Mark Joseph Stern
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mjsdc.bsky.social
Mark Joseph Stern
@mjsdc.bsky.social
160K followers 750 following 2.2K posts
Senior writer at Slate covering courts and the law. Co-host of the Amicus podcast. Dad.
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mjsdc.bsky.social
There are so many great reasons to visit Baltimore, a city I love, so I hesitate to criticize this well-meaning ad … but that is NOT Thurgood Marshall
A wax figure that looks nothing like Thurgood Marshall but is labeled as him
January 13, 2026 at 2:53 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Isn't that two things? www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Bondi has grown increasingly concerned in the past month about Trump’s complaints, people in touch with her say. A spokesman for Bondi said she has been focused on executing Trump’s directive to make America safe again. In a statement to The Wall Street Journal on Friday afternoon, Trump said: “Pam is doing an excellent job. She has been my friend for many years. Tremendous progress is being made against radical left lunatics who are good at only one thing, cheating in elections and the crimes they commit.”
January 12, 2026 at 9:25 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
The Supreme Court sets aside lower court decisions upholding convictions for bribery related to the FIFA scandal because the Trump administration decided to dismiss those criminal cases "in the interests of justice." The FIFA prosecution ends in a whimper. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
CERTIORARI -- SUMMARY DISPOSITIONS 25-390 ) FULL PLAY GROUP, S.A. V. UNITED STATES, ET AL. ) 25-396 ) LOPEZ, HERNAN V. UNITED STATES, ET AL. The petitions for writs of certiorari are granted. The judgment is vacated, and the cases are remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for further consideration in light of the pending motion to dismiss the indictment.
January 12, 2026 at 2:40 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Connecting the dots with @dahlialithwick.bsky.social slate.com/news-and-pol...
I want to go back to the conversation you and I had after Trump v. United States, which the Supreme Court wrote in these very bloodless terms about the immunity conferred upon the president within the outer and inner perimeters of his “official acts.” And I want to layer that against the image of a family car splattered in the blood of a mother gunned down for no good reason, including the reasons being proffered in defense of the murder. In some ways, I feel like this is the answer to the question that has been plaguing us since we started talking about the immunity case, which is: What does the law even mean when one man is given immunity that he can extend to his cronies and deploy against his enemies? When all of this gets made up on the fly as Trump sees fit, and without limits—beyond, as he told the New York Times this week, the outer boundaries of his conscience? How do we even think about this as a matter of “law”?
January 9, 2026 at 8:30 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
What are they saying?
Green parrot opens beak threateningly at hound inches away from snout
January 7, 2026 at 3:38 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Here is the Wyoming Supreme Court's 4–1 decision striking down the state's draconian abortion bans under the state constitution's provision guaranteeing residents the right to make health care decisions (which was enacted as a rejoinder to the ACA). documents.courts.state.wy.us/Opinions/S-2...
Article 1, § 38 of the Wyoming Constitution, guarantees each competent adult “the right to make his or her own health care decisions,” and it directs the State of Wyoming, of which the judicial branch is a part, “to preserve these rights from undue governmental infringement.” The district court concluded Article 1, § 38 establishes a fundamental right to make health care decisions, the decision to have an abortion is a health care decision, and the State was required to justify the statutes restricting access to abortion under the strict scrutiny standard. The court determined the State failed to meet its burden and the Wyoming laws restricting abortion access unreasonably and unnecessarily infringe on this right. Although we recognize the State’s interest in protecting the life that an abortion would end, we conclude the State did not meet its burden of justifying the abortion statutes’ restrictions on a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, as is expressly protected by the Wyoming Constitution. We therefore affirm.
January 6, 2026 at 5:32 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Very funny to see Alito complain about the court skipping full briefing and oral arguments for a quick shadow docket decision when he has signed onto innumerable orders that pull the exact same tricks and rebuked colleagues who complain about it ... www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
In this case, the Court has unnecessarily and unwisely departed from standard practice. It raised an argument that respondents waived below, and it now rules in respondents’ favor on that ground. To make matters worse, the Court reaches out and expresses tentative views on other highly important issues on which there is no relevant judicial precedent and on which we have received scant briefing and no oral argument.
