courts have a role to play. They do not, was the holding of the case.Of course, the court could have said more. One might have expected commentary in Rucho, suggesting that the court’s self-proclaimed powerlessness in the context of partisan gerrymandering does not absolve other officials from considering their own constitutional obligations. Indeed, all officials take an oath to the Constitution and have their own obligations to interpret and apply it, even, or especially, where the courts have stepped aside. Not only did the court miss the opportunity to point out that other actors should not assume that non-justiciability is equivalent to constitutionality, but it has since indicated the opposite. In the 2023 case of Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the court, in an opinion by Alito, reversed a lower court’s conclusion that the South Carolina legislature had intentionally discriminated against Black voters in redistricting. The state’s defense was that it had been motivated by partisanship, not race. In an opinion that presaged Callais in a number of ways, Alito stated in only the third sentence: “Thus, as far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, a legislature may pursue partisan ends when it engages in redistricting.” That’s a big shift from partisan gerrymandering being “unjust” and “incompatible with democratic principles” but not justiciable in Rucho to “it’s perfectly constitutional” in Alexander.And now, in Callais, the court has taken this deference to partisan gerrymandering even farther, announcing a constitutional-level protection for it by dramatically changing the burden on Section 2 plaintiffs who challenge redistricting. Explaining why requires a bit of a detour into the law as it existed before Callais.In 1982, Congress amended Section 2 of the VRA to make clear that the law restricted practices with discriminatory effects, even without a showing of discriminatory intent. More specifically, “states and localities may not use an electoral practice or procedure, including a voting district map, if the practice or procedure ‘results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.’” With regard to districting, such denial or abridgement “occurs ‘if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to the nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected’ by the law.” The provision is thus designed to prevent districts being drawn in ways that dilute minority voting strengths in ways that eliminate or minimize their ability to elect representatives to multimember bodies.These statutory requirements generated a set of practical evidentiary burdens for Section 2 plaintiffs. (Section 2 cases have been brought by the Department of Justice and by private plaintiffs, usually represented by civil rights organizations.) One of the first steps in a Section 2 challenge to a districting map has long been for the plaintiffs to show that it would be possible to draw a different map that would provide minority voters with at least one additional district in which they would be a majority. Drawing such a map requires not only that there are enough such voters, but also that they are concentrated in relatively compact areas around which district lines can realistically be drawn. (Imagine, in contrast, a state that is 75% white and 25% minority but in which both populations are completely evenly distributed. Under those circumstances, it would probably be impossible to draw such a map.) Providing that map is a “precondition” to bringing the case.Before Callais, this precondition was demanding. The plaintiffs’ “illustrative map,” to use the language of the case law, had to comply with the state’s regular redistricting criteria, such as compactness and keeping communities of interest or political subdivisions intact where possible. But Callais makes the precondition all but impossible to meet. One way Callais raises the bar is by requiring not only that the illustrative map incorporate “traditional districting criteria,” but that it also meet “all the State’s legitimate districting objectives, including … the State’s specified political goals.” More specifically, “[i]f a State’s aims in drawing a map include a target partisan distribution of voters, a specific margin of victory for certain incumbents, or any other goal not prohibited by the Constitution, the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps must achieve these goals just as well.”To see how this might work in practice, look at what Tennessee has already done since Callais. The legislature there has drawn new maps to eliminate the only Congressional seat held by a Democrat, creating nine safe Republican districts. And it did so by eliminating the district that included the majority-Black county surrounding Memphis. That area has now been split into several different districts, in all of which Black voters are a minority. Under Callais, Section 2 challengers must provide an illustrative map that both provides for a minority-majority district and achieves the goal of an all-Republican Congressional delegation “just as well” as the legislature’s map.This new requirement is likely impossible to meet in any state where, like Tennessee, race and partisanship are highly correlated. But the requirement is also very strange in light of Rucho’s holding that there are not judicially manageable standards for determining when partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. Recall that Rucho held that courts can’t tell when partisan gerrymandering has gone too far. But the Callais majority apparently thinks that courts will be able to tell when an illustrative map’s partisan gerrymandering hasn’t gone far enough. Thus, for example, in a Section 2 challenge to Tennessee’s new map, a court would have to decide