by Jordan Rubin | Nov 10, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog, Supreme Court, White House
The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for a Trump administration wall construction project along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, over dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The high court majority said that a lower court was wrong to halt the project because it likely lacked jurisdiction to block the government action.
The administration sought to waive environmental and conservation laws in order to facilitate construction in a region it called the “Big Bend Sector.” The Homeland Security secretary said the area was “an area of high illegal entry” that required more protection.
That prompted a lawsuit from a river guide, an environmental nonprofit and a nonprofit dedicated to preserving a historic church in Ruidosa, Texas. They argued that the secretary exceeded his authority. A federal district court in West Texas granted a preliminary injunction.
Lifting that injunction while further litigation proceeds, the Supreme Court said, in part, that the government’s interest “outweighs any aesthetic, recreational, and environmental harm alleged” by the plaintiffs.
Unsuccessfully opposing the action the court took on Monday, the plaintiffs said that granting the government’s request “would result in the permanent alteration of an irreplaceable landscape that includes Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and nearly 200 miles of the congressionally designated Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River corridor.”
The court’s reasoning came in an unsigned “per curiam” opinion, which is how the justices have been handling some emergency litigation lately instead of simply issuing an unexplained order.
Jackson, a Biden appointee, only noted without explanation that she would have denied the administration’s application.
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by Jordan Rubin | Nov 7, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal newsletter readers. As far as stories of the week go, it’s hard to beat Tuesday night’s blue tsunami in the midterm elections.
But I want to highlight a remarkable development that came the night before, when the Supreme Court smacked down a voter suppression effort from the Trump administration. Although the news from the court was understandably overtaken by the following night’s electoral rout, this was no ordinary move from the justices.
Indeed, the court order sent a message that the justices did not take seriously at all what the federal government wanted them to do.
It wanted them to issue an order to set aside some 20,000 ballots from California voters whom the government claimed it had “identified as likely noncitizens.” Lower courts had rebuffed the request while questioning both its legality and accuracy. The administration turned to the high court for relief.
Due to the legally and factually dubious nature of the request, the application filed by the administration on Monday looked like a weak one. Plus, the justices have been blocking some of the more extreme GOP bids this election season. The application seemed destined for denial.
But the appellate panel that ruled against the administration was divided, with a Trump-appointed judge arguing in dissent that the Justice Department was only seeking “modest” relief that “would not cancel any vote but would allow time to verify the eligibility of suspected noncitizens.”
That didn’t mean the administration would win at the Supreme Court. But the division in the lower court signaled that perhaps two or three sympathetic justices might dissent from a government loss; maybe that would include Justices Clarence
by Jordan Rubin | Nov 6, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Deadline: Legal Blog, Supreme Court, White House
Ahead of Donald Trump’s return to office in January 2025, a divided Supreme Court declined to halt his criminal sentencing in New York.
Over dissent from four of the court’s six GOP-appointed justices, the five-justice majority let the sentencing proceed for two main reasons: One was that Trump was only being sentenced to an unconditional discharge, which is basically a nonpenalty; the other was that “the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump’s state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal.”
Nearly two years later, that “ordinary course” is still unfolding.
On Thursday one of the president’s personal lawyers, Robert Giuffra, was in a Manhattan courtroom to press Trump’s appeal in the so-called hush money case. Those “alleged evidentiary violations” were among the arguments presented to the appellate panel — that is, that some of the evidence used to convict Trump at his spring 2024 trial ran afoul of the presidential immunity ruling the Supreme Court announced that summer.
Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money scheme in connection with the 2016 presidential race. Although covering up a hush money scheme is not an official act protected by presidential immunity, Trump’s lawyers have cited the immunity ruling’s related prohibition against using evidence of official acts to secure convictions for unofficial conduct. They have pointed to evidence from his first term in office: discussions with White House communications director Hope Hicks, statements on social media, discussion with the attorney general and testimony about White House operations.
