December 8, 2025: Updated Relist Analysis

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, interestingly, in one of them, specifically Doe v. Hochul, the Court called for the views of the Solicitor General. I found the sight of the Court relisting the petition seven times in a row, and then turning to the SG seemingly almost out of desperation, to ask what they should do to be somewhat surprising. 
Though I have seen the Court call for the views of the Solicitor General (CVSG) many times before, I had not seen it after a long, consecutive string of relists like this before. Usually, when I have seen the Court CVSG on a petition in the past, it has been only after relisting the petition once. Doing it after seven straight relists like this gives the strong impression that the justices are unusually deadlocked and struggling to decide whether to grant or deny this petition.

That leaves Smith v. Scott, the case where police officers want the Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit's decision to deny them qualified immunity. It was relisted for the eighth time today, making it now the most-relisted pending petition on the Court's docket. In second place it's a four-way tie between Doe v. Hochul, Reed v. Goertz, Pitchford v. Cain, and Klein v. Martin, each of which has been relisted seven times now. All of them, except for Doe, were relisted again today (the Court CVSG'ed Doe instead of relisting it).

For some perspective, now that Smith v. Scott has been relisted eight times, it is tied for the seventh-most relisted petition from all of October term 2024 (i.e. the petitions with dockets starting with "24-", of which there are well over 3,000 total). That said, eight relists is still much less than the most-relisted petition from last term, Veneno v. United States, No. 24-5191 which was relisted 21 times before finally being denied, well over a year after being originally docketed. 

Of course, to find out if the Court will grant or deny any of these petitions, we'll almost certainly have to wait until December 15, a week from today, when they release a new order list.

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