Citizens United v. FEC, a major case on political spending, was argued for the first time on this day in 2009. After reargument approximately six months later, the court in January 2010 struck down the challenged restrictions on spending by corporations and unions.
Plus, a reminder: On Thursday, SCOTUSblog is teaming up with Briefly for a LinkedIn Live event about the birthright citizenship case. Briefly’s Adam Stofsky will interview Amy about each side’s key arguments, the court’s potential leanings, and what the eventual decision could mean for the country. Register here to join the event, which will begin at noon EDT.
At the Court
On Monday, the court indicated that it may release opinions tomorrow at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging tomorrow morning beginning at 9:30.
In its Monday order list, the court announced its summary reversal of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit’s decision in Zorn v. Linton. In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court held that a police officer who put a protester in a wristlock after issuing a verbal warning was entitled to qualified immunity in the resulting lawsuit alleging use of excessive force. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. For more on this case and the order list, see the On Site section below.
Also on Monday, the justices heard argument in Watson v. Republican National Committee, on whether federal law requires not only that voters cast their ballots by Election Day, but also that election officials receive the ballots by then. Look for Amy’s argument analysis in the On Site section.
Today, the justices will hear argument in two cases: Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, on the rules pardoning omissions by bankrupt debtors; and Noem v. Al Otro Lado, on the rights of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Tomorrow, after the possible announcement of opinions, the justices will hear argument in Flowers Foods v. Brock, on whether “last-mile” drivers – drivers who deliver from a regional warehouse to a store – are exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act’s arbitration requirements.
Next Wednesday, April 1, we will be live blogging as the Supreme Court hears argument in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case.
Morning Reads
Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Halt DOGE Inquiry
Zoe Tillman, Bloomberg
In a petition for review filed on March 18, “[t]he Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court to block a government watchdog group from questioning a senior official and obtaining internal records about the Department of Government Efficiency project once led by Elon Musk,” according to Bloomberg. “The justices intervened in the same case last year” on the court’s interim relief docket, siding with the administration and halting the watchdog group’s effort to “uncover information about DOGE’s efforts last year to drastically cut federal spending and fire thousands of government workers.” Now, the administration has asked the justices to weigh in on the dispute over the district court’s order allowing discovery.
Trump administration launches more probes into Harvard
Kanishka Singh, Reuters
On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it has “opened two new investigations into Harvard University,” according to Reuters. “The latest probes will look into whether Harvard uses race-based preferences in admissions after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that ended affirmative action in higher education, and into allegations of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus.” The administration has previously sued Harvard over its treatment of Jewish students and over its alleged failure “to comply with a federal investigation” into its admissions process.
Bruce Springsteen Teams Up With the ACLU for ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ Birthright-Citizenship Video
Andy Greene, Rolling Stone
As the Supreme Court considers President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict access to birthright citizenship, the ACLU is teaming up with “The Boss” to call for a ruling against Trump. A new, 30-second video from the ACLU pairs Bruce Springsteen’s “1984 hit ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ with images of Americans of all backgrounds whose lives will be dramatically impacted by the decision,” according to Rolling Stone. In an interview, Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, said that he hopes the video helps Americans engage with the case. “We want birthright citizenship to become a household word, and for folks to feel invested in the outcome of our case,” Romero said.
The Virtues and Vices of “Certiorari Before Judgment”
Steve Vladeck, One First
In a post for his Substack, One First, Steve Vladeck revisited the court’s decision to grant certiorari before judgment in disputes over the Trump administration’s effort to end protected status for Syrian and Haitian nationals, reflecting on whether the court is making this move too often. “Historically, the Court used this procedural device, which, unlike an ‘ordinary’ cert. petition, allows the justices to leapfrog federal courts of appeals in cases of both exceptional importance and urgency, once in a blue moon,” Vladeck noted. But “[l]ast Monday’s grants … were the 25th and 26th since February 2019 – and the fourth and fifth of this term, alone.”
ICE Insists Liberia Is the Only Place It Can Deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Joe Lancaster, Reason
One year ago, the Department of Homeland Security mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. A legal battle ensued, and in April, the Supreme Court “affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the government ‘facilitate’ his release and return,” according to Reason. Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. in June, but his legal battles weren’t over. He remains in deportation proceedings, but his legal team and the federal government disagree over where he should be sent. In a Friday filing, the Trump administration urged U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis to clear the way for him to be sent to Liberia. According to Joe Lancaster, this makes little sense given that Garcia has no connection to that country; rather, the “only explanation seems to be as a form of punishment.”
On Site
Argument Analysis
Court appears ready to overturn state law allowing for late-arriving mail-in ballots
The Supreme Court on Monday appeared ready to overturn a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by, and then received within five business days of, Election Day. After just over two hours of oral argument, a majority of justices seemed to agree with the challengers that the Mississippi law conflicts with federal laws that set the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the “election day.”