if the illustrative map is gerrymandered enough to meet the state’s goal of an all-Republican congressional delegation as effectively as the state’s own map.The requirement elevates the protection of partisan gerrymandering to a quasi-constitutional level. Congress’ clear command in the 1982 VRA amendments that it was protecting minority voters from redistricting that had the effect of reducing their voting power relative to other voters should mean that a state’s desire to advantage one party over another is irrelevant to Section 2 liability. Now, however, it is a defense. In this respect, as Ned Foley has pointed out, it essentially incorporates the law of unconstitutional intentional discrimination into Section 2 – precisely what Congress was trying to avoid. But Callais also all but holds that Congress’ power under the 15th Amendment is limited to restricting discriminatory intent, not discriminatory effects.So as we are seeing states across the South reconvene their legislatures to draw new congressional maps that eliminate majority-minority congressional and state legislative districts, does Congress have any other legislative tools? Let’s look at the guarantee clause, which, again, provides that “[t]he United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The Supreme Court has long held, and indeed reiterated in Rucho, that the guarantee clause presents nonjusticiable political questions. In other words, courts can’t determine when the republican-form-of-government guarantee has been breached or what kinds of remedies might be required. Those decisions are instead for the political branches, including, as in partisan gerrymandering, the states.Although Congress has rarely relied on the guarantee clause, it in fact opens up opportunities for congressional action, as I argued in my article, Democracy, Federalism, and the Guarantee Clause. For the Framers, there was general agreement that a republican form of government meant two things: (1) some kind of representative democracy, with leaders chosen by the people, and (2) no monarchy. There was lots of disagreement about the particulars of the first point, and of course the Framers were perfectly comfortable with a representative democracy that excluded more than half of the actual people from voting, including enslaved people, people of color, women, and, in some states, non-property owning white men. But they did agree on some general goals that animated the clause: a need to keep despotism at bay and a belief that the country could not survive if the states developed incompatible forms of government. The guarantee clause is thus both “a mutual nonaggression pact” and a “structural promise” that the national government would protect states from such incompatibility.Under this reading of the guarantee clause, it is entirely appropriate for Congress to do what it concludes is necessary to keep that promise. Current political circumstances are a modern-day analogue to the Framers’ concerns about tyranny. Most immediately, heavily gerrymandered Republican legislatures are meeting right now to gerrymander still further to reduce Democratic representation in the national legislature as much as possible. Those new gerrymanders could easily give control of the House of Representatives to Republicans despite a majority of voters preferring Democrats. But there are plenty of other ways that anti-democratic practices in one state can have spillover effects in others and, as we are increasingly seeing, can help erode our national cohesion.The upshot is this: if Democrats are ever in a position to act, they should not only outlaw partisan gerrymandering in congressional redistricting under the elections clause, which they have previously attempted to do, but also outlaw it for state legislatures pursuant to the guarantee clause, which they have not. Such legislation would absolutely not replace the VRA, but because minority voters, especially in the South, are disproportionately being excluded from representation by partisan gerrymandering, it would ameliorate some of the worst immediate effects of Callais.In the meantime, pro-democracy states themselves can also take action inspired by the guarantee clause. For example, states can pass a variety of trigger laws, promising, for example, to eliminate partisan gerrymandering if a critical mass of other states do so as well. Yet states can be even more creative. Perhaps, for instance, some states will decide that they do not want to buy products or services from states that do not have meaningful representative democracies. Perhaps they will regulate what can be sold in their own states in ways that affect industries in anti-democratic states or prohibit the sale of goods from certain states altogether. Such laws would undoubtedly face challenges under, for example, the dormant commerce clause because they could be seen as states trying to restrict or discriminate against interstate commerce (though some of the laws I’ve described here might well survive such a challenge.) But if such laws are tied to a concern for compatible forms of government and have triggers for automatic repeal if Congress adequately acts on the guarantee, they should be understood as an effort to demand what the Constitution promises.And if we are to take Alito at his word, the political branches’ reliance on the guarantee clause should be affirmatively protected from court interference. If Congress is trying to exercise guarantee clause power or states are trying to call for its use, there is no place for court review. Or, at most, challengers to those actions should have to show that the same ends could be accomplished using other methods. Such is the power of the political question.To be clear, I don’t actually think that the court, or at least this