SCOTUStoday for Friday, November 14

On this day in 1878, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in Reynolds v. United States, on whether a federal law banning bigamy violated the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. (The court ultimately held that it did not.)

Week in Review

The November sitting concluded this week. Here are the links to SCOTUSblog’s coverage of the cases that were heard on Monday and Wednesday:

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• On Thursday, the Trump administration withdrew its request for the Supreme Court to pause a district court ruling requiring it to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for November. The law that ended the government shutdown this week “fully funds SNAP through the end of the fiscal year,” thereby rendering the case moot, wrote U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer.
• Since Wednesday, the court has resolved three other pending matters on the interim docket: two requests for stays of execution and a request to pause a mandate that would require a 7-year-old girl residing in Texas with her mother to be sent back to Venezuela, where she is expected to reunite with her father. The court denied all three.
• Today, the justices will take part in a private conference and discuss cases and petitions for review.
• On Monday, the court is expected to release an order list at 9:30 a.m. EST, in which it will potentially announce additional cases that it has decided to hear this term.
• Also on Monday, the Trump administration and lawyers for Illinois and Chicago will file what are expected to be their final briefs on President Donald Trump’s authority to deploy the National Guard to Illinois.

Morning Reads

• Judge allows lawsuit over Trump’s anti-DEI grant policy despite Supreme Court ruling (Nate Raymond, Reuters) — A federal judge ruled on Thursday that eight “Democratic-led states can pursue a lawsuit challenging a U.S. Department of Education policy that led to the cancellations of millions of dollars in teacher-training grants despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to terminate the funding,” according to Reuters. The Supreme Court’s decision in April said that disputes over government contracts belong in the Court of Federal Claims. In Thursday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley held that “the Supreme Court’s recent holdings in Trump-era cases meant she could not force the administration to reinstate grants it terminated as part of its effort to nix diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. But she said the states could still pursue claims in her court that the Department of Education overstepped its legal authority,” citing an August concurring opinion from Justice Amy Coney Barrett that a litigant could “challenge an agency policy’s in district court and pursue retrospective claims for money in the Court of Federal Claims.” If the states’ claims are successful, Judge Kelley continued, “organizations that received grants that were terminated could file a new case before the Court of Federal Claims seeking money damages.”
• Oklahoma governor spares the life of inmate just before he was to be executed (Sean Murphy, Associated Press) — Hours after the Supreme Court denied Tremane Wood’s request for a stay of execution and moments before he was set to die by lethal injection for “the stabbing death of Ronnie Wipf, 19, during a botched robbery in 2002,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt spared Wood’s life by “commuting his sentence to life without parole,” according to the Associated Press. “Family members of the victim had supported [Wood’s] clemency bid … and the governor cited their ‘Christian forgiveness and love,’ in a statement announcing his decision.”
• Justice Gorsuch to co-author children’s book about the Declaration of Independence (John Fritze, CNN) — Justice Neil Gorsuch revealed on Thursday during an interview with Fox News that he is working on a children’s book about the Declaration of Independence. The book will be co-authored by Janie Nitze, who wrote Gorsuch’s previous book with him (for adults) on government regulations, and “is set to [be] publish[ed] in May, which Gorsuch indicated is timed to correspond” with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, according to CNN. “I wanted to be part of America’s celebration and bringing us together again,” Gorsuch said.
• The Alien Enemies Act and the Major Questions Doctrine (Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason) — In a post for Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, Ilya Somin explored whether the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Tren de Aragua drug gang violates the major questions doctrine, which “requires Congress to ‘speak clearly’ when authorizing the executive to make ‘decisions of vast economic and political significance.’” He concluded that “courts can and should rule against” the administration’s interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act based on the “text and history of the law alone,” but that the major questions doctrine adds further weight to the idea that the administration’s interpretation of the act is wrong.
• Steve Bannon gets a boost in Supreme Court appeal of his contempt conviction (Jordan Rubin, MSNBC) — In an entry on MSNBC’s legal blog, Jordan Rubin noted that the court has requested a response to Steve Bannon’s “bid to reverse his 2022 contempt conviction for not complying with the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation.” The Justice Department initially waived its right to respond to Bannon’s petition, but it must now provide arguments for why the court shouldn’t take up the case. The request for a response is notable because petitions without a response are almost always denied in short order, as Rubin explained. It takes one justice to make such a request and four to grant review.

