Oral Arguments - The Supreme Court of the United States

Case Summary:Trump, President of the U.S. v. Cook arises from President Donald Trump’s attempt in August 2025 to remove Lisa Cook, a Senate-confirmed member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors serving a 14‑year term, on the ground that she allegedly committed mortgage fraud before joining the Board by designating two different properties as her primary residence on separate loan applications. After the removal letter issued, Cook challenged the action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the Federal Reserve Act’s “for cause” removal protection limits the President to removing a governor only for misconduct or failures in office and that alleged, disputed pre‑appointment mortgage irregularities do not qualify as valid cause. She also contended that, because her statutory, fixed‑term position created a protected property interest, the President violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by removing her without adequate advance notice of the charges and a meaningful opportunity to respond. The district court, treating her request for a temporary restraining order as a motion for a preliminary injunction, enjoined the President from removing Cook, finding that she was substantially likely to succeed on her statutory “for cause” and due process claims and that the equitable factors favored interim relief. The D.C. Circuit, by a 2–1 vote, declined to stay that injunction, leaving Cook in her position while the litigation proceeded and setting the stage for the President’s emergency application and subsequent review in the Supreme Court. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether the Court should stay (pause) the lower court’s preliminary injunction that currently prevents President Donald Trump from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her challenge to the legality of that removal proceeds. In deciding whether to grant that stay, the Court must assess both the president’s statutory and constitutional authority to remove a for‑cause‑protected Fed governor on the basis of alleged pre‑appointment misconduct and the scope of judicial power to review and temporarily block such a presidential removal.

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 cannot be given here because the necessary case details cannot be accessed at the moment.

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 owners’ right to exclude, and the Supreme Court has not yet issued a decision in the case.

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 “arm of the State of New Jersey” entitled to interstate sovereign immunity from being sued in Pennsylvania; after the trial court and intermediate appellate court rejected that immunity claim, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed and held that New Jersey Transit is an instrumentality of New Jersey and thus immune from Galette’s suit. The issue before the U.S. Supreme Court is whether New Jersey Transit qualifies as an “arm of the State of New Jersey” entitled to sovereign immunity that bars it from being sued for damages in another state’s courts (here, Pennsylvania), and more broadly what test courts should use to decide when a bi‑state or cross‑border transit agency is treated as a state for sovereign‑immunity purposes.

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 the state education authorities and West Virginia after the law threatened to exclude her from her school’s girls’ cross‑country and track‑and‑field teams, alleging that enforcing the statute against her violates Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause by denying her any meaningful opportunity to participate in girls’ sports on the same terms as other girls. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether West Virginia’s “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which categorically bars transgender girls from playing on girls’ school sports teams, violates Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause as applied to a transgender girl who has been treated consistent with her gender identity and seeks to compete on her school’s girls’ cross‑country and track teams.

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 student at Boise State University who wanted to compete on the women’s cross‑country team, together with a cisgender high‑school girl concerned about being subjected to sex verification, sued Idaho officials including Governor Brad Little, alleging that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX by excluding her from women’s sports based solely on her sex assigned at birth and transgender status; a district court enjoined the law, the Ninth Circuit upheld that injunction, and Idaho then sought Supreme Court review. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether a state law that limits participation in girls’ and women’s sports to “biological females” (as defined by the statute) violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the background of that merits question, the Court is also being asked whether the case has become moot because Lindsay Hecox has left competition and sought to dismiss her claims, and, if so, what should happen to the Ninth Circuit’s decision that upheld the injunction against Idaho’s law.

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 Management Act permitting scheme, eroded wetlands and harmed waterways, and seek money damages and restoration costs. Chevron, a vertically integrated company that both produced crude oil in Louisiana and refined aviation gasoline for the federal government during World War II under federal contracts, removed the parish suits from state court to federal court under the federal‑officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1), arguing that its challenged production activities were “connected or associated with” its federally directed wartime refining work, but the district courts and the Fifth Circuit held that the complaints targeted only crude‑oil production and related permitting practices not directed by federal contracts and therefore ordered the cases remanded to state court. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether Chevron can rely on the federal‑officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1), to remove these Louisiana coastal‑damage suits to federal court based on its World War II–era federal refining contracts, even though the parish complaints on their face challenge only state‑law coastal‑zone production activities and permitting noncompliance, not the federally directed refining work.

