Episodes
Every episode is a reading of a single U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion, preceded by a short neutral-voice summary and an AI disclosure. Episodes are released as opinions are processed and their audio is produced.
October Term 2025 49 episodes
- Rico v. United States Rico v. United States 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.
- Olivier v. City of Brandon Olivier v. City of Brandon 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.
- Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp. Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp. 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.
- Geo Group, Inc. v. Menocal Geo Group, Inc. v. Menocal 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.
- Villarreal v. Texas Villarreal v. Texas 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.
- Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters 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.
- Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S. A. (Cuba) Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S. A. (Cuba) 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.
- M & K Employee Solutions, LLC v. Trustees of IAM Nat. Pension Fund M & K Employee Solutions, LLC v. Trustees of IAM Nat. Pension Fund 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.
- Postal Service v. Konan Postal Service v. Konan 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 bars suits over deliberate nondelivery.
- Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe 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 the statute nowhere mentions it.
- Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties 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 freestanding confirm-or-vacate applications, does not apply when the claims were filed in federal court to begin with and are still pending there.
- Berk v. Choy Berk v. Choy 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 plain statement of the claim.
- Monsanto v. Durnell Monsanto v. Durnell 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 different label imposes a requirement "in addition to or different from" FIFRA's.
- Chiles v. Salazar Chiles v. Salazar 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 instead of sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny.
- Ellingburg v. United States Ellingburg v. United States 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 intended restitution to compensate victims.
- Watson v. Republican National Committee Watson v. Republican National Committee 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.
- Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited, Inc. v. Burton 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.
- National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Comm’n National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Comm’n 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 and are not necessary and narrowly tailored. Colorado II, which had upheld those caps in 2001, is overruled.
- Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment 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 Cox did neither.
- Barrett v. United States Barrett v. United States 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 to subsection (c)(1)(A)(i), not a supplement to it.
- West Virginia v. B. P. J. West Virginia v. B. P. J. 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 does not violate equal protection because the sex-based classification is substantially related to the important interests of safety and competitive fairness.
- Chatrie v. United States Chatrie v. United States 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 for the Fourth Circuit the further question whether this particular geofence warrant made the search reasonable.
- Trump v. Slaughter Trump v. Slaughter 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 Executor v. United States is overruled to the extent it holds otherwise.
- Trump v. Barbara Trump v. Barbara 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 at common law, such as the children of foreign ministers. President Trump's Executive Order denying birthright citizenship to such children is therefore inconsistent with the Constitution.
- Trump v. Cook Trump v. Cook 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 while the litigation continues.
- Mullin v. Al Otro Lado Mullin v. Al Otro Lado The Court holds that an alien standing in Mexico does not "arrive in the United States" by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country — an alien arrives only when he crosses the border. As a result, the Immigration and Nationality Act neither entitles an alien stopped on the Mexican side of the border to apply for asylum nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him.
- Wolford v. Lopez Wolford v. Lopez The Court holds that a Hawaii law barring licensed concealed-carry permit holders from carrying handguns on private property open to the public unless the owner gives express authorization violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. By flipping the common-law default — under which anyone has an implied license to enter property held open to the public unless the owner withdraws consent — the law imposes a severe new burden on the right to carry arms for self-defense, and the State's historical analogues, mostly old anti-poaching hunting laws, are too far afield to justify it.
- Mullin v. Doe Mullin v. Doe The Court holds that the Temporary Protected Status statute's judicial-review bar forecloses respondents' non-constitutional challenges to the termination of TPS for Syria and Haiti, reaching not only the Secretary's ultimate decision but also the subsidiary steps leading to it. It further holds that the Haitian challengers' equal protection claim — that Haiti's designation was ended because of race — is unlikely to succeed, since the cited statements were not overtly racial and expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications. The District Courts' grants of interim relief are reversed and remanded.
- Landor v. Louisiana Dept of Corrections and Public Safety Landor v. Louisiana Dept of Corrections and Public Safety The Court holds that individuals may not be held personally liable under a Spending Clause statute unless they have voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer lawsuits under it. Because the individual prison officers sued here never entered any agreement with the federal government to face liability under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, the suit against them in their personal capacities cannot proceed.
- Blanche v. Lau Blanche v. Lau The Court holds that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not require a border officer to have clear and convincing evidence that a lawful permanent resident has committed a crime involving moral turpitude before treating that resident as an applicant for admission. Commission of the crime is enough to regard the resident as seeking admission; the clear-and-convincing-evidence burden the Board of Immigration Appeals applies arises only at the later removal hearing, not at the border.
- Hunter v. United States Hunter v. United States The Court holds that a defendant's agreement not to appeal his sentence is unenforceable when enforcing it would result in a miscarriage of justice — that is, when it would leave in place the kind of egregious, obvious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute. This is a high bar that ordinary mistakes in applying sentencing law cannot meet. The Court remands for the Fifth Circuit to decide whether Hunter's challenge clears it.
- Hain Celestial Group, Inc. v. Palmquist Hain Celestial Group, Inc. v. Palmquist The Court holds that a district court's erroneous dismissal of a nondiverse party does not cure a diversity-jurisdiction defect that existed at the time a case was removed to federal court. Because the defect therefore lingered through judgment uncured, the Fifth Circuit correctly vacated the District Court's judgment in Hain's favor — a district court cannot manufacture jurisdiction through its own mistake.
- Case v. Montana Case v. Montana The Court holds that the objective-reasonableness standard it set in Brigham City v. Stuart governs warrantless home entries to render emergency aid, and that it applies without any further gloss. Officers need not have probable cause to believe an emergency is occurring; they may enter when they have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury — a standard the officers here satisfied.
