Supreme Court of the United States, 2026

The Court, per curiam, granted the Government’s application to stay the District Court’s injunction pending appellate review and denied Alabama’s separate stay application as moot.

The Court denied certiorari without addressing the merits of enforcing Jones’s collateral-review waiver against his constitutional challenge to his conviction. Justice Sotomayor, writing alone respecting the denial, agreed that the case should not be granted, vacated, and remanded in light of Hunter v.

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson, held that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment and affirmed the District Court’s preliminary injunction.

The Court held that the FTC Commissioners’ statutory protection against removal without cause violates Article II because the FTC exercises executive power and must remain subject to presidential control. President Trump therefore could remove Slaughter without establishing statutory cause.

Justice Barrett, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, held that the federal election-day statutes do not preempt Mississippi’s allowance for counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five business days afterward.

The Court denied certiorari without addressing the merits of Dershowitz’s request to overrule New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and related public-figure defamation precedents. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissented from the denial.

The Court denied certiorari without addressing the merits of the healthcare workers’ Title VII claims. Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, dissented. He argued that a state law prohibiting religious accommodations cannot automatically establish an employer’s undue-hardship defense under Title VII…

The Court denied certiorari without explaining its decision or resolving the merits of Smith’s Eighth Amendment and qualified-immunity claims. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented and would have summarily reversed the Seventh Circuit’s grant of qualified immunity.

Justice Kagan, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, and Jackson, held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search by obtaining Chatrie’s Google Location History data.

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson, denied the Government’s application to stay the preliminary injunction protecting Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from removal.

Justice Alito, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, held that a noncitizen standing in Mexico has not arrived in the United States under the INA and therefore is not entitled under the provisions at issue to inspection or to apply for asylum.

Justice Alito's opinion for a six-Justice majority held that the TPS statute bars review of respondents' nonconstitutional challenges to termination of Syria's and Haiti's designations and that the Haitian respondents were unlikely to establish racial discrimination warranting interim relief.

Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Barrett, held that FIFRA expressly preempts Durnell’s failure-to-warn claim because it would require a cancer warning additional to or different from the EPA-approved Roundup label that federal law requires Monsanto to…

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, held that RLUIPA cannot impose personal-capacity liability on state prison employees who have not knowingly and voluntarily agreed to answer suits under its Spending Clause provisions.

Justice Alito's opinion holds that, following a tax foreclosure sale fairly conducted in light of the Nation's history of tax sales, the Takings Clause measures compensation by the auction proceeds rather than hypothetical fair market value.

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, held that RLUIPA cannot impose personal-capacity liability on state prison officers under Congress’s spending power absent their knowing and voluntary agreement to that liability.

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Thomas joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, held that the INA does not require border officers to possess clear and convincing evidence that a returning lawful permanent resident committed a crime involving moral turpitude before…

Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett, held that the Helms-Burton Act itself abrogates the sovereign immunity of Cuban agencies and instrumentalities, so plaintiffs suing those entities under the Act need not independently satisfy an exception under the…

The Court denied certiorari without explaining its decision or resolving the merits of the Fourth Amendment question. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented from the denial.

The Court held per curiam that AEDPA did not permit habeas relief based on the trial court’s refusal to instruct the jury about attenuation under Missouri v. Seibert. No clearly established Supreme Court holding required such an instruction, and federal habeas courts could not second-guess the state courts’…

The Court denied certiorari without explaining its reasons or deciding the merits of Saldaño’s intellectual-disability claim. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented.

Justice Gorsuch's opinion for seven Justices held that the government failed to justify prosecuting Hemani under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) solely because he regularly used marijuana while possessing a firearm.

Justice Kagan, writing for eight Justices, held that a knowing and voluntary sentencing-appeal waiver is unenforceable when enforcement would produce a miscarriage of justice: an obvious, egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute.

Justice Kagan delivered the Court’s opinion, joined by every Justice except Justice Thomas. The Court held that a knowing and voluntary sentencing-appeal waiver is unenforceable when enforcement would produce a miscarriage of justice: an obvious, egregious sentencing error that would bring the judicial system into…

The Court denied certiorari without addressing the merits of a student's First Amendment challenge to her school's refusal to approve club flyers containing photographs of students holding anti-abortion advocacy placards. Justice Alito dissented, with no other Justice joining his opinion.

The Court granted Powell leave to proceed in forma pauperis and denied Alabama's petition for certiorari without explaining its reasons or deciding the merits. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented.

Justice Kagan, writing for a unanimous Court, held that a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. §1519 for falsifying a document must occur in the district where the falsification occurred, not a different district where the targeted federal investigation was located.

Justice Kagan delivered the unanimous opinion holding that a prosecution for falsifying a document under 18 U. S. C. §1519 must occur in the district where the falsification occurred, not a different district where the targeted investigation was located.

Justice Jackson, writing for a unanimous Court, held that courts assessing whether a debtor’s failure to disclose a claim was inadvertent or mistaken for judicial-estoppel purposes must consider the totality of the circumstances.

The Court denied certiorari without resolving the merits. Justice Sotomayor, writing alone respecting the denial, criticized Mississippi’s requirement that a defendant alleging ineffective assistance in presenting a Batson challenge show that a successful challenge would have changed the trial’s substantive outcome.

The Court, per curiam, granted Alabama’s applications to stay the District Court’s injunction pending further review. It concluded that Alabama was likely to succeed against both the intentional-vote-dilution and statutory claims because the District Court failed to respect the presumption of legislative good faith…

The Court held per curiam that the Eleventh Circuit improperly considered post-trial DNA evidence when reviewing the Florida Supreme Court’s determination that a witness’s testimony was immaterial to the jury’s verdict.

Justice Kavanaugh's majority opinion held that the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably applied clearly established Batson precedents and unreasonably determined that Pitchford waived his opportunity to challenge the prosecutor's explanations for striking four black prospective jurors.

Justice Barrett, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, held that sentencing disparities resulting from Congress’s nonretroactive reduction of §924(c) penalties cannot establish eligibility for compassionate release, either alone or combined with other factors.

The Court, in an opinion by Justice Barrett joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, affirmed the Second Circuit. It held that challenges to a conviction’s validity, including claims of actual innocence, cannot constitute grounds for compassionate release under 18 U.S.C.

The Court denied without explanation Florida’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint against California and Washington concerning their issuance of commercial driver’s licenses. It did not decide Florida’s preemption or public-nuisance claims.

The Court, in a per curiam opinion, held that the Fourth Circuit abused its discretion by departing from the principle of party presentation. The parties disputed whether the association’s constitutional claims were covered by the Civil Service Reform Act, but the Fourth Circuit remanded on an unraised theory that…

The Court, in an unexplained per curiam order, dismissed certiorari as improvidently granted without deciding how courts should evaluate multiple IQ scores under Atkins v. Virginia.

Justice Jackson delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court, holding that ERISA does not require actuarial assumptions used to calculate an employer’s withdrawal liability to be selected on or before the statutory measurement date.

The Court, without explaining its reasoning, granted the manufacturers’ applications to stay the Fifth Circuit’s May 1, 2026 order pending the appeal and disposition of any timely petition for certiorari. The order did not resolve the merits of Louisiana’s challenge to the FDA’s mifepristone requirements.