court, would treat efforts to enforce the guarantee clause as worthy of the same kind of protection as partisan gerrymandering. Rather, I think this court would thwart attempts by Congress to regulate states’ anti-democratic practices, regardless of what the Constitution and case law say, and likely would be hostile to states’ efforts to respond as well. So don’t misread me. There are no constitutional magic wands, no perfect laws that will restore us on a path to robust multiracial democracy. (Court reform is clearly essential, and I’ll return to that question at another time.) The fight for multiracial democracy requires deep tenacity and creativity. One tactic can be passing laws that might get struck down. Such laws can send important political messages and serve as organizing tools – and some of them might be upheld. We can take inspiration from the words of the late, great John Lewis: “Speak up. Speak out. Get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”Read more

Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury in New Bern, North Carolina, had indicted former FBI Director James Comey for making threats against President Donald Trump. The indictment charges Comey with violating two federal laws: 18 U.S.C. § 871, which makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully … threat[en] to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States,” and 18 U.S.C. § 875, which makes it illegal to communicate “any threat to injure the person of another” across state lines. Specifically, the indictment alleges that Comey violated those federal laws when he posted a photo on Instagram in May 2025 of seashells on a North Carolina beach spelling out “86 47.” In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that “‘86’ is a mob term for ‘kill him.’ They say 86 him! 86 47 means ‘kill President Trump.’” In line with Trump’s statements, the indictment alleges that the image could be reasonably interpreted, by someone “familiar with the circumstances,” as a threat to harm the president.As many legal analysts have pointed out, this indictment faces one legal hurdle in particular: the First Amendment. To move forward, the government will need to show that Comey’s speech qualifies as a “true threat” – a category of speech that does not receive First Amendment protection. Which makes for an obvious explainer topic: what, exactly, makes something a true threat?The precedentAlthough the contours of the First Amendment have been debated since the nation’s founding, the modern true threat doctrine dates back to the Supreme Court’s 1969 decision in Watts v. United States. In 1966, during the Vietnam War, Robert Watts attended a rally near the Washington Monument that featured a group discussion on police brutality. Someone in the group “suggested that the young people present should get more education before expressing their views.” Watts responded that, “They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”For his comments about President Lyndon Johnson, Watts was subsequently charged and convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 871 – the statute that makes it illegal to threaten to harm the president. Watts challenged his conviction on First Amendment grounds.The Supreme Court sided with Watts. In an unsigned opinion issued without holding oral arguments, the court first held the statute was constitutional because there is a “valid, even an overwhelming, interest in protecting the safety of [the president] and in allowing him to perform his duties without interference from threats of physical violence.” However, the justices also made clear that “a threat must be distinguished from what is constitutionally protected speech.” Therefore, any prosecution will require proving a so-called “true ‘threat.’”The court concluded that Watts’ statement did not qualify as such. Instead, Watts’ comment about Johnson was “political hyperbole” and “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President.” When considering the context, the “expressly conditional nature of the statement,” and the fact that Watts and the others present apparently laughed after he made it, the court found Watts’ statement to be constitutionally protected. The next major true threat case was not decided until 2003. In Virginia v. Black, the justices considered the constitutionality of a Virginia law that made it a crime for anyone to burn a cross in a public place with the intent to intimidate others. The court made clear that Virginia may, consistent with the First Amendment, outlaw such expression.Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority of the court, explained that true threats are “those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” O’Connor clarified that a statement may still be a true threat even if the speaker did not “actually intend to carry out the threat.” Rather, so long as the speaker “directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death,” there is no First Amendment protection for the statement.The issue of what constitutes a true threat was raised again in the 2015 case of Elonis v. United States, in which the court considered whether 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) (the other statute Comey was charged with violating, which makes it illegal to communicate “any threat to injure the person of another” across state lines) requires the government to prove the defendant personally intended to threaten someone else. Anthony Elonis was charged and convicted of violating Section 875(c) based on various posts he had put on Facebook, which consisted of violent rap lyrics about harming his family, coworkers, and an FBI agent. Elonis sought to have his charges dismissed, arguing that the government had not alleged that he had actually intended to threaten anyone; according to him, his statements consisted of artistic musings and fantasies. The trial court denied this request, finding that it was enough to show that “Elonis ‘intentionally made the communication, not that he intended to make a threat.’” On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit agreed that Section 875(c) required “only the intent to communicate words that the defendant understands, and that a reasonable person would view as a threat.”The Supreme Court reversed. