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SCOTUStoday for Friday, March 6
On this day in 1857, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that Scott, an enslaved man who spent time in free territory, was not free; African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not and could not be citizens; and the Missouri Compromise – which banned slavery in certain territories – was unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts once said that the decision “injured the court for generations.”
Week in Review
The court heard three arguments this week, as it wrapped up its February sitting. Here are the links to SCOTUSblog’s coverage:
United States v. Hemani: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
Hunter v. United States: Case Preview
Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II: Case Preview and Argument Analysis
And on Wednesday, the court released opinions in two argued cases: Urias-Orellana v. Bondi and Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corporation.
In Urias-Orellana, the court unanimously held that the Immigration and Nationality Act requires federal courts of appeals to apply the substantial-evidence standard when they review a determination that asylum seekers’ experiences in their home country did not rise to the level of persecution. Kelsey analyzed the opinion.
In Galette, the court unanimously held that New Jersey Transit Corporation is not an arm of the state of New Jersey and thus is not entitled to share in New Jersey’s interstate sovereign immunity from suit. Amy analyzed the opinion.
At the Court
Lawyers for a group of Syrian nationals urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place a ruling by a federal judge in New York City that allows them to reside in the United States despite efforts by the Trump administration to end their status to do so. For more on the filing, see the On Site section below.
Today, the justices will meet in a private conference to discuss cases and vote on petitions for review. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT.
Morning Reads
More than 20 states sue over new global tariffs Trump imposed after his stinging Supreme Court loss
Lindsay Whitehurst and Paul Wiseman, Associated Press
The Trump administration’s effort to reimpose tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court has prompted a new lawsuit. On Thursday, “[s]ome two dozen states challenged” the administration’s “planned 15% tariffs on much of the world,” contending that Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 does not give the president the authority to impose “sweeping import taxes,” according to the Associated Press. The states argue that Section 122 “was intended to be used only in specific, limited circumstances” – to address what Section 122 describes as “fundamental international payments problems” related to the U.S. dollar’s relationship to gold. “But the dollar is no longer linked to gold, so critics say Section 122 is obsolete.” Many of the states involved in the new lawsuit were also involved in the successful challenge to Trump’s previous tariffs.
The Tiny Court at the Center of a Massive Scramble to Get Tariff Money Back
Lydia Wheeler and Louise Radnofsky, The Wall Street Journal
Ongoing battles over tariff refunds have given “[o]ne of the most obscure courts in America … a rare moment in the sun.” “Most lawyers know little, if anything, about the Court of International Trade. Fewer than 300 cases were filed there annually in 2023 and 2024,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “The court generally referees disputes over how imported goods are classified and whether they are being dumped into the U.S. at below fair-market value. Until recently, hot cases at the court focused on issues such as Amazon’s contention that video doorbell cameras should be classified as digital still-image video cameras rather than transmission devices.” But now, “there are more than 2,000 lawsuits on the trade court’s doorstep from businesses suing to recoup what they paid” in tariffs.
Trump's TikTok deal benefited firms that 'personally enriched' him, lawsuit says
Ryan J. Reilly, NBC News
A new lawsuit against President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi argues that the deal to sell TikTok’s U.S. operation “violates a law intended to prevent the spread of Chinese government propaganda and has enriched Trump’s allies,” according to NBC News. The law in question, which was “signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2024” and upheld by the Supreme Court in January 2025, “said that TikTok couldn’t be distributed in the United States unless the Chinese company ByteDance found an American-based corporate home by the day before Donald Trump returned to office.” The Trump administration chose not to enforce the law as it worked on the deal that the president ultimately approved, which included investors from Oracle, MGX, and other companies who “have close ties to the President, and have at times personally enriched him.” In the lawsuit, “two software engineers from California … say they suffered financially due to the non-enforcement of the law.”
Justice Dept., Under Pressure From Trump, Fails to Build Autopen Case Against Biden
Michael S. Schmidt, Devlin Barrett, and Alan Feuer, The New York Times
After scrutinizing whether former President Joe “Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents,” Trump’s Justice Department determined it “was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case,” according to The New York Times. Three unnamed people who were “briefed on the matter” told the Times that “[i]nvestigators were never quite clear what crime, if any, had been committed by the Biden administration’s use of the autopen.” And it “was also unclear whether investigators should focus their attention on the actions of Mr. Biden’s aides or on Mr. Biden himself, given that the United States Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling in 2024, granted broad immunity to presidents for most acts undertaken as part of their official duties.”
Man pleads guilty to bringing explosives to a DC church marking the start of a Supreme Court term
Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press
Louis Geri of Vineland, New Jersey, “pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that he brought dozens of homemade explosive devices to a Washington, D.C., church that was preparing for an annual Mass celebrating the start of the Supreme Court’s term,” the Associated Press reported, citing court records. “Geri was arrested Oct. 5 outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where police officers were clearing the area before the annual Red Mass. Some justices usually attend the celebration, but none went to last year’s ceremony.” Geri is expected to be sentenced in July. “Geri and the government agreed that a prison term ranging from five years and 10 months to seven years and three months would be appropriate.”
On Site
Interim Docket
Syrian nationals urge Supreme Court to keep ruling in place allowing them to stay in the United States
On Thursday, a group of Syrian nationals challenging the Trump administration’s effort to end their eligibility for the Temporary Protected Status program urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a lower-court ruling that allows them to retain their legal status while litigation continues.
