by Jordan Rubin | Jun 27, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court has eight more cases to decide this term. Some of the biggest ones remain, including birthright citizenship. Before we get the next, but likely not the last, batch of rulings on Monday morning, let’s highlight what the GOP-appointed majority did in this week’s two decision days, on Tuesday and Thursday.
The court started the week Monday with its routine order list that functions as a snapshot of the court’s priorities. These lists are where the justices say which new cases they’re taking up and, as important, which cases they’re rejecting. In typical fashion, this week’s list featured the right and left wings of the court dissenting from their colleagues’ refusal to hear cases important to their sides.
For example, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the rejection of a government petition that questioned defendant-friendly considerations of race in police stops. Meanwhile, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the court’s refusal to intervene in a capital case “creates a significant risk” that a death row prisoner’s rights will be violated.
It takes four justices to grant review, so let’s now turn to cases that got that review this term and were decided this week. In a barrage of 6-3 rulings, the Roberts Court closed the courthouse door on claimed rights violations while curbing asylum and humanitarian protections for migrants seeking refuge in this country.
On Tuesday, nearly all the rulings were 6-3 splits, with the GOP-appointed justices in the majority and the Democratic appointees dissenting. Thomas and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh authored respective rulings
by Jordan Rubin | Jun 26, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog, Supreme Court, White House
“What are the most significant Supreme Court cases to watch this term?” — John
Hi John,
The court has already issued several significant rulings this term — on tariffs, voting rights, immigration and more.
At this point, there are only eight cases left to decide, and they include some of the most consequential disputes. We could get decisions in any of them, though not likely all of them, when the justices next take the bench on Monday morning.
The court usually issues the term’s final rulings by the end of June or early July. Chief Justice John Roberts has a custom of announcing on the second-to-last day that the next opinion day will be the final one. But he made no such announcement when the latest batch of rulings came on Thursday, so it seems there will be at least one more opinion day after Monday.
Birthright citizenship in Trump v. Barbara
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, he signed an executive order that purports to end automatic citizenship for babies born in this country. The order hasn’t taken effect because it’s “blatantly unconstitutional,” as one of the several judges who ruled against Trump in the lower courts observed.
Now, the Supreme Court must decide whether to maintain the status quo or to green-light one of the president’s most lawless moves yet. Trump himself has said he thinks the Republican-controlled court will rule against him as it did in the tariffs case.
Presidential firing power over independent agencies in Trump v. Slaughter
This is another big case, but Trump is expected to win it. The court is considering whether he can fire Democratic
by Jordan Rubin | Jun 25, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority sided with the Trump administration over Haitians and Syrians on Thursday in a ruling on the administration’s attempt to end humanitarian safeguards under the Temporary Protected Status program.
Writing for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said immigrants from those countries aren’t entitled to orders postponing the termination of their protections during litigation, over dissent by Justice Elena Kagan that said there was “no dispute” that they would suffer irreparable harm without such postponement.
“So the plaintiffs are entitled to stay in this country while these suits go forward,” Kagan argued, so she therefore dissented “from the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane.”
Lower courts had found the administration illegally sought to end protections for immigrants from Haiti, Syria and other countries. That led the administration to ask the justices for a ruling to give the government the power to immediately end those protections without judges intervening.
Solicitor General John Sauer sought emergency relief in the Haiti and Syria cases, complaining that lower courts had been wrongly second-guessing decisions to terminate protections. The justices declined to halt lower court orders in favor of Haitians and Syrians but agreed to hold a hearing to decide the issue in the case, which also carries implications for immigrants from other countries.
The termination decisions in question were made by Kristi Noem when she was head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Lawyers for Syrian and Haitian TPS holders argued there was no good reason for the justices to intervene on the government’s behalf.