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, acknowledged that the text of the statute did not have any particular mental state (or mens rea) requirement. But Roberts explained that when a federal criminal statute is “silent on the required mental state,” the court will “read into the statute” the mental state “necessary to separate wrongful conduct from ‘otherwise innocent conduct.’” Roberts stated that “communicating something is not what makes the conduct ‘wrongful.’” Instead, the wrongful conduct “is the threatening nature of the communication” itself.From this, Roberts declined to adopt a standard finding the presence of a true threat simply if a reasonable person would have felt threatened by the defendant’s statement. Rather, what Elonis thought when he made the statements – that is, his actual intent – “does matter.” The court clarified that “the mental state requirement in Section 875(c) is satisfied if the defendant transmits a communication for the purpose of issuing a threat, or with knowledge that the communication will be viewed as a threat.”The court decided its most recent true threat case, Counterman v. Colorado, in 2023. Somewhat similarly to Elonis, the question in Counterman was “whether the First Amendment [] requires proof that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.” The court held that, in such cases, the answer is yes: The government must prove “that the defendant had some understanding of his statements’ threatening character.” At the same time, the court made clear that a mental state of recklessness (that is, a conscious disregard of a substantial risk that others could understand one’s statements as threatening) was sufficient to meet this standard. In her majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan recognized that this standard may mean that some threats cannot be prosecuted. But that, she wrote, was the price to be paid for First Amendment protections. Kagan also addressed the dangers that a decision otherwise could have a significant “chilling effect,” leading people to self-censor their speech out of fear that it will fall on the wrong side of the line, or based on a “worry that the legal system will err, and count speech that is permissible as instead not.”Where do things currently stand – and what about Comey?A quick recap may be helpful. As Watts made clear, true threats of violence are not protected by the First Amendment. But the threshold of what constitutes a true threat, based on relatively recent Supreme Court case law, is fairly high. Today, a statement will only be considered a true threat when it constitutes a “serious expression” that the speaker means to “commit an act of unlawful violence.” This, in turn, demands that the speaker had “some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements,” or “‘that others could regard his statements as’ threatening violence and ‘deliver[ed] them anyway.’”Which brings us back to the Comey case. Right now, by way of evidence, we only have the “86 47” Instagram photo and the fact that Comey deleted the photo the same day he posted it, writing on social media that it “never occurred” to him that the numbers may be associated with violence. Given this, the government will have to show both that this was a serious expression of an intent to harm Trump and that Comey was aware that other people who saw the photo of the seashells spelling out “86 47” may have understood it to be a threat of violence against the president but he chose to post it anyway.Comey will argue, among other things, that “86” is not typically understood as a threat to do violence – and, based on his erasure of the post itself – he certainly did not mean it as such. Perhaps recognizing the difficulties of the government’s case, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has responded that the indictment against Comey is based on more than just the shell photo, though he has yet to disclose such additional evidence.One thing is certain, however: as this case further unfolds, the court’s precedent on true threats will form the backstop for the administration’s ability to prosecute the former FBI director.Read more

It was a busy Monday at the court, to say the least. Keep reading to catch up on all the action.At the CourtThe court on Monday cleared the way for Alabama to use its 2023 congressional map, which had been blocked by a federal district court for discriminating against Black voters. Specifically, the Supreme Court vacated a lower court ruling barring Alabama from using the map and asked the court to reconsider the dispute in light of Louisiana v. Callais. Find Amy’s analysis of the decision in the On Site section below.Last week, in response to requests from Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reinstating the requirement that the abortion pill mifepristone be dispensed only in person. That pause was set to expire on Monday at 5 p.m. EDT, but Alito extended it until 5 p.m. on Thursday.Later Monday afternoon, Virginia asked the court on its interim docket to reinstate its new congressional map. For more on the request, see the On Site section below.Also on Monday, Texas asked the court to vacate a stay of execution granted to Edward Lee Busby by the 5th Circuit. For more on the case, see the Morning Reads