Supreme Court Decision Syllabus (scotus)

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Send us a textAJT v. Osseo Area SchoolsHeld: Schoolchildren bringing ADA and Rehabilitation Act claims related to their education are not required to make a heightened showing of “bad faith or gross misjudgment” but instead are subject to the same standards that apply in other disability discrimination contexts. ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which KAVANAUGH, J., joined. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which JACKSON, J., joined. 

Send us a textCatholic Charities v. WisconsinWisconsin law exempts certain religious organizations from paying unemployment compensation taxes. The relevant statute exempts nonprofit organizations “operated primarily for religious purposes” and “operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches.” Wis. Stat. §108.02(15)(h)(2). Petitioners, Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc., and four of its subentities, sought this exemption as organizations controlled by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied the exemption, holding that petitioners were not “operated primarily for religious purposes” because they neither engaged in proselytization nor limited their charitable services to Catholics. Held: The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s application of §108.02(15)(h)(2) to petitioners violates the First Amendment. Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. 

Send us a textHeld: Personal jurisdiction exists under the FSIA when an immunity exception applies and service is proper. The FSIA does not require proof of “minimum contacts” over and above the contacts already required by the Act’s enumerated exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity. Read by Jeff Barnum. Justice Alito delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. 

Send us a textHeld: Relief under Rule 60(b)(6) requires extraordinary circumstances, and this standard does not become less demanding when the movant seeks to reopen a case to amend a complaint. A party must first satisfy Rule 60(b) before Rule 15(a)’s liberal amendment standard can apply.

Send us a textHeld: The D. C. Circuit failed to afford the Board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases and incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the Board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place from the Uinta Basin Railway. Pp. 6–22. Read by Jeff Barnum. 

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Send us a textKousisis v. Trump Held: A defendant who induces a victim to enter into a transaction under materially false pretenses may be convicted of federal fraud even if the defendant did not seek to cause the victim economic loss. Read by Jeff Barnum. 

Send us a textAARP v. Trump PER CURIAM. The President has invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), Rev. Stat. §4067, 50 U. S. C. §21, to remove Venezuelan nationals who are members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a designated foreign terrorist organization. See Presidential Proclamation No. 10903, 90 Fed. Reg. 13033 (2025). Applicants are two detainees identified as members of TdA and a putative class of similarly situated detainees in the Northern District of Texas. All of the alleged TdA members in the putative class are currently being held in U. S. detention facilities. In the application before the Court, the detainees seek injunctive relief against summary removal under the AEA. Read by Jeff Barnum. 

Send us a textBarnes v. FelixHeld: A claim that a law enforcement officer used excessive force during a stop or arrest is analyzed under the Fourth Amendment, which requires that the force deployed be objectively reasonable from “the perspective of a reasonable officer at the scene.” Read by Jeff Barnum. 

Send us a textIn Feliciano v. Department of Transportation, the Supreme Court clarified the meaning of “during a national emergency” in a federal statute granting differential pay to federal civilian employees who serve as reservists. Nick Feliciano, a federal air traffic controller and Coast Guard reservist, sought differential pay for his active-duty service from 2012 to 2017 under 5 U.S.C. §5538. His service orders cited support for operations like Iraqi Freedom, but he was activated under a statute not specifically named in the law. The question was whether Feliciano qualified for differential pay simply because his service coincided with a declared national emergency, or whether he needed to prove that his service was substantively connected to that emergency.The Federal Circuit denied Feliciano’s claim, requiring a substantive link. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the statute’s plain language imposes a temporal condition only. Justice Gorsuch, writing for the majority, emphasized that the word

Send us a textIn Advocate Christ Medical Center v. Kennedy, the Supreme Court addressed how to calculate the Medicare “disproportionate share hospital” (DSH) adjustment—a statutory formula that provides extra funding to hospitals serving many low-income patients. At issue was how to interpret the term “entitled to [SSI] benefits” in the Medicare fraction of that formula. A coalition of over 200 hospitals argued that this phrase should include all patients enrolled in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) system, regardless of whether they actually received SSI payments during the month of their hospital stay. The Department of Health and Human Services, by contrast, only counted patients who were actually eligible for a cash SSI payment during their hospitalization month.Writing for the Court, Justice Barrett rejected the hospitals’ broader interpretation. The Court held that a person is “entitled to SSI benefits” only if they are eligible for a cash SSI payment during the specific month of their hospital st

Send us a textIn Monsalvo Velazquez v. Bondi  the Supreme Court held that when a voluntary departure deadline under 8 U.S.C. §1229c(b)(2) lands on a weekend or legal holiday, it carries over to the next business day. Monsalvo Velázquez had been granted 60 days to voluntarily depart the U.S. He filed a motion to reopen on the following Monday after day 60 fell on a Saturday. The Board of Immigration Appeals and the Tenth Circuit rejected the motion as late, reading “60 days” to mean calendar days, no exceptions. The Court reversed. Drawing on longstanding legal and regulatory practice, the majority held that “days” in this context includes the standard rule: deadlines falling on a weekend or holiday extend to the next business day. Congress legislated against that backdrop, and nothing in the statute suggested a break from it. Justice Gorsuch wrote for the Court, joined by Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Justice Thomas dissented, joined by Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett in part. Alito and Barrett also f

Send us a textIn Cunningham v. Cornell University, the Supreme Court addressed a fundamental pleading question under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Petitioners—former and current Cornell University employees—alleged that university fiduciaries violated ERISA §1106(a)(1)(C) by causing their retirement plans to pay excessive fees for recordkeeping services to Fidelity and TIAA-CREF, both parties in interest. The Second Circuit dismissed the claim, holding that plaintiffs must also plead that the transaction wasn’t exempt under §1108(b)(2)(A), which allows for reasonable arrangements with service providers.The Supreme Court unanimously reversed. Writing for the Court, Justice Sotomayor held that §1106(a)(1)(C) sets out a categorical bar against certain transactions between plans and parties in interest, and plaintiffs need only plausibly plead the elements of that section to state a claim. The §1108 exemptions—such as those permitting “reasonable arrangements” for necessary services

Send us a textIn Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. J.G.G., et al., the Supreme Court granted the government’s application to vacate temporary restraining orders issued by the District Court for the District of Columbia, which had blocked the removal of several Venezuelan detainees allegedly affiliated with the foreign terrorist organization Tren de Aragua (TdA). The detainees challenged President Trump’s Proclamation No. 10903, issued under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), which authorized their detention and removal.The Court construed the TROs as appealable injunctions and held that the detainees’ claims must be brought in habeas corpus. Because the claims necessarily challenged the legality of confinement and removal under the AEA, they fell within the “core” of habeas jurisdiction. As such, jurisdiction and venue lay solely in the district of confinement—Texas—not in the District of Columbia. The Court emphasized that equitable relief cannot be sought outside habeas in this context, r

Send us a textIn Department of Education, et al. v. California, the Supreme Court in a per curiam decision granted the federal government’s application to stay a district court order that had mandated continued payment of certain education-related grants. The District Court for the District of Massachusetts had issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on March 10, 2025, barring the termination of grant payments and requiring the government to pay both past-due and ongoing obligations. The lower court found that the states challenging the terminations were likely to succeed on their claims under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The Supreme Court, however, treated the TRO as a de facto preliminary injunction and concluded that the district court likely lacked jurisdiction to order monetary payments under the APA. Citing precedents such as Sampson v. Murray and Great-West Life & Annuity Ins. Co. v. Knudson, the Court emphasized that the APA does not waive sovereign immunity for claims that essential