- United States v. Hemani United States v. Hemani The Court holds that the government's prosecution of Ali Hemani under Section 922(g)(3)'s unlawful user provision — which automatically disarms anyone who is an unlawful user of a controlled substance — is inconsistent with the Second Amendment as applied to him. The habitual drunkard laws the government offered as a historical analogue targeted different people, for different reasons, and worked in different ways, so the government failed to show that disarming a regular marijuana user fits the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.
- Bowe v. United States Bowe v. United States The Court holds that two AEDPA provisions governing successive habeas filings by state prisoners do not reach federal prisoners. Section 2244(b)(3)(E)'s bar on certiorari does not strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over a federal prisoner's request to file a second or successive motion under Section 2255, and Section 2244(b)(1)'s old-claim bar — which forbids relitigating a claim raised in a prior application — applies only to state-prisoner applications under Section 2254, not to federal-prisoner motions under Section 2255.
- Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, Inc. Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, Inc. The Court holds that whether a debtor's failure to disclose a claim in bankruptcy was "inadvertent or mistaken" — the showing that can excuse applying judicial estoppel to bar a later lawsuit on that claim — must be judged from the totality of the circumstances surrounding the omission. The Fifth Circuit erred by confining that inquiry to just two factors: whether the debtor knew the facts underlying the claim and whether he had a potential motive to conceal it.
- Abouammo v. United States Abouammo v. United States The Court holds that a defendant charged under 18 U. S. C. § 1519 — which makes it a crime to knowingly falsify a document with the intent to obstruct a federal investigation — must be tried in the district where the falsification occurred, not in a district where the investigation was located. Because falsifying a document is the only conduct the statute proscribes, that act fixes venue; the statute's intent requirement is a mens rea element and does not move the trial to wherever the contemplated obstruction might be felt.
- FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. The Court holds that Section 47(b) of the Investment Company Act does not give private parties an implied right to sue for rescission of contracts that allegedly violate the Act. The provision is a mandate telling courts how to exercise their remedial power once parties are before them — not a grant of a right to sue — and Congress entrusted enforcement of the Act primarily to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Bost v. Illinois Bd. of Elections Bost v. Illinois Bd. of Elections The Court holds that a political candidate has Article III standing to challenge the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election. Congressman Michael Bost may therefore pursue his suit against Illinois's practice of counting mail-in ballots received up to two weeks after Election Day — without having to show that the rule risks costing him the election, a significant vote threshold, or money.
- Urias-Orellana v. Bondi Urias-Orellana v. Bondi The Court holds unanimously that under the Immigration and Nationality Act, courts of appeals must review the immigration agency's determination that a given set of undisputed facts does not rise to the level of "persecution" under the deferential substantial-evidence standard — not de novo. The agency's persecution determination, both its factual findings and its application of the statute to those findings, is conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.
- Fernandez v. United States Fernandez v. United States The Court holds that a federal prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through the habeas statute, 28 U. S. C. § 2255, and cannot use a motion for compassionate release under 18 U. S. C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) as a substitute. The supposed invalidity of a conviction is not among the "extraordinary and compelling reasons" that justify compassionate release; channeling such claims into § 2255 keeps the two statutes in harmony and stops prisoners from evading § 2255's strict procedural limits.
- Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump The Court holds that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. Because tariffs are a branch of the taxing power that Article I of the Constitution assigns to Congress alone, the President must identify clear congressional authorization to impose them — and IEEPA's grant of authority to "regulate . . . importation," which never mentions tariffs or duties, does not supply it.
- Sripetch v. Securities and Exchange Commission Sripetch v. Securities and Exchange Commission The Court holds that the Securities and Exchange Commission need not prove that investors suffered a pecuniary loss before it may obtain a disgorgement award against a securities-law violator. Under traditional equitable principles, a court may strip a wrongdoer of the gains attributable to his unlawful conduct even when his victims cannot show any measurable financial harm, so a finding of pecuniary loss is not a precondition to disgorgement.
- Rutherford v. United States Rutherford v. United States The Court holds that when Congress declines to make a sentencing amendment retroactive — as it did with the First Step Act's change to the "stacked" mandatory minimums of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) — the resulting disparity between a prisoner's existing sentence and the shorter one he would receive today cannot be an "extraordinary and compelling" reason warranting a sentence reduction under the compassionate-release statute, § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). To the extent the Sentencing Commission's 2023 policy statement counsels otherwise, it is invalid.
- Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. The Court holds that under Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, a plaintiff need not show the defendant trafficked in the plaintiff's particular property interest; using the underlying confiscated physical property is enough. Four cruise lines that embarked passengers from docks in the Port of Havana between 2016 and 2019 used 'property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government,' even though Havana Docks Corporation's time-limited concession in those docks would have expired in 2004.
- Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock The Court holds that a worker who transports goods on an intrastate leg of an interstate journey can qualify for the Federal Arbitration Act's Section 1 exemption — which excludes from the Act contracts of employment of transportation workers engaged in interstate commerce — without ever crossing state lines or interacting with a vehicle that does.
- Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC The Court holds that a state common-law negligent-hiring claim against a transportation broker is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, because the Act's safety exception preserves state authority to regulate motor-vehicle safety — including the ordinary-care duty owed by those who choose which carrier will move goods on the highway.
- First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Davenport First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Davenport The Court holds that New Jersey's investigatory subpoena demanding First Choice Women's Resource Centers' donor information inflicts a present, ongoing injury to the group's First Amendment associational rights, giving it Article III standing to press its federal challenge.
- Louisiana v. Callais Louisiana v. Callais The Court holds that because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create a second majority-minority congressional district, no compelling interest justified the State's use of race in drawing its new map, making that map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.