Amy Howe

Last month, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the target of an attempted “swatting” incident – a call falsely reporting the sound of gunshots at her Virginia home. Although swatting incidents are intended to provoke a heavy police response, and therefore can often be dangerous, police audio indicated that Fairfax County police officers determined that the address had “24-hour security coverage” and were able to quickly confirm with the security detail at the house that it was a swatting call.

Alabama came to the Supreme Court on Thursday morning, asking the justices to allow the execution of Jeffery Lee, who was sentenced to death for the 1998 robbery and murder of a pawn shop owner and employee, to proceed as scheduled on Thursday night. The lower courts have barred

Alabama came to the Supreme Court on Thursday morning, asking the justices to allow the execution of Jeffery Lee to proceed as scheduled on Thursday night. The lower courts have barred the state from using nitrogen hypoxia to execute Lee, calling that method – in which a mask is placed over the prisoner’s face and he breathes nitrogen until he passes out and then dies because of the lack of oxygen – “likely unconstitutional.” But Alabama’s solicitor general, A. Barrett Bowdre, told the justices that “the risk of ‘breathing difficulty or breathing discomfort’ from nitrogen hypoxia does not rise to the level of a severe pain that violates the” Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The Supreme Court on Monday added three new cases, on issues ranging from hearings for noncitizens in immigration detention to the constitutionality of Florida’s six-person juries and the exceptions to the general rule on second petitions for federal post-conviction relief. The announcement came as part of a list of orders from the justices’ June 11 conference, which also included two dissents by Justice Samuel Alito from the denial of review in cases involving student speech and the constitutionality of a prosecutor’s comments in a capital murder trial.

A student group and a trade association came to the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon on its interim docket, asking the justices to restore orders by a federal judge in Austin, Texas, that bar the state from enforcing a law that imposes age-verification and parental-consent requirements on minors’ access to apps and paid content within those apps. Half the states have similar age-verification requirements for minors.

A group of Haitian citizens who are beneficiaries of a program that allows them to stay in the United States came to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking the justices to throw out a dispute over whether the Trump administration can end the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Haiti. The justices heard oral arguments in the case

When the justices take the bench on Thursday morning to issue opinions, the Supreme Court will have 20 cases left to decide, with just under two weeks to go before the end of June – the point by which the justices normally release all of their decisions and leave for their summer recess. Moreover, a not-insubstantial portion of those 20 cases are expected to be major rulings. This has led to questions about the timing and pace of opinion announcements for the rest of the term, and in particular whether the justices might be “behind” in releasing opinions or whether the court might need to extend into early July to finish up.

Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, came to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking the justices to block a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit from going into effect while he appeals that decision. If the lower court’s decision is not put on hold but he ultimately prevails, Moore told the justices, he may not be able to recover the $8.2 million that the jury awarded him.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sent the case of a Texas man who is seeking to appeal one of the conditions that a federal judge imposed as part of his sentence back to a lower court. By a vote of 8-1, the justices held that one can appeal a supervised-release condition even where he or she had generally waived his right to appeal as part of a plea agreement if enforcing such waiver results in a “miscarriage of justice.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in United States v. Hemani that the federal government cannot prosecute a Texas man on charges that he violated a federal law barring users of illegal drugs from having a gun. In an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the justices agreed with Ali Danial Hemani that, at least as when it is applied to him, the law violates the Second Amendment.