Opinion Analysis
Supreme Court rules that New Jersey Transit can be sued in other states
The court on Wednesday ruled that two men who were seriously injured in New York and Pennsylvania by buses operated by New Jersey Transit can sue the transit agency in those states. In a unanimous opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the justices held that New Jersey Transit is not an extension of the state of New Jersey and therefore does not share the state’s immunity from lawsuits.
Argument Analysis
Court grapples with whether federal law supersedes negligent hiring claims against freight brokers
The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard argument on whether federal law prevents state law claims allowing brokers to be held liable for negligently selecting motor carriers or drivers.
Podcasts
Advisory Opinions
Can Marijuana Users Be Barred from Owning Guns?
Sarah Isgur and David French break down United States v. Hemani, a Second Amendment case involving an alleged user of a controlled substance in possession of a gun. They then discuss two recent interim docket decisions.
A Closer Look:
Chief Justice Edward White
The first associate justice to be elevated to chief justice (most don’t count Chief Justice John Rutledge’s stint as an associate justice, since he never heard a single case), Chief Justice Edward Douglass White was appointed by Presidents Grover Cleveland (as an associate justice) and William Howard Taft (as chief), respectively.
Born in 1845 and raised on his family’s plantation in southern Louisiana, White was the grandson of James White, a delegate to the Continental Congress, and the son of Edward White, who served as Louisiana governor, a judge, and a five-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives. His father owned a sugar-beet plantation, relying on around 50 enslaved people. The younger White only knew his father for three years, however, as he died in 1847. White’s mother subsequently remarried, and the family moved to New Orleans. (Until Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court in late October 2020, White was the first and only justice from Louisiana.)
White, who came from a Catholic family, attended a Jesuit boarding school and then Georgetown College (now University). When the Civil War began, the future chief justice, then 15 years old, moved back home – “like most Southern students attending a Northern school,” according to the Supreme Court Historical Society –and joined the Confederate Army. In 1863, White was one of the thousands of Confederate troops who became trapped for weeks in Port Hudson, Louisiana, by Union forces.
A little less than two years later, White was again captured by the Union army in further combat and was imprisoned in New Orleans – where he would remain for about a month until Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865. White was released in a prisoner exchange at Red River Landing, the spot of one of the Civil War’s last battles, before heading home to New Orleans. (White later became friends with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who fought for the Union and was shot through the back of the neck in the Battle of Antietam, and he would put a bouquet on Holmes’ desk each year on the battle’s anniversary.)
White then attended the University of Louisiana (now Tulane University) for law school, which his late father had established as governor by signing its precursor’s charter. After graduating, he practiced law in New Orleans, briefly served on the Louisiana state senate, and was appointed to the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1878. The appointment didn’t last long, however, as White didn’t meet the new minimum age requirement of 35 to serve (he was 33 at the time). Ten years later, he was chosen by the state Legislature to represent Louisiana in the U.S. Senate, partly due to his role in abolishing the corrupt Louisiana Lottery, which had been granted a charter in 1868 based on supposed bribes to state legislatures.
In New Orleans, White also met his future wife, who eventually married him after 20 years of courtship. Meanwhile, White’s legislative work (which included opposing tariff reductions) drew Cleveland’s attention – who then nominated him to the Supreme Court in February 1894. The Senate confirmed White the same day (likely due to the fact that he was from the same party as the Senate majority) – and would do so again when Taft nominated him to chief justice (then an unprecedented move for an associate justice) in December 1910 following the death of Chief Justice Melville Fuller.
White’s best-known cases include those on race and civil rights. He authored the ruling in Guinn v. United States that rejected certain “grandfather clauses,” which allowed those whose grandfathers had been able to vote before the 15th amendment was ratified to register to vote without first passing a literacy test. As with his predecessor, however, White joined the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson. White also ruled on compelled military service (he wrote a unanimous majority opinion in the Selective Draft Law Cases of 1918 that held the government could expand its conscription requirements) and on the Sherman Antitrust Act (he established the “rule of reason” in evaluating “unreasonable” trade restraints in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, which federal courts continue to apply).
In addition, his court restrained war-related speech (holding that under Debs, Schenck, and Abrams, speech or activities interfering with the war could be criminalized), and the “Insular Cases,” which held that only some Bill of Rights protections apply within the U.S. territories.
The ninth chief justice spent 27 years on the court before dying in May 1921. White reportedly insisted on working until the very end – even until his eyes began to fail. As the Supreme Court Historical Society summarizes White’s legacy, “[d]uring his 27-year tenure on the Court, Edward Douglass White played a critical role in interpreting the law in the rapidly transforming post-Civil War and industrial United States.” Others have asserted, however, that White’s leadership “proved less than adequate to meet the challenges of [such a] tumultuous era.”
SCOTUS Quote
MS. BLATT: “I’m just trying to get Justice Alito’s vote, and what I’m trying to say –”
(Laughter.)
MS. BLATT: “ – to Justice Alito is – I care about the rest of you too, but – ”
JUSTICE ALITO: “Thank you very much.”
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE ALITO: “It’s very – very few advocates have that –”
JUSTICE GORSUCH: “I’ll just stop then.”
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE ALITO: “– goal.”
— Hunter v. United States
The post SCOTUStoday for Friday, March 6 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
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