A more expansive ruling by the justices on the Second Amendment’s scope, however, could invite legal challenges to a host of other carry regulations, an outcome sought by gun rights activists and feared by gun-control groups. The Supreme Court has not tackled the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections since the justices found an individual right to bear arms in that amendment more than a decade ago.Ī narrow ruling in Bruen that focuses on the peculiarities of New York’s scheme and its arbitrary enforcement would not directly imperil other restrictions on when and how Americans can carry firearms in public. As I noted last week, however, how exactly the justices craft the decision could have far-reaching implications. The court is widely expected to rule that New York’s current scheme for obtaining concealed-carry permits won’t survive a Second Amendment challenge brought against it by local gun owners. Given the gravity of the situation and the extraordinary stakes of Dobbs, it would not be surprising if this one went down to the wire before the court’s de facto recess in early July.Īnother case that drew renewed interest in recent weeks is New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Once they do, Alito may circulate a second draft that addresses their criticism or makes other changes. Politico reported on May 11 that the three dissenting justices had not yet circulated their dissenting opinion(s) in the case. Alito circulated his initial draft to the other justices in early February. Thanks to the leak, we have a better understanding of the Dobbs timeline than any other case on the court’s docket right now. Wade outright and allowing states to ban most abortions for the first time in almost a half-century. Thanks to the historic leak of Alito’s draft opinion, it now appears virtually certain that they’ll do it in one fell swoop, overturning Roe v. It was already fairly clear that the court was poised to significantly curtail access to the procedure the only real questions were by how much and how quickly they would do it. That case centers on a legal challenge to Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion. The other factor here is that the remaining cases aren’t easy ones-insofar as any Supreme Court case is ever “easy,” that is. Their work here might not yet be done, either, with Ohio’s redistricting mess now drawing in the federal judiciary after a three-judge panel ordered the state to use maps that the Ohio Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional. That confluence brought an additional layer of legal battles to the shadow docket: The justices dealt with redistricting cases from Alabama, Wisconsin, and other states. But this term also coincided with the once-in-a-decade redistricting process that followed the 2020 Census. The court hears its fair share of these cases every two years, of course. But the justices do circulate dissents and concurring opinions in them from time to time, as three of the dissenting justices did here, and deliberate over the outcome on a hastened schedule.Ĭomplicating matters for the court this year is the added burden of election-related cases on the shadow docket. Shadow-docket cases can look deceptively simple because they almost never come with written opinions by the majority. While the justices didn’t hand down any rulings in argued cases this week, they did block Texas from implementing its new social media censorship law in a 5–4 ruling. In recent years, this docket went from being a mechanism to handle emergency and administrative motions from the lower courts to a venue for deciding consequential legal disputes. One possibility is that the justices have been busy with the unusual number of major cases on the shadow docket this term. Using numbers from SCOTUS stats guru Adam Feldman, Stohr reported that this is the furthest behind that the court has been on deciding cases by this point in the calendar since at least 1950.
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Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr noted earlier this week that the court has only handed down decisions in fewer than half of its argued cases this term-the ones that go through the full briefing and oral arguments process. Jackson Women’s Health Organization affecting the justices’ work? There are some signs of sluggishness in their usual output. Is behind-the-scenes friction stemming from last month’s leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft decision in Dobbs v. The court is now entering the final stretch of its most turbulent term in recent memory with a major backlog of prominent cases. Many weeks of the year go by without Supreme Court decisions, of course, but that tends to be less common in the month before the court wraps up its annual October-to-June term.
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The Supreme Court did something strange last week: It didn’t hand down rulings in any of its argued cases.