WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Tuesday, November 21

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read:

• Voting Rights Act ruling is latest attempt by Trump-nominated judges to overturn Supreme Court precedent (Joan Biskupic, CNN)
• Supreme Court agrees to hear San Carlos Apache appeal on health care funding (Adrienne Washington, Cronkite News)
• Idaho Asks US Supreme Court to Permit Abortion Law Enforcement (Mary Anne Pazanowski, Bloomberg Law)
• David Souter showed the Supreme Court how to free itself from politics (Danielle Allen, The Washington Post)
• U.S. Supreme Court rejects review of Derek Chauvin’s latest appeal attempt (Kim Hyatt, The Minneapolis Star Tribune)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Monday, November 20

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• Supreme Court to Resolve Split Over Tribal Health Care Funds (Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson, Bloomberg Law)
• Supreme Court declines appeal from Derek Chauvin to review conviction in George Floyd murder (John Fritze, USA Today)
• The Supreme Court’s Search for a More Attractive Gun Rights Case (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)
• Republicans Have a New Plan to Save the Supreme Court Abortion Pill Case (Susan Rinkunas, Slate)
• The Politics of the Justices’ Pensions (Steve Vladeck, One First)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Friday, November 17

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Friday morning read:

• Supreme Court denies request to reinstate Florida drag show law (David Kihara, Politico)
• ‘He didn’t deserve to die like this’: Supreme Court decision leaves family of a man killed at the border searching for justice (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News)
• She got a ticket for beeping her car horn. Now she’s asking the Supreme Court to sound off. (John Fritze, USA Today)
• The Supreme Court should have heeded Ketanji Brown Jackson’s wisdom (George Will, The Washington Post)
• Supreme Court Starts Ethics Work, Congress or Court Must Finish (Michael Broyde, Charles Geyh, & Danielle Caputo, Bloomberg Law)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Thursday, November 16

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Thursday morning read:

• Supreme Court Urged to Rule Against Mandatory Repatriation Tax (John Woolley, Bloomberg Tax)
• Logging Group Asks Supreme Court to Review Monument Expansion (Bobby Magill, Bloomberg Law)
• Passing the Oral Argument Torch (Adam Feldman, Empirical SCOTUS)
• What the Supreme Court’s New Ethics Code Lacks (Lora Kelley, The Atlantic) 
• Why the Supreme Court says ethics controversies are just a ‘misunderstanding’ (Joan Biskupic, CNN)

RELIST WATCH

Funding for Native healthcare programs, and the Armed Career Criminal Act returns

 The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.

Since our last installment, the Supreme Court has continued slowly chipping away at the still-sizable number of lingering relists from the end-of-summer “long conference.” The court denied review in five-time relist Johnson v. Prentice, involving an Illinois prisoner’s claim that his nearly three-year term of solitary confinement constituted cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, filed an opinion dissenting from the denial of certiorari, arguing that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit had applied the wrong standard and had failed to consider whether prison officials had acted with deliberate indifference to the substantial risk that such long isolation in unsanitary conditions and, for periods, without exercise, posed to the health and safety of petitioner Michael Johnson. But remarkably, seven relisted petitions still remain from the long conference.

As anticipated, the court granted review in one-time relist Diaz v. United States. It presents the question whether, in prosecuting a woman accused of smuggling drugs into the United States, the government can introduce expert testimony that most couriers know they are carrying drugs and that drug-trafficking organizations do not typically entrust large quantities of drugs to unwitting transporters.