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 copyright infringement, presenting evidence that Cox knew particular subscribers were repeatedly infringing yet chose not to terminate their service and operated an intentionally lax “repeat infringer” policy that disqualified it from the DMCA safe harbor. A jury found Cox liable for willful contributory and vicarious infringement of 10,017 works and awarded $1 billion in statutory damages, and the Fourth Circuit later upheld contributory liability while rejecting vicarious liability and vacating the damages award. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether a defendant can be held liable for contributory copyright infringement based on a jury instruction that allowed liability if Cox “knew or should have known” of its subscribers’ infringing activity, or whether contributory infringement instead requires proof that the defendant actually knew of specific acts of infringement (or was willfully blind to them)

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 Urias‑Orellana credible but concluded that the threats and single non‑hospitalizing assault, combined with his ability to relocate within El Salvador for periods without incident, did not amount to “past persecution” or a well‑founded fear of future persecution. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed, and the First Circuit, treating the persecution determination as a factual question subject to deferential substantial‑evidence review, upheld the BIA’s decision.​​ The issue before the Supreme Court is whether a federal court of appeals must defer to the Board of Immigration Appeals’ judgment that a given set of undisputed facts does not amount to “persecution,” treating that determination as a factual finding reviewable only for substantial evidence, or instead must review that ultimate persecution determination de novo as a legal or mixed question of law and fact.

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 charitable‑solicitation laws, demands the names of nearly 5,000 donors along with more than a decade of internal records, including solicitation materials, advertising, personnel information, complaint files, and documents substantiating medical and cost claims on First Choice’s websites, all based on alleged deceptive practices but without citing specific complaints; First Choice responded by suing in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that the subpoena and the threat of enforcement chill its and its donors’ First Amendment rights, while the State has pursued enforcement in New Jersey courts. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether a state attorney general’s broad administrative subpoena to a nonprofit advocacy organization seeking years of internal documents and thousands of donor identities based on alleged deceptive practices violates the First Amendment by impermissibly burdening and chilling the organization’s and its supporters’ rights to free speech and expressive association, and if so, what constitutional standard governs such subpoenas

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; when he returned to the higher‑traffic area so concertgoers could actually hear him, officers arrested and charged him under the ordinance, he pled no contest and paid a fine, and he later filed a § 1983 suit seeking damages and an injunction on the ground that the ordinance and its enforcement violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether a person who has been convicted under a local ordinance may still bring a federal civil‑rights suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for prospective declaratory and injunctive relief against that ordinance, or whether such a suit is barred by the Court’s precedent in Heck v. Humphrey because success would necessarily imply that the prior conviction is invalid.

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 keeping her on the Commission would be inconsistent with his Administration’s priorities and did not claim any statutory “for cause” ground, prompting Slaughter to sue in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on the theory that her removal violated both the FTC Act and the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, after which the district court ordered her reinstatement and the government sought emergency stays in the D.C. Circuit and then the Supreme Court. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the President may remove a sitting Federal Trade Commission commissioner at will based solely on policy disagreement or whether the FTC Act’s “for cause” removal protection, as interpreted in Humphrey’s Executor, constitutionally limits the President to removing commissioners only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.

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 expenditures with their own candidates under 52 U.S.C. § 30116(d). They filed in the Southern District of Ohio under FECA’s special review provision, which required the district court to certify the constitutional questions directly to the Sixth Circuit sitting en banc; that court upheld the coordinated‑expenditure limits against facial and as‑applied First Amendment challenges, after which the plaintiffs petitioned for certiorari and the Supreme Court agreed to review whether those coordinated party‑expenditure caps violate the free‑speech and association rights of political parties and candidates. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the Federal Election Campaign Act’s coordinated‑expenditure limits for national political party committees—52 U.S.C. § 30116(d)’s caps on how much a national party can spend in coordination with its own candidates violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and association of parties and candidates, either on their face or as applied to the plaintiffs

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 protect long‑term investors from short‑term activist takeovers. Activist investor Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. acquired large positions in several of these funds and then sued in the Southern District of New York, arguing that the control‑share provisions violated section 18(i) of the Investment Company Act, which requires each share of stock to have equal voting rights, and seeking rescission of those provisions under section 47(b); the district court granted summary judgment to Saba and ordered rescission, and the Second Circuit affirmed, prompting the funds to petition the Supreme Court on whether section 47(b) creates an implied private right of action. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether section 47(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 itself provides an implied private right of action that allows private plaintiffs like Saba to sue to rescind contracts or provisions (here, the control‑share voting restrictions) alleged to violate the Act.

