SCOTUStoday for Monday, December 29

On this day in 1971, former Justice John Marshall Harlan II died at age 72, just three months after retiring from the court due to declining health. Among his many accomplishments, Harlan is the namesake (along with Justice John Marshall Harlan I) for Executive Editor Zach Shemtob’s first child (and, yes, we realize how nerdy/dorky/dweeby that is). 

This is an abridged edition of the SCOTUStoday newsletter, and we will be sending abridged editions tomorrow and Wednesday, as well. We will then take Thursday and Friday off. We will resume our regularly scheduled programming on Monday, Jan. 5.

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• The Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place a ruling by a federal judge in Chicago that bars the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard in Illinois. For more on the decision, check out Amy’s analysis and our Interim Docket Blog.
• Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to release a year-end report on the federal judiciary on Wednesday. Amy will be reporting on it.

Morning Reads

• Louisiana National Guard sending 350 troops to New Orleans through Mardi Gras (Matthew Albright and Ben Myers, The Times-Picayune)(Paywall) — Moments after the Supreme Court ruled on the National Guard deployment in Chicago, a new deployment was announced in New Orleans, according to The Times-Picayune. “About 350 members of the Louisiana National Guard will deploy to New Orleans for two months, helping to beef up security in the French Quarter for New Year’s Eve, the Sugar Bowl and Mardi Gras.” The New Orleans “deployment is under federal Title 32 status, which means the National Guard will continue to report to [Louisiana Gov. Jeff] Landry and leader, Maj. Gen. Thomas Friloux, but the operation will be paid for by the federal government.” The Supreme Court case dealt with a different statute that puts the National Guard under federal command.
• How a Scholar Nudged the Supreme Court Toward Its Troop Deployment Ruling (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)(Paywall) — The Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling against the Trump administration in the dispute over National Guard deployment in Illinois “was in large part the result of a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by a Georgetown University law professor named Martin S. Lederman,” which said the administration had misinterpreted the law used to order the deployment, according to The New York Times. “A veteran of the Office of Legal Counsel, the elite Justice Department unit that advises the executive branch on the law, Professor Lederman identified what he called a glaring flaw in the administration’s argument. ‘None of the parties were paying attention to it,’ he said,” describing his claim that the law, “which allows deployment of the National Guard if ‘the president is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States’” refers to the U.S. military, not to civilian law enforcement.
• Do school pronoun policies violate free speech? It’s complicated (BrieAnna J. Frank, USA Today) — As disputes arise across the country over school rules that address when, if ever, teachers should use “pronouns that don’t align with a person’s biological sex,” legal experts are beginning to expect that the issue will be in front of the Supreme Court sooner rather than later, according to USA Today. “Historically, the more the Supreme Court sees confusion about the law, the more likely they are to step in and provide needed clarity,” said Alex Morey from the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan organization that supports the First Amendment. She continued, “No matter where you fall on the spectrum politically, people want to know what they can say, must say, should say and teachers are eager to have a fuller understanding of what their rights are in and out of the classroom, particularly on this pronoun issue.”
• In interview with Bishop Barron, Justice Barrett opens up about her faith (Tessa Gervasini, Catholic News Agency) — Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke about the role of her Catholic faith in her career in a recent interview with Bishop Robert Barron. She said that the Constitution, rather than Catholic teachings, guides her work on the Supreme Court, but added that her faith “grounds” her as she navigates the demands of her position, according to Catholic News Agency. “So it’s what enables me to keep my job in public life in perspective and remain the person who I am and continue to try to be the person I hope to be despite the pressures of public life,” she said.
• The Fourth Amendment’s Erratic Year at the Supreme Court (Damon Root, Reason) — In a column for Reason, Damon Root reflected on two Fourth Amendment rulings from the Supreme Court in 2025, sharing his belief that “[t]he right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure had an up-and-down sort of year.” In Barnes v. Felix, he noted, the court “unanimously rejected a legal standard governing the use of force by law enforcement” that limited a court’s analysis to the moment force was used. By allowing courts to consider more of the surrounding circumstances, the ruling may complicate officers’ efforts to prove that the force was justified. But on the interim docket, in Noem v. Perdomo, which addressed the circumstances under which federal immigration officials could make stops in the Los Angeles area, some justices showed an “utter disregard … for the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure regardless of skin color,” Root argued.

On Site

From Kelsey Dallas

The Supreme Court’s “reindeer rule”

Here’s an overview of what the Supreme Court said in two Christmas-related cases, what legal experts mean by the “reindeer rule,” and why some justices felt a ruling permitting a nativity display on public land watered down the religious significance of holiday festivities.

Contributor Corner

Reviving lenity

In his latest Civil Rights and Wrongs column, Daniel Harawa explored a doctrine known as the rule of lenity, under which courts are to resolve uncertainty in a criminal statute in favor of the defendant, and its changing role in American criminal law.