Oral Arguments - The Supreme Court of the United States

Case Summary: M & K Employee Solutions v. Trustees of the IAM Pension Fund is a case about whether an employer is obligated to contribute to a multiemployer pension fund under a collective bargaining agreement and related plan documents, and whether the fund’s trustees correctly interpreted those documents when claiming contributions were owed, but a precise sentence‑format rule or holding can...

Case Summary: Wolford v. Lopez is a Second Amendment challenge to Hawaii’s law that makes it a crime for licensed handgun carriers to bring a firearm onto private property open to the public without the owner’s express permission, with the plaintiffs arguing this default ban unconstitutionally burdens public carry while the State defends it as consistent with historical regulations and property ow...

Case Summary: Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp. arises from an August 9, 2018 collision in Philadelphia, where Cedric Galette, riding as a passenger in a stopped vehicle driven by Julie McCrey, was injured when a New Jersey Transit bus struck their car. Galette sued McCrey and New Jersey Transit in Pennsylvania state court for negligence, and New Jersey Transit moved to dismiss, arguing it is an...

Case Summary: West Virginia v. B. P. J. arises from a challenge by Becky Pepper‑Jackson, a transgender girl in West Virginia, to the state’s “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which bars transgender girls and women from competing on girls’ and women’s school sports teams. As an 11‑ to 15‑year‑old middle‑ and high‑school runner who has taken puberty blockers and publicly lived as a girl for years, she sued...

Case Summary; Little v. Hecox arises from Idaho’s 2020 “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” (HB 500), which bars transgender girls and women, and any student designated male at birth, from competing on female sports teams at public schools and public colleges, and includes a sex‑verification process that can require invasive exams if an athlete’s sex is disputed. Lindsay Hecox, a transgender woman and...

Case Summary: Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish grows out of a set of Louisiana coastal‑damage suits in which Plaquemines Parish and other local governments allege that Chevron and other oil and gas companies’ decades of exploration and production activities in the coastal zone, such as dredging canals, drilling, and failing to comply with Louisiana’s State and Local Coastal Resources Managem...

Case Summary: Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment arises from a suit by Sony and other record labels alleging that Cox’s internet customers used its service to download and share pirated music, after Cox received millions of infringement notices identifying specific subscriber accounts. In the Eastern District of Virginia, Sony proceeded on theories of contributory and vicarious copyrig...

Case Summary: Urias-Orellana v. Bondi involves Douglas Humberto Urias‑Orellana, his wife, and their child, Salvadoran nationals who entered the United States without authorization in 2021 and conceded removability but applied for asylum and Convention Against Torture protection based on escalating threats and one physical assault tied to gang extortion in El Salvador. An immigration judge found Ur...

Case Summary: First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin arises from a 2023 administrative subpoena issued by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin to First Choice, a Christian, pro‑life nonprofit that operates pregnancy centers and provides counseling, information about abortion, and abortion‑pill‑reversal services. The subpoena, issued under New Jersey consumer‑protection and charita...

Case Summary: Olivier v. City of Brandon arises from Gabriel Olivier’s street‑preaching near a concert at the Brandon, Mississippi amphitheater, where he used signs and a loudspeaker to evangelize on sidewalks and grassy areas just outside the venue. After the city adopted an ordinance confining all “protests” to a remote designated zone in the park, the police chief ordered Olivier to move there;...

Case Summary: Trump, President of the United States v. Slaughter arises from President Donald Trump’s March 2025 decision to fire Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter before the end of her fixed term, even though the FTC Act provides that commissioners may be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Trump notified Slaughter by email that...

Case Summary: Case Summary: NRSC v. FEC (National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission) arises from a 2022 lawsuit in which the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, then‑Senator J.D. Vance, and then‑Representative Steve Chabot challenged federal limits on how much national party committees can spend in coordinated expe...

Case Summary: FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund involves a group of closed‑end investment funds, including FS Credit Opportunities Corp., that adopted “control‑share” provisions (mirroring Maryland’s Control Share Acquisition Act) to restrict the voting rights of any shareholder whose holdings would reach or exceed 10% of a fund’s voting power, which the funds said would pr...