A Closer Look: Trump v. Carroll

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to hear Trump v. Carroll and overturn the lower court’s ruling against him in that case. But unlike the many other such requests the president has made in recent months, which dealt with matters of presidential authority, this petition centers on a civil dispute.

In 2019, during Trump’s first term, New York Magazine published an excerpt of a book in which the writer E. Jean Carroll alleged that Trump had sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in 1996. The president denied the allegation in a written statement and comments to reporters. “I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book—that should indicate her motivation,” the statement said in part. “It should be sold in the fiction section.”

At the time, Carroll had no way to sue Trump for damages over her sexual assault claim because the statute of limitations had run out. She sued the president for defamation, however, alleging that his remarks about her book excerpt were false and harmful. A trial in that lawsuit was delayed for several years as the Justice Department sought to take Trump’s place as the defendant on the basis that his allegedly defamatory remarks were made as part of his work as president.

Then, in 2022, amid a nationwide reckoning with the #MeToo movement, New York passed a law allowing persons to seek civil damages for claims of sexual misconduct that had been time-barred. Carroll used the law to file a second lawsuit against Trump, seeking damages for the alleged assault in 1996.

Unlike the initial defamation lawsuit, Carroll’s second case went to trial within six months of being filed. In May 2023, a federal jury rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped but found Trump liable for sexual abuse of Carroll and for defamation. (The defamation claims in the second lawsuit stemmed from comments Trump made in 2022 about the case being “a hoax and a lie.”) Trump’s Supreme Court petition addresses that verdict and the $5 million in damages that Trump was ordered to pay, which a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld last year.

Trump, who is represented in the case by attorneys from the James Otis Law Group in St. Louis, has asked the justices to consider whether the district court misapplied federal rules of evidence. Although these rules can be quite convoluted, they address – among other things – how to balance the potential value of propensity evidence (evidence showing one’s disposition) against the potential prejudicial effect of that evidence. In his petition, Trump contends that the lower court “admitt[ed] highly inflammatory propensity evidence,” including testimony from two other women who accused Trump of sexual assault. Trump also asserts that the district court erred in allowing jurors to see the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump makes sexually explicit remarks about women. Throughout the brief, Trump maintains that Carroll’s accusations are “implausible” and “politically motivated.”

Carroll’s response to Trump’s Supreme Court petition in Trump v. Carroll is due on Dec. 15. The justices will likely review the petition sometime early next year.

SCOTUS Quote

“[N]o question can be settled until settled right.”

— Justice John Marshall Harlan (as quoted by Justice Neil Gorsuch in United States v. Vaello Madero)

On Site

From Kelsey Dallas

Second Amendment in the Spotlight

If you’ve followed coverage of the Supreme Court’s 2025-26 term over the past few months, you’d likely say this term’s theme is executive power. By the time the dust settles on this term, however, the court may have also had a great deal to say about the Second Amendment. So far this fall, the justices have taken up two cases on gun rights, and they’ll be considering several additional petitions on Second Amendment issues over the next two weeks. Read Kelsey’s analysis to learn more about the questions being raised.

Contributor Corner

Class Actions in a Post-CASA World

Adam Crews, a professor at Rutgers Law School, wrote for SCOTUSblog on a question that’s been raised about class-action lawsuits after the court in Trump v. CASA identified these suits “as a procedurally permissible [way] to obtain relief for people who are not actively participating in a case”: What happens to a class action if the named plaintiff loses their personal injury and has nothing left for the court to redress?