SCOTUStoday for Tuesday, September 23

Summer vacation is in the rear-view mirror for most of us, but the justices still have time for a trip or two before the “long conference” next Monday. Justice Samuel Alito met the pope when he was in Rome over the weekend for a speaking engagement, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is promoting her memoir in London on Wednesday at Royal Festival Hall.

Morning Reads

• White House bullish after a long string of Supreme Court victories (Lawrence Hurley and Katherine Doyle, NBC News) — Although it may feel like the Trump administration is filing emergency applications with the Supreme Court on a daily basis, the administration has tried to be selective and has asked the justices to weigh in on only a small share of the more than 300 active lawsuits against it, according to NBC News. “The White House has won 18 times at the Supreme Court since Trump took office and is on a 15-case winning run.” According to an individual close to the White House, “[t]hey’re ecstatic” about the wins, though “officials do not want to overplay their hand at the court.”
• Supreme Court poised to shake up midterm elections (Jack Birle, The Washington Examiner) — Upcoming Supreme Court cases on the Voting Rights Act, campaign-finance regulations, and whether a federal candidate can sue over state-level election regulations have the potential to “significantly affect the midterm elections in 2026 and beyond,” according to The Washington Examiner. The first two “cases have been scheduled for October hearings, while the other has yet to be scheduled but will be heard by the justices in the upcoming term, long before the midterm elections in November 2026.”
• New York Times v Sullivan: the 60-year-old Supreme Court judgment that press freedom depends on in Trump era (Emma Long, The Conversation) — A 1964 Supreme Court ruling looms large in President Donald Trump’s effort to win a libel and defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, two Times journalists, and Penguin Random House, whom he’s accused of trying to damage his reputation and disrupt his 2024 campaign, according to The Conversation. The court’s decision in New York Times v. Sullivan made it clear that public officials have to clear a high bar to win defamation suits, proving not just that there were factual errors, but also that false information was published “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” The ruling “provided the press in the US with one of the most protected spaces in the world in which to operate.”
• Illinois toymaker takes its challenge of Trump administration’s tariffs to Supreme Court (Angela Mathew, Chicago Tribune) — The Chicago Tribune recently visited a warehouse in Vernon Hills, Illinois, for a closer look at one of the companies challenging Trump’s tariffs, Learning Resources. The company’s CEO, Rick Woldenberg, described why he decided to file a lawsuit over the tariffs and what the past few months have been like for his team. “Woldenberg hasn’t laid off any of his employees, but he has stopped filling some vacant positions. The companies also raised prices on some of Learning Resources’ toys by around 5% and cut expenses, like a planned $600,000 investment in racks for the warehouse and professional development workshops for his employees.” Woldenberg said these changes have motivated him during the legal battle. “The (employees in the) community that we live in, and millions of children have their educational trajectory affected by what we do,” he said. “It’s a big source of motivation to fight the threat from tariffs.”
• 5 Reasons the Supreme Court Might Change Its Mind on Same-Sex Marriage (Kimberly Wehle, Politico) — Most court watchers believe the justices will turn down a petition asking them to reconsider a 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, but the petition should still be taken seriously, according to law professor Kimberly Wehle. In a column for Politico, she outlined five reasons why the petition may get enough votes, including the fact that three of the dissenters in the 2015 case — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — are still on the court. “If these justices feel as strongly now as they did in 2015 that the right to gay marriage is not grounded in the Constitution, it would only take one additional justice — presumably one of the newer three conservatives on the court — to vote to accept the case for Obergefell to be reconsidered. And then the whole issue is reopened for debate.”

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• The Supreme Court on Monday announced that it will hear oral arguments in December on Trump’s authority to fire FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and the president’s power over federal agencies in general.
• Amicus curiae, or friend of the court, briefs in support of the Trump administration or in support of neither party are due today in the cases on President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
• A response brief to the Trump administration’s emergency application asking the court to allow for the firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook is due on Thursday.
• The 2025 inaugural SCOTUSblog Summit is on Thursday.

A Closer Look: First Among Equals

The Constitution lists just one responsibility for the Chief Justice of the United States: presiding over Senate impeachment trials of the president. But, in fact, the chief justice occupies a much larger role. Among other things, Chief Justice John Roberts oversees the Supreme Court’s private deliberations, chairs what is known as the Judicial Conference of the United States, and issues a report each year on the state of the federal judiciary.

As Stephen Wermiel wrote in a 2017 SCOTUSblog post, the chief justice is often described as “first among equals” vis-à-vis his fellow justices. In this role, he presides over the Supreme Court’s private conferences, where the justices review around 7,000-8,000 annual petitions for certiorari, granting around 60-80 of these for full review. At such conferences, the chief justice speaks first and guides discussions, while also determining who writes the majority opinions when he is in the majority. (If the chief justice is in dissent, the author of the majority opinion is decided by the most senior justice in the majority.)

On the administrative side, the chief justice is technically in charge of managing the court’s operations, from personnel to facilities. He also addresses public controversies, such as debates over live audio streaming of arguments.

Additionally, as head of the federal judiciary – overseeing over 30,000 employees –Roberts currently chairs the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for federal courts. This conference typically meets twice a year, and reviews administrative and policy issues facing the federal court system and advises Congress on legislation involving the judicial branch. The chief justice further appoints judges to specialized bodies like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Annually, the chief justice also issues a report on the federal judiciary. Last year, Roberts focused on defending the judiciary’s independence.

As for the chief justice’s constitutional duty of presiding over impeachment trials, that role is largely ceremonial. That is because the Senate limits his authority to that of a presiding officer subject to the Senate’s will. So, at least in one area, the chief justice is not the head honcho.  

On Site

From Amy Howe

Test of Presidential Power

On Monday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and agreed to decide on the president’s ability to fire the heads of independent agencies. The case could dramatically upend Supreme Court precedent and give the executive branch much greater authority over federal agencies. Read Amy’s analysis to understand the significance of Monday’s announcement — and what could happen next.

From Kelsey Dallas

Police Dogs And Their Noses

The traffic stop started with a dirty license plate and led to a Supreme Court petition on a drug-detection dog’s sniff into an open window. The sniff-centered case, Mumford v. Iowa, could become at least the fourth case on police dogs and the Fourth Amendment in front of the justices since 2004. Read Kelsey’s full analysis here.

Contributor Corner

In his latest Justice, Democracy, and Law column, Edward B. Foley, a law professor at The Ohio State University and former clerk for former Justice Harry Blackmun, writes about the court’s call for reargument in Louisiana v. Callais and what it could mean for the Voting Rights Act.

Many fear that the court’s reargument order signals an intent to rule Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act – which bars racial discrimination in voting – unconstitutional. … But it is crucial to disentangle two separate constitutional questions that are potentially at stake in Callais. One is whether Congress has the power to require states to avoid drawing legislative districts that “result[]” in racial minorities having “less opportunity than other members of the electorate … to elect representatives of their choice,” as Section 2 of the VRA provides. The other issue is whether a state violates the Constitution when (as occurred in Louisiana), to avoid violating Section 2, it draws a legislative district specifically with the intent to enhance the electoral power of a racial group. The two issues are not the same.

You can access the rest of the piece here.