Opposing what they put in scare quotes as the government’s bid for “emergency” relief, lawyers for Syrian
by Jordan Rubin | Jun 25, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog, Supreme Court
Supreme Court justices are set to take the bench Thursday morning to announce their latest rulings in cases argued this term. They won’t say which ones are coming ahead of time, but among the remaining rulings are ones on birthright citizenship and other consequential decisions for America’s future.
Yet all Americans won’t see or even hear the justices as they make these important announcements in open court.
The opinions will be posted on the court’s website as the justices summarize them. But that doesn’t excuse the court’s lack of transparency.
Think about the birthright citizenship case, for example, to understand why the court’s practice does not make sense. When it was argued in April, anyone with internet access could tune in live to hear the audio of the hearing in real time. When the resulting ruling is announced, however, there will be no such live audio, even though both the hearing and the opinion announcement will happen in the same public courtroom. It’s not a technological obstacle.
Nor does the court view opinion announcements as so sensitive that no one can hear them, because these sessions are open to however many people can fit into the courtroom on a given day. Nor does the court view opinion announcements as so sensitive that everyone can’t hear them eventually, because the audio is typically published at some point during the following court term. It’s only that the court does not want everyone to be able to tune in live for these announcements in the same way that it lets people tune in for hearings.
What could possibly justify the court’s selective transparency?
A common attempt at an explanation
by Jordan Rubin | Jun 23, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Many of the Supreme Court’s rulings don’t split the justices along the party lines of the presidents who appointed them. But several 6-3 splits on Tuesday morning alone provide a telling snapshot of the high court as its latest term comes to a close in the days ahead.
Rulings authored by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett show the GOP-appointed supermajority taking a narrow view of people’s rights and a broad view of U.S. corporate rights in a series of unrelated cases, while the Democratic-appointed justices are confined to sounding alarms in dissent.
Thomas led the six-justice majority in Blanche v. Lau, an immigration case. An appeals court said a border officer didn’t adequately respect an immigrant’s lawful permanent residency status, but the high court majority said the law didn’t require what the lower court claimed.
In her dissent for the three Democratic appointees, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the majority’s view “cannot possibly be what Congress intended” when it passed the law in question. She said she worries that the majority “handed the Government a massive blank check” for immigration proceedings going forward.
That theme of opposing legal interpretations — and the stark consequences that follow — runs throughout Tuesday’s cases, including in the opinion Gorsuch authored in Landor v. Louisiana. He led the six-justice majority against Damon Landor, a Rastafarian man who wanted to sue Louisiana prison officials for monetary damages after they cut his dreadlocks.
The Trump appointee said Landor couldn’t find that right in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Jackson led the Democratic appointees in dissent in that one, too, writing that the majority “reduces
by Jordan Rubin | Jun 22, 2026 | Deadline: Legal Blog
Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented Monday from the court’s refusal to consider a case involving race and law enforcement.
The court’s senior GOP appointees wanted their colleagues to review the petition brought by the federal government, which raised questions about the relevance of race in analyzing whether Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures are violated.
It takes four justices to grant review. The denial appeared on the court’s order list, in which the justices announce the latest action in pending appeals. As usual, the court did not explain why it denied review.
The government’s petition came in the case of Donte Carter. He was charged with gun and theft offenses in Washington, D.C., and he moved to suppress the stolen firearm that law enforcement recovered from him after an officer asked him to hike his pants. He argued that he was technically “seized” under the Fourth Amendment at that point and that the officer lacked reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
The trial court denied his motion to suppress, but the appeals court reversed. The appeals court considered what it called “the coercive nature of the officers’ conduct and factoring in the elevated effect that this would have had on an objective and reasonable Black man in Mr. Carter’s shoes.” From that premise, the appeals concluded that Carter was seized under the Fourth Amendment when the officer asked him to raise his pants.
Dissenting from the Supreme Court’s denial of the government’s petition to review the appeals court’s ruling, Alito said the lawfulness of the appeals court’s inquiry “is an important question.” Joined by Thomas, he wondered: If officers
