As we’ve previously noted, we here at SCOTUSblog read a lot of legal news each week. Still, some headlines are hard to forget, including this one: The Supreme Court could legalize moonshine, and ruin everything else.
At the Court
On Wednesday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor released a statement through the Supreme Court’s Public Information Office about the “inappropriate” remarks she made last week about Justice Brett Kavanaugh (without naming him). For more on her statement, see the On Site section below.
The court has indicated that it may announce opinions tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. EDT. We will be live blogging beginning at 9:30 a.m.
Also on Friday, the justices will meet in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
Monday is the start of the court’s April argument session.
Morning Reads
Justice Jackson chides Supreme Court conservatives over ‘oblivious’ pro-Trump emergency orders
Mark Sherman, Associated Press
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke at Yale Law School on Monday and “delivered a sustained attack on her conservative colleagues’ use of emergency orders to benefit the Trump administration,” according to the Associated Press. She “call[ed] the orders ‘scratch-paper musings’ that can ‘seem oblivious and thus ring hollow,’” and criticized her colleagues for insisting that those “‘musings’ be applied by lower courts.” Jackson also “pushed back on the court’s assessment that preventing the president from putting his policy in place … is a harm that often outweighs what the challengers to a policy might face.” “The president of the United States, though he may be harmed in an abstract way, he certainly isn’t harmed if what he wants to do is illegal,” she said.
Trump recalls how Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death affected the Supreme Court as he discusses Samuel Alito’s future
Aileen Graef and John Fritze, CNN
During an interview with Fox Business that aired Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump “said he has a list of potential candidates in mind if a seat opens on” the Supreme Court this year, according to CNN. However, he added that he doesn’t know if Justices Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas will retire. Trump went on to highlight what happened to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, after declining to step down during President Barack Obama’s time in office, died at the end of Trump’s first term. “She decided that she was going to live forever … [but] she went out, and I got to appoint somebody,” the president said.
Trump threatens to fire Powell if the Fed chair doesn’t leave office on his own
Jeff Cox, CNBC
During the same Fox Business interview, Trump addressed the investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s leadership of the renovation of the Fed headquarters, sharing his intent to fire Powell later this year if he won’t leave on his own. “If he’s not leaving on time – I’ve held back firing him. I’ve wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial. I want to be uncontroversial,” the president said. Trump was referring to his desire for Powell to leave after his term as chair ends in May, even though Powell “has two years remaining on his term as governor,” according to CNBC. Trump’s effort to fire another Fed governor, Lisa Cook, “has been argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and is awaiting a decision.”
Ishmael Jaffree, Who Won Case Rejecting School Prayer, Is Dead at 80
Clay Risen, The New York Times
Ishmael Jaffree , the man behind one of the Supreme Court’s most famous school prayer cases, Wallace v. Jaffree, died on July 30, 2024, but The New York Times did not learn of his death until last week. In its obituary, the Times described Jaffree’s push in the 1980s to ensure that Alabama followed the Supreme Court’s guidance on school prayer from the 1960s, an effort that brought the issue back in front of the justices during the 1984-85 term. “The Supreme Court had banned mandatory prayer in public schools in 1962, but a series of recent laws in Alabama had made it easier to bring religion into the classroom,” the Times reported. In Jaffree’s case, the court clarified its religious freedom jurisprudence, “restricting states from allowing anything more than a belief-neutral ‘moment of silence’ in classrooms.” The case made Jaffree, who was agnostic, “a hero among civil libertarians, atheists and humanists” and something of a villain in “conservative Alabama.”
Justice Senator?
Michael A. Fragoso, National Review
In a column for the National Review, Michael A. Fragoso explained why he believes it would be a bad idea for Trump to follow Sen. Chuck Grassley’s advice and appoint either Sen. Mike Lee or Sen. Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court if he has the opportunity to make another appointment. “Being a senator and being an appellate judge are very different roles,” Fragoso wrote. “Most basically, the Senate is about politics and the courts are about law.” Lee’s and Cruz’s skills in the Senate won’t translate well to the court, he contended. “At the end of the day a successful justice persuades his or her colleagues by force of reasoning, typically written. It’s not by articulate and impassioned speeches at lunch (a Ted Cruz specialty) or by ginning up rabid twitter mobs (Mike Lee’s current method of persuasion).”
On Site
From the SCOTUSblog Team
Justice Sotomayor apologizes for “inappropriate” remarks about Justice Kavanaugh
Just over one week after lobbing pointed personal criticism at Justice Brett Kavanaugh for his concurring opinion in a decision by the Supreme Court that lifted restrictions on immigration stops that the challenger said are based on racial profiling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her remarks “inappropriate” and indicated that she had apologized to Kavanaugh.
Case Preview
Justices to consider when federal courts may review state-court decisions
The justices on Monday will hear argument on the circumstances in which lower federal courts may review state-court judgments. The case highlights persistent confusion over lower court jurisdiction, which the justices tried – apparently unsuccessfully – to resolve just over two decades ago.