From the SCOTUSblog Team
Court reverses ruling on qualified immunity, denies review of death-row case and First Amendment challenge by citizen journalist
In a list of orders released on Monday morning, the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by a federal appeals court, holding that a Vermont police officer is entitled to qualified immunity from a lawsuit brought by a nonviolent protester who was injured during a sit-in at the state’s capitol. The justices also denied review in the case of a Texas man on death row seeking DNA testing that he says could prove his innocence.
Contributor Corner
The bottom line
In his Nuts and Bolts column, Stephen Wermiel explored “the bottom line” of Supreme Court decisions – that is, the judgment and the mandate. Specifically, he explained what it means for the justices to “affirm, modify, vacate, set aside or reverse” lower-court judgments and what the Supreme Court has to do in order for its rulings to become “official.”
Contributor Corner
Birthright citizenship: reading the text and sidestepping the parent trap
In a Brothers in Law column, Akhil and Vikram Amar and Samarth Desai explored what they describe as “slam-dunk textual facts that doom” President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship: “The words ‘parent,’ ‘parents,’ ‘mother,’ and ‘father’ appear nowhere in the text of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause.”
A (Mandatory) Retirement Age?
One of the more familiar criticisms of the Supreme Court is that the justices stay there too long. Or as one law review article put it, “Happy Birthday! Now get out.”
Under Article III, Supreme Court justices (along with all Article III judges) have lifetime tenure, as they “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” (This differs dramatically from state supreme court justices, who are term limited in 49 states – the Rhode Island Supreme Court being the exception.)
Those who support a mandatory retirement age often point out that Supreme Court justices, on average, now serve for 26 years after joining the bench. Given life expectancy at the nation’s founding, justices’ times on the court near then were typically a good deal shorter. Proponents of retirement ages also point to its popular public support: Per a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, the majority of Americans favor age limits for “both politicians and Supreme Court justices.”
Those on the other side maintain that life tenure is critical for judicial independence (if justices have to find a career after, say, 18 years, the political environment may influence their votes) and institutional stability. Alexander Hamilton summed this argument up well: the framers provided life tenure “to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of justice.”
There have been several prior proposals for mandatory retirement, although none have gone very far. Because life tenure is written directly into Article III, Congress cannot simply pass a law to eliminate it altogether. Such a change would require a constitutional amendment, and several such amendments have thus been proposed.
One of the first emerged in 1937 as an alternative to President Franklin Roosevelt’s “court packing” plan. It consisted of a proposal for a constitutional amendment mandating compulsory retirement at age 75. Roosevelt, favoring increasing the number of justices instead, rejected this. From 1946 to 1955, the American Bar Association pushed for another amendment for retirement at the age of 75. This amendment didn’t get very far either, however, given significant resistance in Congress.
In the 1970s, Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia tried to have a statute passed for “the removal of any justice who became mentally disabled.” Nunn realized “the problem of mental incapacity [as] troubl[ing] the modern Supreme Court even more than it characterized the nineteenth-century Court,” perhaps referring to Justice William Douglas’ health difficulties while on the bench. (Justice Byron White agreed with Nunn’s sentiment, writing in a memo that “I am convinced that it would have been better had [Douglas’] retirement been required at a specified age.”)
The bill Nunn introduced ultimately evolved into the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980. The law created a complaint mechanism under which any individual could allege a federal judge had a) engaged in conduct prejudicial to the courts or b) had become unable to perform their judicial duties due to a mental or physical disability. Under the act, complaints are filed with the clerk of the relevant circuit court and reviewed by circuit judicial councils, with ultimate oversight by the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability, a body composed of lower federal court judges. But the act has a key limitation: it does not apply to Supreme Court justices. (The basis for this being that impeachment is the only constitutionally permissible means of removing a Supreme Court justice, and that the Judicial Conference does not have “administrative jurisdiction” over the Supreme Court.)
Roughly nine years later, Alabama Sen. Howell Heflin introduced two measures for a constitutional amendment that would have removed “any justice or judge … physically or mentally unable to perform his duties,” but this measure died after one day of hearings in 1990.
Several more recent proposals have again brought up the issue. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, first introduced the Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act in 2020, and then reintroduced it in 2021. If implemented, the act would guarantee each president two Supreme Court nominations per term, with justices serving 18 years before moving to senior status. The bill states that “any Justice who has served a total of 18 years is deemed retired from regular service and may continue to serve as a Senior Justice” – and thus attempts to avoid the constitutional challenge behind eliminating the lifetime tenure of Article III judges. A similar bill – the Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization Act – was introduced in 2022 before dying in committee, and reintroduced in both 2023 and 2025.
SCOTUS Quote
JUSTICE GORSUCH: “Well, what if – what if – what if a state came up with a law that said so long as a notary, that’s official, that’s recognized, certified that you cast your ballot on Election Day and it was delivered later by whatever means, common carrier or not, what – what in your theory of the preemptive effect of this statute would preclude that law?”
MR. STEWART: “I think two points on that, Justice Gorsuch. One I think is that –“
JUSTICE GORSUCH: “Pick your best.”
The post SCOTUStoday for Tuesday, March 24 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.