The Supreme Court on Monday morning turned down a request from NBA Hall of Famer John Stockton to weigh in on whether his lawsuit against the Washington Medical Commission, arguing that the agency’s efforts to investigate and sanction licensed physicians in the state who discourage COVID-19 vaccination and promote treatments such as ivermectin violate the First Amendment, can go forward. The denial of review in Stockton v. Brown was part of a list of orders released from the justices’ private conference on Friday, May 1. The justices did not add any new cases to their docket for the 2026-27 term.
As Kelsey Dallas recounted last month, the former point guard for the Utah Jazz became a prominent critic of vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. A federal appeals court stressed that his lawsuit, which was joined by (among others) Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit formerly headed by current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., could not move forward because none of the plaintiffs had suffered the kind of concrete injury that would give them a right to sue. Stockton went to the Supreme Court, which denied his petition for review without comment.
The justices also declined to take up the case of an Indiana gun dealer located 10 miles from the border of Illinois and which argued that it did not have the kind of contacts with Illinois that would allow the City of Chicago to sue it for its intentional sale of guns to “straw purchasers” – that is, to buyers who then sell or give the guns to others, who often are not able to purchase the guns themselves – that then made their way into Chicago.
The justices will meet again for a private conference on Thursday, May 14. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday, May 18, at 9:30 a.m. EDT.