So Ordered

The Court holds that a defendant who absconds while on federal supervised release does not automatically extend the term of that release. The Sentencing Reform Act gives courts many tools to punish a failure to report, but a fugitive-tolling rule that keeps the term running past the date a judge set is not one of them. CASE: Rico v. United States AUTHOR: Gorsuch, J. DECIDED: 2026-03-25 OPINION: ht...

The Court holds that a person previously convicted under a law may still sue under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for purely prospective relief against that law's future enforcement. Heck v. Humphrey does not bar such a suit, because it does not collaterally attack the prior conviction. CASE: Olivier v. City of Brandon AUTHOR: Kagan, J. DECIDED: 2026-03-20 OPINION: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/60...

The Court holds that New Jersey Transit is not an arm of New Jersey and so cannot claim the State's interstate sovereign immunity when it is sued in another State's courts. New Jersey built it as a legally separate corporation that can sue and be sued and is responsible for its own debts and judgments, and the State's substantial control over it does not change that. CASE: Galette v. New Jersey Tr...

The Court holds that a federal contractor cannot immediately appeal a pretrial order denying it protection under Yearsley v. W. A. Ross Construction Co. Yearsley provides a defense to liability on the merits, not an immunity from suit, so an order rejecting it can be fully reviewed on appeal after a final judgment. CASE: Geo Group, Inc. v. Menocal AUTHOR: Kagan, J. DECIDED: 2026-02-25 OPINION: htt...

The Court holds that a trial judge may bar a testifying criminal defendant's lawyers from discussing his ongoing testimony for its own sake during an overnight recess, so long as the order leaves them free to discuss other protected topics such as trial strategy and a possible plea. Such a qualified conferral order does not violate the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. CASE: Villarreal v. Texas AU...

On an emergency application, the Court lets the Government keep using its expanded SAVE citizenship-verification program, which checks voters against Social Security records, while a privacy-law challenge proceeds, finding that a federal immigration statute likely overrides the disclosure limits the lower court relied on. CASE: Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters AUTHOR: Per...

The Court holds that the Helms-Burton Act itself strips Cuban government agencies and instrumentalities of foreign sovereign immunity, so a U.S. national suing them under the Act for trafficking in confiscated property does not also have to fit the suit within an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. CASE: Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S. A. (Cuba) AUTHOR: Kavanaugh, J. DECI...

The Court holds that ERISA does not require a multiemployer pension plan to calculate an employer's withdrawal liability using actuarial assumptions adopted on or before the measurement date. Actuaries may select their assumptions, such as the discount rate, after that date, so long as the assumptions satisfy the statute's reasonableness and best-estimate requirements. CASE: M & K Employee Solutio...

The Court holds that the Federal Tort Claims Act's postal exception, which retains the government's sovereign immunity for claims arising from the "loss," "miscarriage," or "negligent transmission" of mail, applies even when postal workers intentionally refuse to deliver it. Both "miscarriage" and "loss" of mail can occur as a result of intentional misconduct, not just negligence, so the exception...

The Court holds that federal courts may not create new causes of action for violations of international law under the Alien Tort Statute, so Cisco cannot be held liable under that statute for aiding and abetting the Chinese Government's alleged persecution of religious practitioners. It also holds that the Torture Victim Protection Act does not provide for aiding-and-abetting liability, because th...

The Court holds that a federal court which stayed claims in a pending action under Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act keeps jurisdiction to confirm or vacate the arbitral award that resolves those claims, even though the Section 9 or Section 10 motion shows no independent basis for federal jurisdiction on its face. Badgerow v. Walters, which barred the "look-through" approach for freestandin...

The Court holds that Delaware's affidavit-of-merit law, which bars a medical malpractice complaint from being filed unless a medical professional attests to the suit's merit, does not apply in federal court. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 answers the same question, what a plaintiff must show about the merits of his claim at the outset of litigation, and it requires no more than a short and plai...

The Court holds that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act expressly preempts a state-law failure-to-warn claim that would require a pesticide manufacturer to add a cancer warning to a label EPA has approved without one. Because federal law requires Monsanto to use the EPA-approved Roundup label unless and until EPA approves or requires a change, a Missouri tort claim demanding a...

The Court holds that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy, as applied to a licensed counselor who offers nothing but talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint rather than conduct. Because the law lets a counselor affirm a client's sexual orientation or gender identity but forbids her from speaking in ways that would change it, the lower courts erred in applying only rational-basis review i...

The Court holds that restitution imposed under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act of 1996 is criminal punishment for purposes of the Ex Post Facto Clause. The statute's text and structure — it labels restitution a penalty for an offense, is codified in the criminal code, and is imposed at sentencing alongside imprisonment and fines — make that conclusion plain, even though Congress also intende...

The Court holds that the federal election-day statutes do not require absentee ballots to reach election officials by election day. Because an "election" is the electorate's choice of candidate, and that choice is complete when voting ends rather than when ballots arrive, Mississippi may count absentee ballots that are postmarked by election day and received up to five business days later. CASE: W...

The Court holds that Rule 60(c)(1)'s requirement that a motion be made within a reasonable time applies to a Rule 60(b)(4) motion alleging that a judgment is void. A motion for relief from an allegedly void judgment is a "motion under Rule 60(b)," so the Rule's default time limit reaches it — resolving a split in which the Sixth Circuit stood alone against every other circuit. CASE: Coney Island A...

The Court holds that the Federal Election Campaign Act's limits on how much a political party may spend in coordination with its own candidates violate the First Amendment. The base limits on contributions to candidates, the earmarking rules, and the disclosure requirements already serve the Government's interest in preventing circumvention, so the coordinated-expenditure caps are disproportionate...

The Court holds that an Internet service provider is not contributorily liable for its subscribers' copyright infringement merely because it knew certain accounts were being used to infringe and kept serving them. Contributory liability requires that the provider intended its service to be used for infringement, which can be shown only by inducement or by a service tailored to infringement — and C...

The Court holds that Congress did not clearly authorize convictions under both 18 U. S. C. §§ 924(c)(1)(A)(i) and (j) for a single act that violates both provisions. Because the two subsections define the same offense under Blockburger, and Congress never wrote into §924 the Blockburger-surmounting language it used elsewhere, one act may spawn only one conviction: subsection (j) is an alternative...

The Court holds that, under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, schools may maintain separate women's and girls' sports teams for biological females and may determine eligibility for those teams based on biological sex. Title IX permits schools to provide sex-separated teams defined by biological sex, and limiting girls' and women's teams to biological females doe...

The Court holds that police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain a person's Google Location History data, because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. That expectation is not defeated by the short, two-hour span of data the government obtained or by the fact that the records were held by a third-party company. The Court leaves...

The Court holds that the FTC's statutory provision limiting the President's ability to remove Commissioners only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office violates the separation of powers. Because the FTC exercises quintessentially executive power — rulemaking, enforcement, and civil litigation — its Commissioners must be removable by the President at will, and Humphrey's Execut...

The Court holds that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present are nonetheless "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States, and so are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause. The Clause incorporates the common law rule of jus soli — citizenship by birth on the soil — subject only to the narrow exceptions recognized...

The Court denies the Government's request to stay a District Court injunction that bars President Trump from removing Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. On a narrow ground, the Court holds that the President failed to give Cook the notice and opportunity to respond that the Federal Reserve Act requires before a Governor may be removed for cause, so Cook remains in office whil...