March 6, 2026: Updated Relist Analysis

The Court had a private conference today. A quick docket search indicates a total of 92 petitions were distributed for that conference (52 on the regular docket and 40 on the IFP docket). So this seems to mean that 92 is the maximum number of petitions the Court could dispose of in the order list we know it will issue next Monday.

As has been the case for some time now, the most-relisted petition remains Smith v. Scott, No. 24-1099. It was relisted for the 14th time on March 2, this past Monday. In a close second is the same petition that has been in second place for some time now (including when I made my last post): Reed v. Goertz, No. 24-1268. It was relisted for the 13th time on March 2. No other pending petition has been relisted more than 10 times. In third place, it's a four-way tie between the following petitions, each of which has been relisted 8 times, most recently on Monday for the conference that happened today:

  1. Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, No. 25-77. Lower court decision: 128 F. 4th 336 (CA1 2025) (per curiam). This is a case about whether schools have to tell parents if their children identify as transgender, even if the child doesn't want their parents to know. Notably, this pending petition got a shoutout on the same day in the Court's long-awaited shadow docket decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta, No. 25A810, where the Court sided with the parents complaining about a different school with a similar policy of not (automatically) notifying parents about their children's gender identities. Specifically, Kagan, in her dissent, pointed to this exact petition as a better vehicle in which to address the underlying issues of whether parents' rights to direct the upbringing of their children have in fact been impermissibly violated by such school policies. 
  2. Duncan v. Bonta, No. 25-198. Lower court decision: 133 F. 4th 852 (CA9 2025). This is a case about whether a California gun control law violates the Second Amendment--or, because it confiscates private property by retroactively banning certain ammunition feeding devices, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit held that the ban did not violate either provision of the Constitution. Notably, this was the case in which Trump-appointed Ninth Circuit judge Lawrence Van Dyke dissented in a video he also uploaded to YouTube, which generated a great deal of controversy.
  3. Gator's Custom Guns v. Washington, No. 25-153. Lower court decision: 568 P. 3d 278 (Wash. 2025). Similar to Duncan v. Bonta, this case is a Second Amendment challenge to a state law banning ammunition feeding devices. In this case, it's a Washington state law which was upheld by the Washington Supreme Court.
  4. Zorn v. Linton, No. 25-297. Lower court decision: 135 F. 4th 19 (CA2 2025). A case where a divided Second Circuit panel denied a police officer qualified immunity, stating that a prior case was similar enough to make it "clearly established" that what the officer did violated the Constitution. The officer argues that the prior case in question, namely Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford, 361 F. 3d 113 (CA2 2004), was too different to make it "clearly established" that what the officer here (Jacob Zorn) did to a protester (Shela Linton) was unconstitutional.

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