Immunity is not the only issue in the appeal. Much of the discussion at Thursday’s hearing focused on Giuffra’s argument that
by Jordan Rubin | Nov 3, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog, elections, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Monday denied the Trump administration’s bid to sequester mail ballots from California voters whom the federal government claimed it had “identified as likely noncitizens.”
The rejection came in an unexplained order without any justices noting dissent. That is not unusual for emergency litigation. But a notable aspect of this rejection of the administration is how quickly it came from the full court and without the court even calling for a response from the opposing party first.
The Department of Justice turned to the high court after a divided appellate panel refused to order the Democratic-led state to separate out more than 20,000 ballots and establish a process to verify the citizenship status of those voters before counting them.
The two panel judges in the majority were appointees of Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. They said the state already had a verification process and that the DOJ was trying to subvert the constitutional system for how elections are conducted. The majority also raised concerns about disenfranchising lawful voters while questioning the reliability of the government’s data.
The dissenting panel judge, also a Trump appointee, said the DOJ only sought “modest” relief that “would not cancel any vote but would allow time to verify the eligibility of suspected noncitizens.”
In its Supreme Court application Monday, the DOJ leaned on that dissent from Judge Patrick Bumatay, who has been floated as a potential high court pick if Trump makes another appointment during his second term. Whether he has an opportunity to do so hinges, in part, on the Senate’s composition after the Election Day results are tallied.
The DOJ quoted Bumatay in support
by Jordan Rubin | Oct 6, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court started its new term with an order list that mainly consisted of the court declining to weigh in on an array of appeals. Justices sometimes issue dissents or other separate writings from these routine denials. There was only one such writing, from one justice, in the term’s first list Monday morning.
It was a familiar figure and topic: Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a death penalty case.
The Obama-appointed justice’s statement in Mulkey v. Alabama highlighted her continued focus on matters of crime and punishment in which her colleagues have not shown the same interest.
It follows the GOP-appointed majority’s unexplained order last week that let the lethal injection of Christa Pike proceed in Tennessee, over dissent from the court’s three Democratic appointees, led by Sotomayor. Despite the high court’s help, the state failed to carry out the death penalty for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, as Pike survived — at least for the time being — what her lawyers called a “torturous” botched execution.
In Monday’s case from Alabama, Sotomayor again put attention on a capital case — this time all alone, as she has done before — writing that it was especially important to do so “where the defendant’s life hangs in the balance.”
The defendant is Steven Mulkey, who was sentenced to death for killing elderly couple Ching and Siu Mei Kao during what the state said was “a dispute over thirty dollars’ worth of yard work” in 2018.
In his Supreme Court petition, which the justices denied Monday, Mulkey’s lawyers argued that his constitutional rights were violated because the trial judge publicly sanctioned and jailed a prospective juror in
by Jordan Rubin | Oct 3, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog, Supreme Court, White House
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal newsletter readers. The new Supreme Court term starts Monday. We’re coming off a huge term that featured historic decisions on birthright citizenship, voting rights, tariffs, presidential firing power and more. Despite losing on citizenship and tariffs, and despite being blocked from immediately firing Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, the Trump administration is pressing backup plans on those fronts that could eventually return them to the high court.
The justices were off the bench for the summer, but they decided several important emergency matters, including ones related to the November midterm elections. Although they backed Donald Trump’s White House ballroom construction — over a notable dissent led by Chief Justice John Roberts — the justices blocked the president’s mail ballot restrictions as well as Missouri’s bid to use a congressional map that could’ve gained Republicans another House seat next month.
Trump lashed out on social media following those losses, calling his three high court picks who ruled against him “merely a shell of their original selves.” In a line that Democrats likely agree with but for different reasons, he said the court’s “inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History.”
The dramatic complaint follows a term that was an overall win for Trump and the GOP. And just this month, the court granted emergency relief ahead of the midterms for Republicans on campaign broadcast advertising rates and, for the administration, on using a citizenship verification database — the latter over dissent from the court’s Democratic appointees, who raised concerns about lawful voters being
