The Supreme Court of the United States issued decisions in two cases on April 4, 2016:

Evenwel v. Abbott, No. 14-940:   In this legislative redistricting case, certain voters brought a challenge to the redistricting in Texas under the one-person, one-vote principle of the Equal Protection Clause.  While legislative maps are deemed to presumptively comply with the one-person, one-vote rule where the maximum population deviation between the largest and smallest district is less than 10%, and here the maximum total-population deviation was 8.04%, petitioners based their challenge on the fact that the maximum population deviation among eligible voters or registered voters exceeded 40%.  A three-judge District Court dismissed the complaint, and today, the Court affirmed, holding that, based on constitutional history, the Court’s decisions, and longstanding practice, a State may draw its legislative districts based on total population. 

The Court's decision is available here

Nichols v. United States, No. 15-5238:  Petitioner Lester Ray Nichols, a registered sex offender, moved from Kansas to the Philippines without notifying Kansas authorities.  Nichols was then convicted of failing to update his sex-offender registration, in violation of 19 U.S.C. §2250(a) of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).  That statute makes it a crime to “knowingly fai[l] to register or update a registration,” and requires that offenders who move to a different State inform “at least 1 jurisdiction involved” of the change, with a “jurisdiction” under this section including “each jurisdiction where the offender resides, . . . is an employee, and . . . is a student.”  The Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction, holding that even though Nichols moved out of Kansas, that State remained a “jurisdiction involved” under the statute.  Today, the Court reversed, holding that because the SORNA provision at issue refers to jurisdictions in the present tense (i.e., the jurisdiction in which the offender “resides”), Nichols was not required to update his registration in Kansas after he departed the State.

The Court's decision is available here

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in one case on April 4, 2016

Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 15-606:  Whether a no-impeachment rule constitutionally may bar evidence of racial bias offered to prove a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury.