Judicial Body
Appears in 16 stories
IEEPA tariff ruling anticipated post-February 20 recess
The United States has imposed economic pressure on Cuba for 64 years. Now, for the first time, Washington is threatening to punish any country that sells oil to the island. President Trump's January 29 executive order creates a tariff mechanism targeting third countries that supply Cuban fuel—a significant escalation that goes beyond traditional bilateral sanctions to coerce allies and trading partners into joining an energy blockade. The strategy has proven devastatingly effective: Cuba's national power grid collapsed entirely on March 17, 2026, leaving approximately 10 million people without electricity and triggering ten consecutive days of street protests—the most visible civil unrest in years. Partial restoration occurred on March 18 after 29 hours, but the blackout deepened shortages of food, medicine, and water, and included the vandalization of a Cuban Communist Party provincial office in Morón, signaling fractures in state control. On March 21, Cuba blocked a US Embassy request to import diesel for generators, escalating diplomatic tensions amid ongoing rolling blackouts.
Updated Mar 21
Hearing the case; ruling expected by June 2026
Since 1968, federal law has barred anyone who uses illegal drugs from owning a firearm. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether that ban violates the Second Amendment—a question that could reshape gun rights for the roughly 50 million Americans who use marijuana in states where it is legal under state law but still illegal under federal law.
Updated Mar 2
Oral arguments scheduled for April 1, 2026, in Trump v. Barbara
On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," directing federal agencies to deny automatic U.S. citizenship to children born on U.S. soil if their mother was in the country unlawfully or only on a temporary visa and the father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident. The order directly challenges more than 125 years of legal consensus, grounded in the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court's 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, that nearly everyone born in the United States is a citizen at birth regardless of parental status.
Updated Feb 27
Hearing Trump v. Cook; decision expected by July 2026
No president has fired a sitting Federal Reserve governor in the central bank's 112-year history. Donald Trump is trying to be the first—and to replace the Fed chair with a loyalist. His August 2025 attempt to remove Governor Lisa Cook over unproven mortgage fraud allegations escalated into a Supreme Court showdown that exposed the fragility of Fed independence. In a striking January 21, 2026 hearing, all nine justices—including three Trump appointees—expressed skepticism about Trump's removal claims, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh warning the administration's position "would weaken, if not shatter, the independence of the Federal Reserve." Fed Chair Jerome Powell attended the arguments and later called the case "perhaps the most important legal case in the Fed's 113-year history." Nine days later, Trump nominated Kevin Warsh, a 55-year-old former Fed governor and longtime Trump ally, to replace Powell when his term expires in May 2026.
Updated Feb 5
Reviewing VPPA consumer definition
Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act in 1988 after a reporter published Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history. Thirty-eight years later, the law has become the basis for hundreds of class action lawsuits against media companies using tracking pixels on their websites—and the Supreme Court just agreed to decide who can sue under it.
Updated Jan 31
Blocked Chicago deployment 6-3
The last time a president invoked the Insurrection Act to deploy federal troops in American cities was 1992, during the Los Angeles riots. President Trump has deployed over 10,000 National Guard troops and active-duty Marines to six cities since June 2025—without invoking that law. The Congressional Budget Office now reports the seven-month operation cost taxpayers $496 million, with ongoing deployments projected to add $93 million monthly.
Updated Jan 29
Issued ruling
For decades, federal courts disagreed on a fundamental question: Is court-ordered restitution a criminal punishment or a civil remedy? The distinction matters because the Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause bars retroactive increases in criminal punishment—but not civil obligations. On January 20, 2026, the Supreme Court unanimously answered: restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act is plainly criminal punishment, and defendants cannot be held to payment terms that didn't exist when they committed their crimes.
