Today at the Supreme Court

In my post on Friday I noted that the most-relisted pending petitions at the Supreme Court was a three-way tie: specifically, three petitions had each been relisted seven times. Those petitions are: National Basketball Association v. Michael Salazar , No. 24-994 John Doe v. Kathy Hochul , No. 24-1015 Kyle Smith v. Rochelle Scott , No. 24-1099 Well, today, as expected, the Court issued an order list at 9:30 AM. Also as expected, it consisted mostly of a list of petitions being denied. What I found more surprising was that the Court only denied one of the three petitions mentioned above, and not only that, they did it without so much as a noted dissent, let alone a written opinion dissenting from the denial. Specifically, the Court denied NBA v. Salazar today. Of course, as usual, the Court offered no explanation of why they did so, meaning we don't really know why they turned away this case.  What happened to the other two petitions that had each been relisted seven times? Well, i...

In a previous post on November 17 , I listed the most-relisted petitions that, at the time, were still pending at the Supreme Court. As I noted, the most-relisted such petition then was No. 24-1159, Pitts v. Mississippi . As it happens, exactly a week later (in its scheduled November 24 order list), the Court granted the petition--but not in the way you would usually expect, where it will hold oral argument multiple months in the future, people will be able to submit amicus briefs, etc. Instead, the Court summarily reversed the Mississippi Supreme Court's decision in an unsigned per curiam opinion, with no separate writings or noted dissents whatsoever. I also noted then that the second-most relisted pending petition at the time was a five-way tie: Neilly v. Michigan, No. 24-395.  Kyle Smith v. Rochelle Scott, No. 24-1099.  Kari Beck v. United States, No. 24-1078. This one was denied on November 24. Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion, and Gorsuch noted his dissent (though he ne...