December 23, 2025 at 8:45 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Kavanaugh concurs, but complains that the majority goes too far in restricting Trump’s ability to federalize the National Guard in the future. I wonder if he tried to persuade Roberts and Barrett to sign onto his narrower approach, but failed. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
The Court’s legal interpretation, as I understand it, could lead to potentially significant implications for future crises that we cannot now foresee. Consider a hypothetical example. Suppose a mob rapidly gathers outside the U. S. Courthouse in Philadelphia in response to an unpopular decision (or to influence the outcome of a pending matter). Suppose also that the mob is threatening to storm the courthouse and attack the federal judges, prosecutors, and other personnel inside, and to damage or burn down the building, thereby preventing the execution of federal law. Suppose further that U. S. military forces cannot readily mobilize to deploy to the site in time, that the local police and federal court security officers are outnumbered, and that the President wants to federalize National Guard units to protect the courthouse and the judges, prosecutors, and other personnel. Under the Court’s order today, even in those circumstances the President presumably could not federalize the National Guard under §12406(3).2
December 23, 2025 at 8:21 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
NEW: By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court blocks Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Chicago to assist immigration agents. A majority holds that he likely lacks authority to do so. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissent. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
The Government asked this Court to stay the District Court's order. After the response and reply were filed, JUSTICE BARRETT referred the application to the Court. We directed the parties to file supplemental letter briefs on an issue that the District Court had addressed but the parties' initial briefs had not: the meaning of the term "regular forces" in §12406(3). In its supplemental brief, the Government argues that the term refers to civilian law enforcement officers, such as those employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Federal Protective Service. Respondents, echoing the District Court, maintain that the term refers to the regular forces of the United States mili-tary. We conclude that the term "regular forces" in §12406(3) likely refers to the regular forces of the United States mili-tary. This interpretation means that to call the Guard into active federal service under §12406(3), the President must be "unable" with the regular military "to execute the laws of the United States." Because the statute requires an assessment of the military's ability to execute the laws, it likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws. Such circumstances are exceptional: Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from "execut[ing] the laws" "except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress." 18 U. S. C. §1385. So before the President can federalize the Guard under §12406(3), he likely must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be "unable" with those forces to perform that function.
December 23, 2025 at 8:16 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
New: The Supreme Court DENIES the Trump administration's request to halt further fact-finding in a legal dispute over speech restrictions that the Trump administration has imposed against immigration judges. Says the government hasn't shown irreparable harm yet.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2025 ORDER IN PENDING CASE 25A662 MARGOLIN, DAREN K. V. NAT. ASSN. OF IMMIGRATION JUDGES The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is denied. At this stage, the Government has not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm without a stay. This denial is without prejudice to a reapplication if the District Court commences discovery proceedings before the disposition of the Government’s forthcoming petition for a writ of certiorari. Cf. Cheney v. United States Dist. Court for D.C., 542 U. S. 367, 385 (2004). The order heretofore entered by The Chief Justice is vacated.
December 19, 2025 at 6:03 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Very interesting: Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu (who's retiring soon) won't apply equal protection to invalidate discrimination against the poor because she's afraid of giving SCOTUS an opportunity to further weaken the 14th Amendment. Remarkably candid. www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf...
YU, J. (dissenting) — I agree with the majority’s summation of federal equal protection law and its limited application to the issue before us. However, I cannot overlook the inherent unfairness of disregarding the economic value of community service used to pay legal financial obligations in Blake1 cases. Thus, I must dissent from the majority in result. Nevertheless, I cannot join the analysis proffered by the dissent of Justice Mungia. I am not persuaded that current federal due process and equal protection doctrines fit the fact pattern before us, and I am reluctant to attempt to expand these doctrines at this time. Doing so risks weakening established jurisprudence that is already being weakened, as the United States Supreme Court “retreat[s] from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most.” United States v. Skrmetti, 605 U.S. 495, 579, 145 S. Ct. 1816, 222 L. Ed. 2d 136 (2025) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).
December 15, 2025 at 7:41 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
The Supreme Court grants just one new case on its final (scheduled) orders list of 2025, about a defendant's ability to challenge allegedly racist peremptory strikes.

No more (scheduled) conferences till 2026. www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
CERTIORARI GRANTED 24-7351 PITCHFORD, TERRY V. CAIN, COMM'R, MS DOC, ET AL. The motion of petitioner for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to the following question: Whether, under the standards set forth in AEDPA, 28 U. S. C. §2254(d), the Mississippi Supreme Court unreasonably determined that petitioner waived his right to rebut the prosecutor's asserted race-neutral reasons for exercising peremptory strikes against four black jurors.
December 15, 2025 at 2:33 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Linda Greenhouse’s report at the time asserted that all the justices left the building BEFORE the ruling was issued!
www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/u...