Case Preview
Court to contemplate SEC’s use of disgorgement in securities enforcement
Monday’s argument in Sripetch v. SEC will be yet another chapter in the court’s sustained examination of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s use of certain remedies in its enforcement of the securities laws. The specific question here is whether the SEC can use “disgorgement” to force a wrongdoer to turn over its profits to the government without showing directly that the wrongdoer’s activities harmed its customers.
Relist Watch
“Universal” pre-K causes court to re-re-reconsider major religious precedent
In his Relist Watch column, John Elwood explored the one new relist that will be considered by the justices this week: St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, which addresses Catholic schools’ inability to participate in Colorado’s universal preschool program and presents an opportunity to overrule a 1990 case, Employment Division v. Smith, in which the court held that the free exercise clause does not exempt religious observers from compliance with neutral, generally applicable laws.
Contributor Corner
Last arguments of the term: huge cases for the Fourth Amendment and immigration
The court’s April argument session includes two important immigration cases as well as one of the biggest Fourth Amendment cases in years, according to Rory Little. He offered a brief overview of these disputes in his ScotusCrim column.
Podcasts
Amarica’s Constitution
Last Branch Stands, the Barbara Court Sits – Special Guest Sarah Isgur
Akhil Reed Amar and Andy Lipka continue their analysis of the oral argument in the birthright citizenship case and then speak with Sarah Isgur about her new book, Last Branch Standing.
New York Football Giants v. Flores
This Closer Look expands on the case description Kelsey wrote for her article on recent petitions for review involving public figures.
Can the NFL grant its own commissioner complete authority to determine if a coach’s claim against it is successful? That’s the question at the center of a petition for review in a case pitting the NFL and three of its teams against one of its most prominent Black coaches.
The petition stems from a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores in 2022 against the NFL, Dolphins, New York Giants, and Denver Broncos. Flores alleged that his status as a Black man had played a role in the Dolphins’ decision to fire him and the Giants’ and Broncos’ decisions not to hire him, and he accused the league of failing to address “a pattern of racist hiring practices.” “I understand that I may be risking coaching the game that I love and that has done so much for my family and me,” Flores said after filing the class-action lawsuit, according to NFL.com. “My sincere hope is that by standing up against systemic racism in the NFL, others will join me to ensure that positive change is made for generations to come.”
Two months later, Flores’ lawsuit expanded to include two other Black coaches as plaintiffs and three more NFL teams. One of those teams was the Houston Texans, whom Flores alleged had removed him “from consideration for a head coach position after the lawsuit was filed.”
Citing the NFL Constitution and team-specific arbitration agreements, the league and teams moved to compel arbitration, contending that Flores, who is currently the defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings, and the other coaches had accepted NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s authority over employment disputes when they signed their various coaching contracts. The NFL Constitution states that “[t]he Commissioner shall have full, complete, and final jurisdiction and authority to arbitrate … [a]ny dispute between or among players, coaches, … or clubs of the League.”
In March 2023, a federal district judge “compelled arbitration as to the claims in which there was a specific employment contract between the respective coach and team,” but did not compel arbitration of Flores’ claims against the Broncos, Giants, Texans, and NFL. The decision cleared the way for those claims from Flores to move forward in federal court, rather than in the league’s internal arbitration process.
The NFL, Broncos, Giants, and Texans appealed the district court’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which affirmed Flores’ victory in August 2025. Specifically, it held that the league’s arbitration agreement was an arbitration agreement “in name only” and is therefore unenforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act. The “provision fails to bear even a passing resemblance to ‘traditional arbitral practice,’” according to the 2nd Circuit’s decision. “Instead, it offends basic presumptions of our arbitration jurisprudence by submitting Flores’s statutory claims to the unilateral substantive and procedural discretion of the ‘principal executive officer’ of one of his adverse parties, the NFL.”
In January, the three teams and NFL asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case, contending that the 2nd Circuit claimed an authority to subjectively determine whether an arbitration agreement is enforceable that it doesn’t actually have. “The text and history of the Arbitration Act make clear that the Act protects not only the parties’ decision to arbitrate but also their chosen arbitration procedures, including their choice of arbitrator,” the petition said. Moreover, the league and teams continued, the ruling was “contrary to decisions from numerous other courts that have rejected arguments that the arbitration provision in the NFL Constitution, and similar provisions of other professional sports leagues, are unenforceable because they designate the league commissioner as the arbitrator.”
In his response to the petition, Flores asserted that the 2nd Circuit’s decision will not, as the league and teams predicted, send shockwaves through the legal landscape by weakening the Federal Arbitration Act. “The Second Circuit’s decision is consistent with all other circuit courts in holding that an employer—whether a professional sports league, restaurant, retail store or otherwise—cannot force employees to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims before the employer’s own chief executive,” Flores wrote.
New York Football Giants, Inc. v. Flores will be considered by the justices at their private conference on Friday.
SCOTUS Quote
MR. GARRE: “Your Honor, they have basis, and we have context, punctuation, pre-enactment history, post-enactment history, and structure.”
JUSTICE KAGAN: “I’m sorry. You’re saying they have text, and you have a bunch of other things.”
United States v. Woods (2013)
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