Case Summary: Hamm v. Smith involves Alabama death-row prisoner Joseph Clifton Smith, who was convicted of capital murder for killing Durk Van Dam during a 1998 robbery and sentenced to death. Over the years, Smith received five full-scale IQ scores ranging from roughly 72 to 78 (with measurement error meaning his IQ could be as low as about 69), and he sought state postconviction and then federal...

Case Summary: Hencely v. Fluor Corp. arises from a 2016 suicide bombing at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where an Afghan national, Ahmad Nayeb, employed by a subcontractor of Fluor Corporation, detonated an explosive vest using materials from his job, killing several people and seriously injuring U.S. Army Specialist Winston T. Hencely. Fluor was working under a Department of Defense logistics c...

Case Summary: Rico v. United States involves Isabel Rico, who was sentenced in 2010 to 84 months in prison and four years of supervised release for a federal drug offense, then began serving her supervised release in 2017. In 2018, she absconded, stopping all contact with her probation officer, while 37 months of supervised release remained. After she was arrested in January 2023 and charged with...

Case Summary: Coney Island Auto Parts, Inc. v. Burton arises from a 2015 adversary proceeding in the Vista-Pro Automotive bankruptcy, where Vista-Pro (a Tennessee auto-parts manufacturer) sued Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc., a New York corporation, in the Tennessee bankruptcy court to recover approximately $49,000 in unpaid invoices. Vista‑Pro served the summons and complaint by first‑cla...

Case Summary: Hain Celestial Group v. Palmquist arises from a products‑liability suit brought by Grant and Sarah Palmquist on behalf of their son E.P., alleging that his physical and mental decline and diagnosis of heavy‑metal poisoning were caused by consuming Hain’s Earth’s Best organic baby foods purchased from Whole Foods. The Palmquists originally sued Hain and Whole Foods in Texas state cour...

Case Summary: Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump involves two family-owned educational toy companies, Learning Resources and hand2mind, which import most of their products from China and other countries. They claimed that new emergency tariffs ordered by President Donald Trump would dramatically raise their costs and harm their businesses. In April 2025 they sued the President and several federal o...

Case Summary: Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections involves Damon Landor, a Rastafarian incarcerated in Louisiana whose religious beliefs require him to wear his hair in dreadlocks. After Landor showed prison officials a Fifth Circuit decision stating that forcibly cutting a Rastafarian prisoner’s hair violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), officers al...

Case Summary: GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal arises from a class action filed by former and current civil immigration detainees at GEO’s Aurora, Colorado detention facility, alleging that GEO ran two unlawful labor schemes inside the center. First, they claim GEO’s “Sanitation Policy” forced detainees, under threat of punishment such as solitary confinement or loss of privileges, to clean common areas...

Case Summary: Fernandez v. United States arises from Joe Fernandez’s federal convictions in the Southern District of New York for participating in a murder‑for‑hire scheme, based largely on testimony from a cooperating witness, Darge, after which the court imposed two consecutive life sentences while his co‑defendants received much shorter terms ranging from two to thirty years. Years later, Ferna...

Case Summary: Rutherford v. United States arises from Daniel Rutherford’s federal convictions for two Hobbs Act robberies and two associated firearm counts under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), for which the district court imposed a total prison term of about 42½ years, including a “stacked” 32‑year mandatory minimum on the firearm counts (7 years for the first, 25 years for the second) plus 125 months on the...

Case Summary: The Case involves Harold R. Berk, a Florida resident who was visiting Delaware when he fell, severely injured his left ankle and foot, and then sought treatment at a local emergency room and rehabilitation facility. Berk alleges that Dr. Wilson C. Choy, Beebe Medical Center, and Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital provided negligent medical care that worsened his injuries by del...

Case Summary: The Case arises from a Texas murder trial in which the judge ordered defendant David Asa Villarreal not to discuss his ongoing testimony with his lawyers during a 24‑hour overnight recess between direct and cross‑examination, and again during a later seven‑minute break in cross. Villarreal, the only defense witness and central to a self‑defense theory, was thus unable to confer with...