Yesterday, in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens (No. 25A608), a presumably 6-3 Court issued a short order allowing Texas’s new, and explicitly gerrymandered, congressional map to go into effect for the 2026 congressional election. In doing so, it stayed a split three-judge District Court’s decision that the new map violated the Constitution by taking the racial composition of voting districts into account in achieving the legislature’s partisan aims. Like many so-called Shadow Docket decisions—that is
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Pitts v. Mississippi (No 24-1149)
In Pitts v. Mississippi (No 24-1149), the Nine summarily reversed a Mississippi Supreme Court decision that effectively ignored the Court’s decisions in Coy v. Iowa (1988) and Maryland v. Craig (1990), which require trial courts to make case-specific findings of necessity before precluding a criminal defendant from exercising his Sixth Amendment right to confront child witnesses “face to face.”
Jeffrey Pitts was convicted of
Read More Pitts v. Mississippi (No 24-1149)Clark v. Sweeney (No. 25.-52)
In Clark v. Sweeney (No. 25.-52), a unanimous Court chastised the Fourth Circuit for straying from the principle of party presentation in ordering a new trial for a habeas petitioner on grounds he hadn’t raised in his appeal.
Jeremiah Sweeney was charged with second-degree murder after allegedly shooting a bystander during an argument with neighbors about stolen drugs. His defense at trial was that
Read More Clark v. Sweeney (No. 25.-52)Preview of October Arguments
The Supreme Court kicks off its October 2025 term today, with oral argument in two cases. Some of those cases are notable in and of themselves—we’ll preview them in a second—but this is also a good time to take a pause and look at the docket (so far) for the Court’s upcoming term.
A few things stand out. First, the Court has already agreed to
Read More Preview of October ArgumentsSupreme Court Update: October Term 2025
- Trump v. CASA (holding that universal injunctions exceed the equitable authority of district courts);
- United States v.
FDA v. Wages and White Lion Investments (No. 23-1038)
In 2021, after a multi-year regulatory process, the Food and Drug Administration denied more than a million applications from tobacco manufacturers seeking to sell various flavored e-cigarette products. After that process concluded, an en banc Fifth Circuit vacated the FDA’s denial of those products’ applications, concluding that the agency performed a “surprise switcheroo” by relying on criteria for evaluating applications that the Fifth Circuit found
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