section below.The court has indicated that it may release opinions on Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging that morning beginning at 9:30.Additionally, the justices will meet in a private conference on Thursday to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.Morning ReadsTrump criticizes 2 Supreme Court justices by name over tariff rulingEric Mack, Fox NewsPresident Donald Trump criticized Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett by name in a lengthy Sunday afternoon Truth Social post, asserting that their vote to strike down his tariffs hurt the country. “I ‘Love’ Justice Neil Gorsuch! He’s a really smart and good man, but he voted against me, and our Country, on Tariffs, a devastating move. How do I reconcile this? So bad, and hurtful to our Country,” the president wrote. “I have, likewise, always liked and respected Amy Coney Barrett, but the same thing with her. They were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly!” Trump concluded, “Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day, but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!! Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide.”For Trump, Court Loss Is Latest Twist in Ever-Shifting TariffsLazaro Gamio and Tony Romm, The New York Times (paywalled)After the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled last week that Trump had exceeded his authority under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 in imposing “a 10 percent tax on most imports from around the world,” The New York Times put together a timeline showing the president’s shifting tariff strategy and the role courts have played in forcing changes to it. “Many of the president’s tariffs — the sky-high rates that he first imposed on what became known as ‘Liberation Day’ last year — were struck down by the Supreme Court in February,” the Times noted. Since then, the administration has imposed the temporary Section 122 tariffs that are at the center of the current lawsuit and moved toward imposing longer-term Section 301 tariffs, which require “investigations into the trade practices” of targeted countries (those investigations are currently under way). “We always do it a different way,” Trump has said of his trade policies. “We get one ruling, and we do it a different way.”Federal appeals court temporarily halts execution of Texas death row inmate Edward BusbyAyden Runnels, The Texas TribuneAs noted above, the 5th Circuit temporarily halted Texas’ planned execution of Edward Busby on Thursday. Judge Stephen A. Higginson, one of the two judges in the majority, cited “concerns over his eligibility for capital punishment because of intellectual disability,” noting that “Busby’s appeal could be significantly shaped by a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a separate case,” Hamm v. Smith. “That case, originating from Alabama, could determine how courts consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ tests in determining a defendant’s eligibility for the death penalty,” including in Busby’s case, which also involves multiple IQ scores and various types of intelligence assessments. “Busby was sentenced to death out of Tarrant County in 2005 for the kidnapping and murder of 78-year-old Laura Crane after he robbed her and suffocated her by wrapping her face with tape.”Justice Breyer: It’s up to us whether the American experiment succeedsJustice Stephen G. Breyer, USA TodayIn a forward for a forthcoming book, The Promise of America: Reflections on Our Enduring Ideals, which was reprinted by USA Today, retired Justice Stephen Breyer reflected on the values laid out in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution and challenged everyday Americans to work to ensure the American experiment succeeds. “Our Nation’s canonical documents … lay out America’s founding principles: liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, government by consent, the separation of powers, and basic human rights. The American people have over time called upon their government to live up to those principles,” Breyer wrote.On SiteCourt NewsCourt clears way for Alabama to use congressional map blocked by lower court as racially discriminatory The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that a lower court had blocked on the ground that it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The justices threw out the lower-court order barring Alabama from using the map, which it had adopted in 2023, and sent the dispute back to the lower court for another look. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from Monday’s decision, in a four-page opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.Interim DocketCourt extends temporary order allowing access to abortion pill by mailMifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortions, will remain widely available throughout the United States, at least for now. In a pair of brief orders, Justice Samuel Alito extended the temporary pause – known as an administrative stay – that he had placed on a ruling by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which would require mifepristone to be dispensed in person. That pause, which had been scheduled to expire at 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, will now last at least until 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, May 14. Interim DocketVirginia asks Supreme Court to allow it to reinstate congressional map that would advantage DemocratsLawyers for Virginia Democrats and Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones asked the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon to allow the state to use a new congressional map in the 2026 elections. The lawyers contended that a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court