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 habeas relief arguing that, under Atkins v. Virginia, his intellectual disability makes him categorically ineligible for execution. After state courts rejected his claim without an evidentiary hearing, the federal district court held a hearing, found he met Alabama’s criteria for intellectual disability, and vacated his death sentence, a ruling the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the Eleventh Circuit used the correct legal standard under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) when it granted habeas relief by deferring to the federal district court’s factfinding, rather than to the Alabama courts’ rejection of Smith’s Atkins intellectual‑disability claim. In particular, the case asks how federal courts should apply AEDPA’s deference provisions when state courts have denied an Atkins claim without an evidentiary hearing but a federal court later holds a hearing and finds the prisoner intellectually disabled

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 contract that required it to hire and supervise local Afghan workers as part of the “Afghan First” program, and Hencely sued Fluor in federal court under South Carolina tort law (negligent supervision, negligent entrustment, negligent retention, and related claims), alleging the company failed to properly vet and supervise Nayeb, which allowed him to move unsupervised around the base and carry out the attack, as well as a contract-based claim arguing he was a third‑party beneficiary of Fluor’s contract with the military. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether a federal contractor like Fluor can invoke federal-law defenses, principally the “combatant activities” exception in the Federal Tort Claims Act and related federal‑preemption doctrines, to bar state‑law tort suits by U.S. service members injured by the contractor’s alleged negligence in performing a combat‑zone military contract. In particular, the case asks whether Hencely’s South Carolina negligence and contract claims are preempted or displaced because Fluor was carrying out a Department of Defense logistics contract in an active war zone, such that allowing the suit to proceed would impermissibly second‑guess or interfere with the federal government’s combat and force‑protection activities.

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 new violations, the district court, applying the judge‑made “fugitive tolling” doctrine, treated her supervised release term as having been paused during the years she was a fugitive and thus still running, revoked her release, and resentenced her to 16 months in prison followed by a new two‑year term of supervised release, a result the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether federal courts may apply a judge‑made “fugitive tolling” doctrine to pause (toll) a defendant’s term of supervised release while the defendant is a fugitive, even though 18 U.S.C. § 3624(e) specifies when supervised release is tolled and does not mention fugitive status.

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‑class mail addressed only to “Coney Island Auto Parts Unltd., Inc.” at its Brooklyn business address, without naming or directing service to any officer or registered agent, Coney Island never appeared, and the bankruptcy court entered a default judgment in May 2015, which Vista‑Pro’s Chapter 7 trustee, Jeanne Burton, then spent years trying to enforce, sending a demand letter to Coney Island’s CEO, serving subpoenas, registering the judgment in New York, and ultimately freezing about $97,000 in Coney Island’s bank account, before Coney Island moved in 2021 under Civil Rule 60(b)(4) to vacate the judgment as void for lack of personal jurisdiction. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether a party can seek relief from a void federal judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(4) at any time, or whether such a motion is subject to a time limitm such as Rule 60(c)(1)’s “reasonable time” requirement or equitable doctrines like laches, when the defect is lack of personal jurisdiction based on improper service of process.

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 court, Hain removed the case to federal court on diversity grounds, the district court dismissed non‑diverse Whole Foods as improperly joined, denied remand, and then granted judgment as a matter of law in Hain’s favor at trial, but the Fifth Circuit later vacated that judgment and ordered the case remanded to state court after concluding Whole Foods had been properly joined and complete diversity was lacking. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether a federal court of appeals may vacate a final merits judgment and order a case sent back to state court when it concludes, after that judgment, that complete diversity was lacking because a non‑diverse defendant (here, Whole Foods) was in fact properly joined and should not have been dismissed as “improperly joined” at the removal stage.

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 officials in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the President to impose broad import tariffs in response to a declared national emergency, that tariff authority belongs to Congress under Article I, and that the executive orders imposing the tariffs therefore exceeded statutory limits and violated separation‑of‑powers principles. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the President to impose broad, across‑the‑board import tariffs as an emergency measure, or whether such tariff‑imposing power is reserved to Congress under Article I so that the President’s emergency tariff orders exceeded both the statute and constitutional separation‑of‑powers limits.