Scotustoday For Wednesday, January 28

Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson on this day in 1916. SCOTUSblog executive editor Zach Shemtob recently gave a Jewish Study Center presentation on the history of Jewish justices and what the future could hold.

Plus, a reminder: we’re hiring! We’re looking for an editor to oversee a new daily newsletter for commercial litigators and corporate counsel that highlights circuit court decisions, relists, denials, en banc grants, and notable dissents.

SCOTUS Quick Hits

• Last week, a group of California Republicans asked the court on its interim docket to block the state from using its redistricting map in this year’s elections. California officials’ response to that request is due tomorrow by 4 p.m. EST. To learn more about what’s currently pending on the interim docket, see the Closer Look section below.
• The court has not yet indicated when it will next release opinions. If the court follows its typical pattern, the earliest the next opinion day may be is Friday, Feb. 20, the day of the court’s next session.
• The court will next hear arguments on Monday, Feb. 23, the first day of its February sitting.

Morning Reads

• US judiciary may not be able to fully maintain operations past Feb. 4 in government shutdown (Nate Raymond, Reuters)(Paywall) — If the government partially shuts down later this week amid a dispute over funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal judiciary “may not be able to fully maintain paid operations beyond February 4,” according to an internal memo written by Judge Robert Conrad, the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and obtained by Reuters. The legislation caught up in the dispute includes “a measure that would provide the judiciary $9.2 million,” as well as “an extra $30 million for Supreme Court security.”
• Appeals court won’t reconsider Habba disqualification, paving way to Supreme Court (Ella Lee, The Hill) — In a “terse” Monday order, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit “declined to reconsider a three-judge panel’s decision to uphold Alina Habba’s disqualification as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey,” according to The Hill. “The decision keeps intact the panel’s ruling that Habba’s tenure became unlawful when she remained in the role after her 120-day interim term expired, despite the ‘novel series of legal and personnel moves’ the administration took to keep her in the job.” Monday’s ruling may lead to “a Supreme Court battle over Trump’s efforts to keep his preferred prosecutors in U.S. attorney offices across the country.”
• Meta and YouTube head to trial over harm to children after TikTok settles (Shannon Bond, NPR) — Just before jury selection began on Tuesday in a closely watched trial on the harm posed to children by social media apps, TikTok settled with the teen at the center of the case, who is known as K.G.M. and “says her excessive use of social media led to mental health problems,” according to NPR. K.G.M.’s case will proceed against Meta and YouTube, which have argued “that there’s no clinical diagnosis of addiction to social media and that no direct link between using social media and mental health problems has been proved.” The sites have also argued “that just as people’s speech is protected from government censorship, the decisions that social media companies make about content are also a type of ‘protected speech’ — an argument the Supreme Court has affirmed.”
• This May Be the Only Path to Accountability for the Minneapolis Shootings (Barry Friedman and Stephen I. Vladeck, The New York Times)(Paywall) — In a column for The New York Times, Barry Friedman and Steve Vladeck noted that the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis have put a spotlight on “a series of decisions by the Supreme Court [that] made it all but impossible to hold federal officers liable for damages in federal lawsuits for violating our constitutional rights.” But, they argued, not enough has been said about the potential for “state and local prosecutors [to] prosecute federal officials for violating state criminal laws.” “States prosecuting federal officers for crimes committed in the course of their federal duties would certainly face complications,” they contended, “but those hurdles would not be insurmountable,” especially if they can prove, using videos of the shootings, that “a reasonable officer in [the federal agents’] position” would not have concluded that “their actions were necessary to fulfill their duties.”
• SCOTUS Holds The Key To Stopping Virginia Democrats’ Gun Control Gambit. Will They Use It? (Shawn Fleetwood, The Federalist) — In a column for The Federalist, Shawn Fleetwood highlighted pending petitions for review on semiautomatic rifle bans and bans on high-capacity magazines, noting that Supreme Court rulings on these issues could resolve Second Amendment conflicts across the country, including in Virginia, where policymakers are considering a bill that “seeks to outlaw the importation, sale, manufacturing, purchase, or transfer of an ‘assault firearm,'” and criminalize ownership of “large capacity” magazines.

A Closer Look: Interim Docket Update

Over the past year, the Trump administration has dominated the Supreme Court’s interim docket as it has challenged – often successfully – lower court rulings preventing it from implementing new immigration policies, overhauling funding programs, and removing certain federal officials from office. Two of its requests regarding such firings are still pending, but decisions are not expected anytime soon since the court heard oral argument last week on one of the applications and has indicated that it will not rule on the second at least until the first is resolved.

Putting those two requests from the administration aside, here is an overview of two significant applications that the court will likely address in the near future. Both come from California, including a high-profile battle over the state’s redistricting map.

California redistricting

As the court’s January argument session was winding down last week, the interim docket was heating up, thanks to an application from a group of California Republicans who are challenging their state’s redistricting map. The Republicans contend that the California Legislature unconstitutionally relied on race in redistricting, even as they acknowledge that lawmakers’ stated goal was to add five Democratic seats to the U.S. House of Representatives in response to a Texas map adding five Republican seats. (In a previous interim docket case, the court cleared the way for Texas to use its new map this year.)

Specifically, in Tangipa v. Newsom, the California Republicans have asked the justices to pause a lower court ruling allowing California to use the new map in this year’s elections. They are hoping that the justices issue a decision by Feb. 9, when the window opens in California for congressional candidates to file paperwork declaring their candidacies.

On Thursday, Jan. 22, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the court to grant the California Republicans’ request and block the state from using the new map. “California’s motivation in adopting the … map as a whole was undoubtedly to counteract Texas’s political gerrymander. But that overarching political goal is not a license for district-level racial gerrymandering,” Sauer wrote.

California officials’ response to the request is due on Thursday by 4 p.m. EST.

Parental rights

As Amy reported in November, the court has fielded multiple petitions for review in recent months on parental rights, public schools, and gender identity. The justices have not yet granted such a petition, but they are now addressing a similar case on the interim docket.

In Mirabelli v. Bonta, a group of parents and teachers are challenging California policies that they claim prevent public school teachers from notifying parents about their child’s decision to use different pronouns or a different gender identity at school unless the student gives them permission to do so. They have asked the justices to vacate a stay from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that paused a federal judge’s ruling in their favor, which determined that the policies violated parents’ due process and free exercise rights, and teachers’ free speech and free exercise rights.

The parents and teachers contend that the 9th Circuit has “flouted” the Supreme Court’s June 2025 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which held that parents have a constitutional right to opt their kids out of lessons involving discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity. “California’s policies unquestionably interfere with parents’ ability to direct the religious upbringing of their children,” an outcome the court rejected in Mahmoud, they wrote.

California officials, on the other hand, have urged the court to leave the 9th Circuit’s stay in place, contending that it will “prevent confusion, harm to students, and a massive change to the status quo.”

Mirabelli v. Bonta has been fully briefed since Jan. 22, so the court’s decision could come at any time.

SCOTUS Quote

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: “So tell me how to write this decision.” 

MR. SURI: “I’d suggest copying our brief, Your Honor.”

— Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters

On Site

From the SCOTUSblog Team

Contributor Corner

Defending the Fed: agency independence in three dimensions

In his first Controlling Opinions column, Richard Re reflected on the court’s recent decisions (and expected future decisions) on the president’s power to remove subordinate executive officials, exploring how and why the court’s view of this power is changing.

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