Updated Jan 21
Set Bruen precedent; hearing two more gun cases in 2026
The Ninth Circuit just struck down California's ban on openly carrying guns in urban areas, ruling that a law affecting 95% of the state violates the Second Amendment. Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote that open carry was widely protected at America's founding—exactly the kind of historical analysis the Supreme Court demanded in its 2022 Bruen decision. The ruling creates a circuit split with the Second Circuit, which said states can ban one form of carry as long as they allow the other.
Deciding jurisdictional question
A Louisiana jury ordered Chevron to pay $745 million in April 2025 for wrecking coastal wetlands through decades of oil drilling. Now the Supreme Court will decide if that verdict stands—or if Chevron can escape to federal court by claiming it was acting under federal orders when it refined aviation fuel during World War II. The catch: the lawsuit concerns oil production, not refining, and much of the damage happened decades after the war ended.
Updated Jan 14
Reviewing IEEPA tariff authority
For three months, the world's two largest economies operated under a fragile ceasefire. The Trump-Xi trade deal struck in South Korea last October reduced U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods from a peak of 145% to 47%, while China suspended its rare earth export controls. On January 12, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on all countries doing business with Iran—a measure that primarily targets China, which purchases over 90% of Iran's oil exports.
Hearing oral arguments; decision expected by June 2026
The Supreme Court heard over three hours of oral arguments on January 13, 2026, in two cases that will determine whether states can bar transgender students from competing on sports teams matching their gender identity. During the proceedings, the Court's conservative majority signaled strong support for upholding state restrictions, though several justices appeared wary of issuing an overly broad ruling. The cases—Little v. Hecox from Idaho and West Virginia v. B.P.J.—challenge laws under both Title IX and the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Updated Jan 13
Issued 5-4 ruling expanding federal prisoner habeas rights
The Supreme Court just handed federal prisoners a major win, ruling 5-4 that they can challenge their convictions repeatedly—something most courts have blocked for decades. Michael Bowe, serving 24 years for armed robbery, asked to revisit his case based on new legal precedent. The Eleventh Circuit said no. On January 9, 2026, the Supreme Court said yes, declaring that a key provision of the 1996 anti-terrorism law applies only to state prisoners, not federal inmates.
Updated Jan 11
2018 ruling in Trump v. Hawaii established broad presidential authority over immigration
Trump signed his first travel ban seven days into his presidency, blocking entry from seven Muslim-majority countries and igniting protests at airports nationwide. Courts blocked it within a week. Eight years later, after Supreme Court victories, a Biden reversal, and a return to power, Trump's December 2025 expansion restricts entry from 39 countries—affecting one in eight people worldwide and eliminating exemptions that previously protected immediate family members of U.S. citizens.
Updated Dec 28, 2025
Refused to halt remand; kept door open to pause discovery later
Immigration judges say the Justice Department has effectively muzzled them: speak publicly about immigration and you need permission, and what you say can be steered into “agency talking points.” The Trump administration’s response has been procedural: you don’t get federal court—go through the civil-service machinery first.
Updated Dec 19, 2025
Issued rulings tightening corruption law; now asked to send Lopez–Full Play case back for dismissal
U.S. prosecutors spent years proving that Hernan Lopez, a former Fox International Channels CEO, and the sports marketing firm Full Play bribed South American soccer officials to lock down lucrative TV rights. A Brooklyn jury convicted them in 2023, a judge threw those convictions out, an appeals court revived them in July 2025—and now the government is telling the Supreme Court it wants the whole case dismissed in “the interests of justice.”
Updated Dec 11, 2025
Hearing and shaping core precedent on presidential power over independent agencies
In 2025, President Donald Trump launched an aggressive campaign to assert sweeping authority over independent federal agencies, testing the long‑standing 1935 Supreme Court precedent in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that limited presidential power to fire members of multi‑member regulatory commissions. After the Supreme Court used its emergency docket to let Trump remove Democratic members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the conflict escalated when Trump fired Democratic Federal Trade Commission commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter in March 2025 and later attempted to oust Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, both before their fixed terms expired.
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