SCOTUStoday for Thursday, October 23

Updated on Oct. 23 at 11:20 a.m.

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Morning Reads

• Judge extends restraining order barring National Guard deployment in Illinois as Supreme Court decision looms (Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune) — U.S. District Judge April Perry on Wednesday extended her order preventing President Donald Trump from deploying the National Guard in Illinois and considered how quickly to proceed with a “trial on the merits,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Perry “ordered both sides to confer within 10 days and come back with a plan for expedited discovery.” The Supreme Court’s decision on whether to pause Perry’s order is expected any day.
• Most Republicans Want Supreme Court Term Limits—Poll (Mandy Taheri, Newsweek) — A new poll from PRRI identifies broad – and bipartisan – support for term limits for Supreme Court justices, according to Newsweek. “The PRRI survey of 5,543 adults nationwide found that 75 percent of Americans believe there should be term limits for U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Along party lines, more Democrats than Republicans support the matter, with 85 percent of Democrats in agreement, 76 percent of independents, and 67 percent of Republicans.”
• As Supreme Court weighs Louisiana map, lawmakers head back to work (Chelsea Brasted, Axios) — A three-week special session of the Louisiana Legislature begins today, at which lawmakers are set to discuss the 2026 election and, more specifically, changes that can be made to qualifying deadlines to maximize potential candidates’ ability to react to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, according to Axios. The decision in that case, which is on race-based redistricting and the Voting Rights Act, may require Louisiana to adopt a new congressional map. Lawmakers “hope to push off qualifying long enough that candidates can know exactly what the map looks like before they enter a race.”
• Wisconsin seeks to end religious tax exemption after Supreme Court loss to Catholic group (Michael Gryboski, The Christian Post) — Four months after the court unanimously ruled that Wisconsin had violated the Constitution by refusing to give a Catholic charitable organization the exemption from its unemployment tax that is available to churches, faith-based schools and several other religious groups, the state is seeking to eliminate the tax exemption altogether, according to The Christian Post. “Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a remedial brief on Monday before the state supreme court in relation to the case brought by the Catholic Charities Bureau, writing that the U.S. Supreme Court ‘did not prescribe a particular remedy’ when siding with the charity” and that eliminating the exemption would “avoid collateral damage to Wisconsin workers while still curing the discrimination the U.S. Supreme Court identified.”
• Newly rejected by appeals court, LDS tithing lawsuit may be headed to U.S. Supreme Court (Tony Semerad, The Salt Lake Tribune) — “Disaffected” members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plan to appeal a challenge to the church’s operations to the Supreme Court, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. “Their suit, which originated in Utah, asserts that church leaders knowingly misled them and other members on a host of church doctrines, including over how the Book of Mormon, the faith’s signature scripture, came about,” to defraud them of charitable donations. The case was previously dismissed by a U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which accepted the church’s argument that courts could not resolve the dispute without improperly weighing in on “ecclesiastical matters.”

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• The court will not hear oral arguments again until Monday, Nov. 3, but the justices have plenty to work on in the meantime. Several cases on the interim docket are fully briefed and awaiting the court’s response, including the Trump administration’s request to be allowed to federalize and deploy the National Guard in Illinois and its attempt to change the current rules for sex markers on passports.
• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is scheduled to speak at California State University Dominguez Hills today about lessons she’s learned from her “life in the law.”

A Closer Look: Section 122

The dispute over President Donald Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs, set for argument on Wednesday, Nov. 5, centers on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president the power to “regulate … importation” of “property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest” during a national emergency. But it is drawing attention to a different law on trade called Section 122, which more explicitly grants the president tariff powers.

Section 122, part of the Trade Act of 1974, empowers the president to impose “a temporary import surcharge,” not to exceed 15%, for up to 150 days in order to address “fundamental international payments problems.” The text of the law explains that it’s designed to help the president address “large and serious … balance-of-payments deficits” or to “prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar in foreign exchange markets.”

The small businesses and states challenging Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA highlighted Section 122 in briefs filed Monday in the Supreme Court. Section 122 shows that when Congress wants to delegate tariff powers to the president it does so explicitly, they said, and with clear limitations. And the limits outlined in Section 122 and other laws that explicitly mention tariffs control the scope of IEEPA, they added. “It makes no sense to read IEEPA’s general language to allow the President to circumvent these statutes’ specific substantive and procedural limits … And the very existence of these tailored statutes belies the notion that IEEPA grants him unbounded power to impose tariffs whenever and however he sees fit,” contended one of the groups of small businesses.

The Trump administration also addressed Section 122 in its brief, but described its relationship with IEEPA as “complementary,” meaning that “each should be given full effect in its own domain.” “Section 122 and IEEPA each provides an independent source of authority; the President’s choice to exercise his authority under one does not compel him to comply with the terms of the other,” wrote U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

Trump likely used IEEPA, rather than Section 122 or another law regarding tariffs, to implement his tariffs policy because – at least in the administration’s reading – it allows the president to impose tariffs without a federal agency investigation into their potential impact and over a longer term (not for just 150 days, as is the case with Section 122). Administration officials have said they can use other statutes (Section 122 seemingly among these) to reimpose tariffs if the Supreme Court blocks the IEEPA tariffs, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged in a September interview with Reuters that these other methods are “not as efficient, not as powerful.”

SCOTUS Quote

“From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice.”

— Chief Justice John Roberts, in his commencement address to his son’s middle-school class

On Site

Contributor Corner

The Passage of Time

In his latest Courtly Observations column, Erwin Chemerinsky reflected on when, if ever, it’s appropriate for the Supreme Court to decide that a federal law is unconstitutional because it is no longer needed. Some justices seem to have engaged in just such an analysis in recent cases on racial discrimination and during last week’s arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, he noted. Chemerinsky criticized the practice, writing that it’s “disturbing for the court to strike down or narrow a vital civil rights statute based on a group of justices’ intuition that race discrimination in voting is largely a thing of the past.”

Which NBA Player Is Each Supreme Court Justice?

By now, many SCOTUSblog readers likely have seen Zach Shemtob’s article comparing the Supreme Court justices to heavy metal bands. Rodger Citron drew inspiration from that memorable piece for his story comparing the justices to NBA players. Read the post to discover whom he paired with the likes of LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Jimmy Butler.