December 12, 2025 at 11:41 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
While ICE continues to torment Kilmar Abrego Garcia in Maryland, federal prosecutors in Tennessee are trying to rig his forthcoming trial by suppressing any discussion of his unlawful deportation or the suspicious favors witnesses will get in exchange for their testimony. slate.com/news-and-pol...
Meanwhile, lawyers are fighting over jury selection and preparing for trial. Incredibly, the government has moved to exclude from trial any mention of its unlawful deportation of Abrego Garcia or his eventual return. And as Abrego Garcia’s lawyers explained in opposing this motion, that would be an egregious violation of his rights under the Fifth and Sixth amendments. All of the witnesses against him came forward only after top Trump officials defamed him as a violent criminal and made it abundantly clear that they wanted to lock him up by any means necessary. These witnesses clearly understood that they could extract unusually generous benefits in exchange for testimony against him. And indeed, they all obtained rare perks, including early release from prison and relief from deportation.
December 12, 2025 at 7:56 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Excellent stuff from @sifill.bsky.social. "The assault on the 14th Amendment has not generated the kind of moral panic that politicians, journalists, and tech bros successfully created over their claims of First Amendment abuses several years ago..."
sherrilyn.substack.com/p/is-it-too-...
The assault on the 14th Amendment has not generated the kind of moral panic that politicians, journalists, and tech bros successfully created over their claims of First Amendment abuses several years ago. They claimed that the scorn, disparagement, and condemnation they received for posting sexist, racist, and even fascist commentary or for making fascist gestures in public resulted in “cancellation.” Obviously the First Amendment doesn’t protect against people deciding that you are an odious person for publicly posting opinions that embrace eugenicist or misogynistic views, but their outrage was enough to put universities, media platforms, and corporations back on their heels. It was a nasty bit of political manipulation to be sure, but it was effective. The full-on hijacking of the 14th Amendment has not been challenged with commensurate concerted outrage and political clarity. That is because far too many white Americans associate the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of birthright citizenship and equality, as provisions that only protect Black people, migrants, Latino people, and other marginalized groups, rather than as core democracy infrastructure of our Constitution.
December 11, 2025 at 3:33 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
FIRE is suing on behalf of Monica Meeks, a veteran and Tennessee state employee who was fired for criticizing Charlie Kirk on Facebook following his murder. Argues that "her termination was unlawful retaliation for her protected expression" and demands reinstatement.
www.thefire.org/research-lea...
Monica Meeks served honorably as a U.S. Army Soldier for twenty years to protect and defend the rights of all Americans, including the fundamental rights preserved by the First Amendment. But when Meeks exercised her First Amendment rights by making a personal comment on a friend’s Facebook page, she was fired from her job with a Tennessee state agency. Meeks brings this First Amendment lawsuit because Americans who work for the government do not give up their rights to express personal opinions as private citizens when they are off the clock.
December 10, 2025 at 4:36 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
NY allowed religious exemptions from school vaccine mandates.

It spurred a measles outbreak, so the state passed a law ending the exemption.

Parents + schools + 22 red states asked SCOTUS to strike down the law and restore the exemption.

It appears … QUITE interested.
slate.com/news-and-pol...
This move has incredibly alarming implications. In Mahmoud, the Republican-appointed supermajority gave public school parents the right to exempt their children from seeing books that feature LGBTQ+ characters. It held that the First Amendment's free-exercise clause "protects against policies that impose more subtle forms of interference with the religious upbringing of children." The decision was destabilizing to public education because it effectively gave religious parents veto power over aspects of the curriculum they disliked. But Monday's order suggests that at least some justices believe it's even broader than it first appeared, reaching beyond curricula to interfere with public health measures in the education system. If Mahmoud applies to immunization mandates—as the court implied it does-then parents may have a constitutional right to send their children to any school, public or private, without having them vaccinated.
December 9, 2025 at 11:53 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Who would ever voluntarily choose to live under the demented monarchical plutocracy our Supreme Court is creating for Trump? How is this a remotely rational way to structure a government?
slate.com/news-and-pol...
Here is a sampling of who will be better off following this legal earthquake: Trump, Republicans loyal to Trump, corporations kowtowing to Trump, billionaires ingratiating themselves to Trump, media moguls flattering Trump, and foreign governments courting Trump. Here is a partial list of the casualties: Congress, the First Amendment, journalists, whistleblowers, the civil service, unions, and everyday investors. In short: everyone and everything that this Supreme Court deems a hindrance to Trump’s monarchical consolidation of power. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it on Monday: “Under our constitutional design, given the history of the monarchy and the concerns that the Framers had about a president controlling everything,” one might assume that courts should defer to Congress’ decision that the chief executive should not have an iron fist on the administrative state. But the collective will of the people’s representatives is no match for six unelected justices with a trendy political theory they’re itching to superimpose upon the Constitution.