invalidating an amendment to Virginia’s constitution giving the Virginia General Assembly the power to enact new maps was “deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.”From the SCOTUSblog TeamThe serious decline in petitions before the Supreme CourtOver the past approximately two decades, the number of petitions for a writ of certiorari filed each year at the Supreme Court has been declining. And the drop is especially pronounced if you look just at “in forma pauperis,” or “IFP,” petitions, which come from litigants who were not required to pay the court’s $300 filing fee or print their briefs in booklet form. Nora explored what might be going on here.From the SCOTUSblog TeamJustice Samuel Alito opens up about oral arguments, judicial security, and his writing processDuring an appearance last week at the 5th Circuit Judicial Conference, Justice Samuel Alito showed his sense of humor with jokes about his childhood pastimes and family dog, expressed dissatisfaction with life in Washington, D.C., and offered a glimpse into the inner workings of his chambers and the Supreme Court.A Closer LookSupreme Court CounselPerhaps reading our previous Closer Look about “the other jobs at SCOTUS” prompted some of you to wonder what the Supreme Court’s legal counsel actually does (well, in writing that piece, it at least made us curious).The Supreme Court’s Legal Office was established in 1973 as part of Chief Justice Warren Burger’s efforts to improve the court’s efficiency and continuity in work. Members of the office operate as in-house counsel for the court by providing legal services for the institution itself. The head of the legal office is known as court counsel, and is currently held by Ethan V. Torrey, who has been in the position since 2014. (The prior court counsel, Scott S. Harris, became the clerk of the court.)There are some relatively recent events involving this office. In 2022, Torrey authored a letter addressed to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Henry Johnson, Jr., which responded to an information request about potentially unethical conduct by Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito. The initial letter from Whitehouse and Johnson described a “judicial lobbying campaign” conducted by a conservative religious group which involved taking the justices and their wives to expensive dinners, as well as hosting the justices in their homes. The letter also urged the court to adopt a code of conduct and updated financial disclosure requirements.Torrey’s response letter described the current code of conduct and financial disclosure rules for federal judges that the justices rely on. Specifically, the letter highlighted that the code of conduct “prohibits outside activities that reflect adversely on the judge’s impartiality” and only allows judges to be reimbursed for “extrajudicial activities” when the payment source “does not give the appearance of impropriety.” Additionally, Torrey noted that the financial disclosure policy was consistent with a statute that had been recently enacted requiring that federal judges’ (including the justices’) financial disclosures be available in an online public database.Another ethics-related letter came from Torrey later that same month, in which he responded on behalf of the court to allegations that Alito had shared the outcome of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby –which struck down a federal regulation requiring employers to provide female employees with free contraception – with an anti-abortion activist over dinner three weeks before the opinion was announced. In the letter, Torrey indicated that Alito denied the allegations, that there was no evidence they were true, and that there were no facts to suggest that any of Alito’s actions violated the court’s ethics standards.Most recently, Torrey defended Roberts (in his official capacity as presiding officer of the federal judicial conference) and the federal courts’ administrative office (a judicial agency which provides a wide array of support services to the federal courts) in a lawsuit filed by America First Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm. This was somewhat notable as a break from the norm of the court and the justices being represented by the Department of Justice.The case itself was filed in April of last year. In its complaint, America First alleged that the federal judicial conference (the policymaking body for the federal courts) and the administrative office of the courts violated the Freedom of Information Act by failing to provide records of certain communications. In its FOIA request, America First requested “all records referring to or relating to” Thomas and Alito and “all communications with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Representative Hank Johnson, or any of their staff” from April 2023 onward. According to the complaint, America First believed that White and Johnson had been attempting to “chill the judicial independence” of Thomas and Alito by “falsely accus[ing]” them of ethics violations and that the requested records contained information about undisclosed ethics violation allegations brought by members of Congress to the defendants against Thomas and Alito.In July, a motion to dismiss was filed with Torrey listed as counsel, which argued that FOIA does not apply to the judicial conference or the administrative office. The district court agreed, granting the motion and dismissing the case because it found that the defendants were not “agencies” within the meaning of FOIA and therefore are not subject to that statute.SCOTUS Quote“It would be consistent with my public image if I told you that I spent the summer catching flies so we could pull the wings off the flies.”— Justice Samuel Alito  (2026)Read more