SCOTUStoday for Wednesday, November 26

We’re wishing you a happy and restful Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving weekend. On Monday, the justices will be back in the courtroom to start the December sitting, and the SCOTUStoday newsletter will be back in your inbox.

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• The court could issue its decisions in the interim docket cases on President Donald Trump’s effort to deploy the National Guard to Illinois, the Trump administration’s effort to remove the top U.S. copyright official from her post, and Texas’ new congressional map at any time.
• The Supreme Court Building will be closed on Thursday and Friday this week.
• The court’s December sitting begins next week. On Monday, the justices will hear argument in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, on whether a service provider can be held liable for copyright infringement if it continued to provide services to people it knew were engaged in infringement, and Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, on federal courts’ role in asylum cases. See the On Site section below for more on these two cases.
• Mark your calendars: SCOTUSblog will be hosting a live blog during the oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter on Monday, Dec. 8. The live blog will begin at 9:30 a.m. EST.

Morning Reads

• Times Analysis Finds Errors in Trump’s Supreme Court Filing That Calls for National Guard in Chicago (Devon Lum, Mattathias Schwartz, Christoph Koettl, and Ainara Tiefenthäler, The New York Times)(Paywall) — After analyzing videos and audio files from Chicago, The New York Times concluded that “[t]he Trump administration made erroneous claims to the Supreme Court” when it asked to be allowed to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, “mischaracterizing the responsiveness of local police and the actions of protesters.” Specifically, the Times contends that the administration misstated “what happened in the aftermath of a car crash and shooting on Oct. 4 in Chicago that involved Border Patrol agents” and made it seem as if “the Chicago Police Department didn’t respond quickly to the scene, leaving federal agents to fend for themselves during what they called a riot.”
• As judges face more threats, only the Supreme Court gets new security funds (Derek Hawkins, The Washington Post)(Paywall) — The deal that ended the government shutdown earlier this month “boosted security funding for the Supreme Court, freeing up millions of dollars to support round-the-clock protection for the nine justices,” according to The Washington Post. It did not, however, send additional security funding to “hundreds of judges in lower courts, who for months have urged lawmakers to set aside more money for their safety amid a surge in threats of violence.” “These are really serious matters, and Congress is not taking it seriously,” said Liam O’Grady, a retired judge who served in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, to The Washington Post.
• DOJ Defense of Top Prosecutors Tees Up Debate for Supreme Court (Celine Castronuovo and Ben Penn, Bloomberg Law) — On Monday, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed the Justice Department’s cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, holding that the interim U.S. attorney who brought the charges, Lindsey Halligan, is unlawfully serving in that role. Although the DOJ’s appeal will go first to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, law professors and former prosecutors told Bloomberg Law that the Trump administration’s “commitment to stand by its divisive US attorney appointments increases the chances that the Supreme Court is forced to review the administration’s attempts to test the bounds of federal vacancy laws.”
• Supreme Court case could restore gun rights for millions in blue states: AG Bondi (Michael Ruiz, Fox News) — On Monday, the federal government filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of licensed gun owners in Hawaii who are challenging the state’s restrictions on concealed carry on private property, according to Fox News. In a social media post about the filing, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote that Hawaii has “effectively bann[ed] public carry” in violation of the Second Amendment and that a ruling for the gun owners “will restore Second Amendment rights for millions of Americans.” The Supreme Court is set to hear the case, Wolford v. Lopez, in January.
• Is the Fourth Circuit the New Ninth? (Jonathan H. Adler, The Volokh Conspiracy, Reason) — In a post for Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, Jonathan H. Adler positioned the court’s summary reversal on Monday of a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on post-conviction relief within a growing trend toward disagreement between the Supreme Court and the 4th Circuit. “I would not be surprised if the Fourth Circuit amasses a high reversal rate over the next several terms. Last term, the Fourth went 0 for 8, and it’s starting off in the hole for OT 2025,” Adler wrote.

On Site

Case Previews

Ronald Mann on Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment

The court will hear its big copyright case for the year on Monday, Dec. 1, when it reviews a billion-dollar ruling against Cox Communications based on its failure to eradicate copyright infringement by its customers. In Cox Communications v. Sony Entertainment, Sony successfully proved that many of Cox’s subscribers are flagrant copyright infringers, and it also proved that Cox continued to sell internet access to subscribers for whom it had received repeated notices from content providers like Sony alleging that the users were engaged in infringing conduct. The justices now will consider whether Cox should be held liable for its users’ actions, as Ronald Mann noted in his case preview.

Kelsey Dallas on Urias-Orellana v. Bondi

Also on Dec. 1, in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, the Supreme Court will consider the federal judiciary’s role in asylum cases as it weighs whether a federal court of appeals must defer to the Board of Immigration Appeals’ judgment on an asylum seeker’s claims of persecution when it reviews the individual’s case. Read Kelsey’s case preview for more on this dispute.

Contributor Corner

Justice Jackson’s dissents

In his latest Civil Rights and Wrongs column, Daniel Harawa reflected on the reported tension between the court’s three liberal justices and what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is trying to accomplish by penning much sharper dissents than Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Jackson’s dissents, Harawa wrote, are “a democratic signal to the public, naming threats as she sees them so that civic actors – not just judges – can respond.”