The morning read for Tuesday, September 9

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read:

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit on Monday “upheld an $83.3 million jury award” in a defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against President Donald Trump and rejected his argument that the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity prevented a finding of liability in the case, according to Benjamin Weiser of The New York Times. The jury award stemmed from comments Trump made about Carroll after she accused him of rape. It was separate from an earlier $5 million jury award that Trump was ordered to pay after he was found liable for sexual abuse of Carroll. The 2nd Circuit upheld that previous jury award in December, but Trump’s legal team has said it will appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, Weiser reported.
• January and Jeffrey Littlejohn, Florida parents who became national figures after challenging their school district’s approach to gender identity, could soon be at the center of a Supreme Court case. In a cert petition filed Sept. 3, the Littlejohns asked the justices to take up their dispute with the Leon County school system, which the Littlejohns say violated their parental rights “when its employees created a secret ‘gender-support plan’ for their child, who was 13 at the time,” according to Stephanie Matat of the Tallahassee Democrat. The Littlejohns’ case was previously dismissed by a federal district judge in Tallahassee, who said it should be adjudicated in state, rather than federal, court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld that decision.
• New York Attorney General Letitia James has announced that she will defend New York’s protections for abortion providers against a challenge from Texas, setting up an interstate battle over abortion access that could eventually make it to the Supreme Court, according to Shefali Luthra of The 19th News. The lawsuit, which is currently before the Ulster County Supreme Court in New York, was brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against a New York county clerk who refused to enforce a fine imposed by a Texas judge against a New York doctor “for providing a telehealth abortion to a Texas-based patient.” The New York law at the center of the case, called a shield law, enables doctors in the state to provide telehealth appointments to patients seeking abortions in states with abortion bans. “The law prohibits New York law enforcement officials from arresting or extraditing health professionals who provided abortions that are legal in New York; law enforcement also cannot cooperate with investigations or punishments of such procedures,” Luthra reported. Shield laws have become more common — and more controversial — since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
• In Monday’s edition of the One First newsletter, Steve Vladeck reflected on why he uses the phrase “shadow docket” as a catch-all term for a variety of Supreme Court orders, and why he disagrees with Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s recent attempt to rebrand the court’s emergency orders as the “interim docket.” According to Vladeck, shadow docket captures the fact that few of the Supreme Court’s orders are fully explained and that some are released “in the wee small hours” of the day. Vladeck believes “interim” is misleading since the relevant orders are not often temporary and sometimes produce “massive, permanent, and almost certainly irrevocable effects.”
• A new documentary on Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s first Black justice, celebrates “a real-life superhero of civil rights,” according to Staci Zaretsky of Above the Law. The documentary recounts how Marshall fought to end racial discrimination as an attorney and then continued that work as a federal judge using interviews with “acclaimed authors, legal scholars, and family members.” “Becoming Thurgood: America’s Social Architect” premieres today at 10 p.m. EDT on PBS.