The motions docket of the U.S. Supreme Court remains busy. Following the April 4 decision in Department of Education v. California—in which the Court, treating a temporary restraining order (TRO) as if it were a preliminary...more
On March 28, 2025, a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that President Donald Trump likely has the authority to remove National Labor Relations Board...more
3/31/2025
/ Appeals ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Employee Rights ,
Government Agencies ,
Judicial Authority ,
Labor Relations ,
NLRB ,
Presidential Appointments ,
Quorum ,
Statutory Interpretation ,
Trump Administration
The Supreme Court decided two cases today, continuing the release of opinions on which the Court is not deeply divided. The tougher ones are yet to come....more
The U.S. Supreme Court resolved more textual battles yesterday, one in a fully argued case, the other on procedural motions. The combinations of Justices continue to defy stereotypes, and at least one of those combinations,...more
3/6/2025
/ Administrative Agencies ,
Appeals ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Department of Veterans Affairs ,
Executive Orders ,
Foreign Aid ,
Regulatory Oversight ,
SCOTUS ,
Statutory Interpretation ,
Supreme Court Justices ,
Veterans
Only a few readers of SCOTUS Today are lawyers who are professionally occupied with environmental matters. However, almost all of my readers are constantly occupied with administrative law matters, governed in the...more
The U.S. Supreme Court decided two cases yesterday, one of which, Lackey v. Stinnie, involved an action brought pursuant to 42 U. S. C. §1983 and should be of particular interest to the many readers of this blog who practice...more
2/26/2025
/ 42 U.S.C. §1983 ,
Attorney's Fees ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Criminal Procedure ,
Due Process ,
Equal Protection ,
Evidence ,
False Evidence ,
False Testimony ,
Jurisdiction ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Prevailing Party ,
Remand ,
SCOTUS
President Donald Trump has made several significant and sudden changes at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC” or “the Commission”), the agency responsible for enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of...more
2/12/2025
/ Affirmative Action ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Diversity and Inclusion Standards (D&I) ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Employment Litigation ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Executive Orders ,
NLRB ,
Title VII ,
Trump Administration
The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed the nationwide injunction that had been blocking the enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) while the merits of the CTA are pending a decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for...more
As the snow has fallen on Washington, DC’s First Street over the past few days, the Supreme Court has begun to issue opinions in the current term....more
In an action brought by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, commonly known as SpaceX, a U.S. District Court Judge in the Western District of Texas, Waco Division, has declared that the structure of the National Labor...more
In a recent landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the Chevron doctrine in the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
This ruling has significant implications for employers and other entities in the...more
The Supreme Court started yesterday with 14 decisions yet to deliver and only reduced the number by two—neither of them the Trump immunity case nor the Loper case concerning the future of the agency deference doctrine of...more
6/27/2024
/ Article III ,
Bribery ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Misleading Statements ,
Murthy v Missouri ,
Public Officials ,
SCOTUS ,
Snyder v United States ,
Social Media ,
Standing
Of the Supreme Court opinions issued today, the one that will draw the greatest public attention is Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, unanimously holding that the pro-life organizational...more
6/14/2024
/ Abortion ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
First Amendment ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
NLRB ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Reproductive Healthcare Issues ,
SCOTUS ,
Starbucks ,
Starbucks Corp. v McKinney ,
Trademarks ,
Unions ,
USPTO ,
Vidal v Elster
Some commentators claim there are bitter divisions among the Justices, roiling the Court and its processes. Many of the same commentators were critical of the Court’s decision holding that former President Trump was not...more
4/12/2024
/ Building Permits ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Construction Project ,
George Sheetz v County of El Dorado ,
Impact Fees ,
Property Owners ,
Real Estate Development ,
SCOTUS ,
Supreme Court Justices ,
Takings Clause ,
Traffic Impact Assessments
In its frequent attempts to enforce the separation of powers that the Constitution’s framers devised as a system of checks and balances among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government, it is...more
The question of whether a would-be trademark, “TRUMP TOO SMALL,” warrants a First Amendment exception to the Lanham Act’s prohibition on registering a living person’s name as a trademark without that person’s permission has...more
6/19/2023
/ CAFC ,
Certiorari ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
First Amendment ,
Free Speech ,
Lanham Act ,
Public Figures ,
SCOTUS ,
Trademark Registration ,
Trademarks ,
USPTO
Indian tribal rights led the Supreme Court’s docket yesterday. In one case, the Court held that the federal Bankruptcy Code abrogated the sovereign immunity of tribal governments. And in another, this time upholding tribal...more
6/16/2023
/ Anti-Commandeering ,
Bankruptcy Code ,
Child Custody ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Double Jeopardy ,
Equal Protection ,
Haaland v Brackeen ,
Improper Venue ,
Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) ,
Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v Coughlin ,
Native American Issues ,
Parental Rights ,
Smith v United States ,
Tenth Amendment ,
Tribal Governments
With essential unanimity, though with an array of concurrences in one of them, the Supreme Court ruled against government parties in three cases, two of them in favor of homeowners, and in property rights and environmental...more
5/26/2023
/ Administrative Remedies ,
Clean Water Act ,
Commercial Litigation ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Dupree v Younger ,
Eighth Amendment ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
Exhaustion Doctrine ,
Fifth Amendment ,
FRCP 56 ,
Property Owners ,
Property Tax ,
Sackett v EPA ,
SCOTUS ,
Takings Clause ,
Tax Sales ,
Tyler v Hennepin County Minnesota ,
Waters of the United States
While the substantial backlog of decisions has many observers waiting for a flood of rulings, the Supreme Court is moving at its own pace. Thus, the Court has issued a single opinion today, but especially for readers who are...more
The Court didn’t waste time getting to a controversial matter, the applications for stays of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA’s”) COVID-19 mandate concerning alternatives of mandatory testing,...more
1/14/2022
/ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Mandates ,
Healthcare Workers ,
Infectious Diseases ,
National Federation of Independent Business v Department of Labor and OSHA ,
OSHA ,
SCOTUS ,
Stays ,
Vaccinations ,
Virus Testing
In an unexpectedly broad ruling issued December 14, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas declared the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) as unconstitutional in its entirety. This decision, if ultimately...more
12/19/2018
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Appointments Clause ,
Benefit Plan Sponsors ,
Biosimilars ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Declaratory Judgments ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Health Care Providers ,
Health Insurance ,
Healthcare ,
Healthcare Reform ,
HRA ,
Individual Mandate ,
Internal Revenue Code (IRC) ,
Kathleen Sebelius ,
Medicaid ,
Medicaid Expansion ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Popular ,
Severability Doctrine ,
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act