Today at the Supreme Court

As I noted in my post earlier today, No. 24-1159, Jeffrey Clyde Pitts v. Mississippi , is the most-relisted pending cert petition at the Supreme Court right now, having been relisted for the seventh time today. The question presented, according to the petition , is as follows:  "Whether the Confrontation Clause permits the use of a screen at trial that blocks a child witness’s view of the defendant, without any individualized finding by the trial court that the screen is necessary to prevent trauma to the child." In a stark illustration of the extreme contrast between certiorari petitions and briefs in opposition in the same case, the brief in opposition filed by Mississippi reframes the question presented as:  "Whether this Court should review the Mississippi state courts’ rejection of petitioner’s Confrontation Clause challenge to his four-year-old daughter’s testimony that he sexually abused her, when the trial proceedings satisfied confrontation’s essential elements...

 The most important news from today is that, in the previously scheduled order list released this morning, the Court granted exactly one petition for certiorari: Noem v. Al Otro Lado , No. 25-5. The question presented is "whether an alien who is stopped on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border "arrives in the United States" within the meaning of those provisions." The provisions in question are certain sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), also known as Title 8 of the United States Code, specifically, 8 U.S.C. 1158(b)(1)(A), 1225(a)(1) and (3).  It matters if aliens "arrive[] in the United States" because these provisions require that if they have done so, they must be permitted to apply for asylum and inspected by DHS. The current administration, of course, wants to make the asylum process as difficult as possible, so it is no surprise that they want the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court's decision, which had held that ali...