October 6, 2025

Today was a highly significant day at the Court, primarily because, as it is the first Monday in October, it is the first day of the Court's term. Under 28 USC 2, the Court "shall hold at the seat of government a term of court commencing on the first Monday in October of each year". It was, as such, the day the Court issued its first order list after the summer recess, during which it was not in session. And because the Court is not in recess during the summer, it is not generally granting or denying petitions, with very limited exceptions (primarily highly time-sensitive capital cases where the defendant will file a petition shortly before their execution is scheduled). But people are continuing to file petitions, and they are continuing to be docketed, throughout the summer. This has been the case for many years, which means when the Court starts its new term in October, there is always a large backlog of petitions that have built up over the summer. 

The first conference of a new Supreme Court term is sometimes known as the "long conference", because it necessarily involves spending a long period of time dealing with the aforementioned backlog of pending petitions. This year, it happened on September 29. Because the Court consistently denies a large proportion of petitions in its first order list after the long conference, this conference has been called "where petitions go to die". And, as expected, the Court denied many, many petitions in its order list today, which was its first one since the long conference last week. By my count, it denied about 400 petitions from represented parties (as opposed to pro se litigants) in today's list.

The Court did not grant any petitions for certiorari, or anything else, which Amy Howe found less surprising than I did. However, it does make sense considering the Court granted certiorari in five cases just three days ago.

Most of the media attention today has focused on the Court denying Ghislaine Maxwell's petition in today's order list. Of course, there were a handful of other petitions the Court denied today that are also relatively high-profile, including one for rehearing in Apache Stronghold v. United States, and the ludicrous RICO suit brought by right-wing provocateur and troll Laura Loomer. The Apache Stronghold rehearing petition is more interesting than usual rehearing petitions because Gorsuch dissented from the Court's denial of rehearing today. He also dissented from the denial of certiorari earlier this year in the same case.

There were also the first oral arguments of the new term today. Two cases were argued: Villarreal v. Texas and Berk v. Choy.

This afternoon, after publishing its order list in the morning, the Court denied a stay application from Google, which wanted the Court to stay a lower court's order requiring Google to make major changes to its "Play" app store.