December 8, 2025 at 11:48 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
It is true that New York had a religious exemption for student vaccines before 2019. But the reason lawmakers abolished that exemption was because parents began abusing it at an unprecedented scale and allegedly spurred a horrific measles epidemic. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...
New York law has long required medically eligible children to be vaccinated against certain serious diseases, including measles, in order to attend school. In 2018, following an increase in the number of students claiming a religious exemption and a dangerous decline in vaccination rates that threatened communities’ ability to contain the disease, New York became the epicenter of what was then the Nation’s worst measles outbreak in a quarter-century. The New York Legislature responded by amending the law to repeal the only nonmedical exemption to the school vaccination requirement: an exemption for children whose parents or guardians object to vaccination on religious grounds. In making that change, the Legislature marshalled data and other scientific evidence demonstrating that the amendment would increase vaccination rates and prevent future outbreaks. The questions presented are:
December 8, 2025 at 2:55 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Full orders list: www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...

Cert petition: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...

Religious anti-vaxers have had a very encouraging day at the Supreme Court.
For more than 50 years, New York permitted both medical and religious exemptions to its school vaccine requirement. But in 2019, the New York Legislature categorically eliminated religious exemptions. Sponsors of that law denigrated “fake” and “garbage” religious beliefs that they deemed “selfish and misguided.” But they kept in place a regime of medical exemptions. And they continued to permit nonvaccination of nonstudents (such as teachers) and children outside of school. Today in New York, if a vaccine would harm your lungs, you may be exempted; but if it would harm you soul, you may not.
December 8, 2025 at 2:40 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
The Supreme Court just set aside a 2nd Circuit decision upholding New York's requirement that all school students, public and private, obtain certain vaccinations, without any religious exemptions. It orders the 2nd Circuit to reconsider the ruling in light of SCOTUS' LGBTQ school books decision.
CERTIORARI -- SUMMARY DISPOSITION 25-133 MILLER, JOSEPH, ET AL. V. McDONALD, COMM'R, ET AL. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for further consideration in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U. S. 522 (2025).
December 8, 2025 at 2:38 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
The Supreme Court asks Trump's Justice Department to weigh in on a pending challenge to New York's COVID vaccine mandate for health care workers, which lacks any exception for religious objections. Suggests that some justices are looking at this one closely. www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-f...
Issues: (1) Whether compliance with state laws directly contrary to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s requirement to provide a reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs may serve as an undue hardship justifying an employer’s noncompliance with Title VII; and (2) whether a state law that requires employers to deny without any consideration all requests by employees for a religious accommodation, contrary to Title VII’s religious nondiscrimination provision, is preempted by Title VII and the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
December 8, 2025 at 2:35 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
By the end of the ratification debates, everyone understood that the 14th Amendment would grant birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants. The only live question was whether that was a *good* thing. Some senators argued it wasn’t. But they lost! applyliberally.substack.com/p/birthright...
However, the reality - which Justice Horace Gray notes in the Wong Kim Ark decision - was that precisely that debate did arise. During the debate over the ratification of the 14th Amendment in the 39th Congress, it was proposed that the initial clause was unacceptable because it denied states the capacity to deny citizenship either to Chinese or 'Gypsy residents - the unsuitability of both groups described at great length by a Senator Cowan from Pennsylvania. Senator John Conness of California -himself an immigrant from Ireland - replied to this objection that "The proposition before us, I will say, Mr President, relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. We have declared that by law; now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the nation. I am in favor of doing so. I voted for the proposition to declare that children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States"
December 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
We need to talk about the massive loophole that the Supreme Court just carved into election law over the shadow docket—giving states a free pass to enact patently unconstitutional voting rules within nearly *one year* of an election. A stunning new limit on judicial review. slate.com/news-and-pol...
In practice, what it means right now is that red states like Indiana and Florida will get a free pass to gerrymander racial minorities into oblivion, even if their maps are blatantly illegal and openly racist. That gives a huge advantage to Republicans because in many states, their one neat trick for gaining a partisan advantage is diluting representation for racial minorities to create more safe GOP districts. And so they can now go full steam ahead, changing the rules, rigging the maps, hampering democracy, without worrying about any pesky litigation that will cause for them. That is the sign of a party that’s desperate to cling on to power because it is losing popular support.
December 5, 2025 at 7:12 PM
mjsdc.bsky.social
Here is the question presented. It's a relatively clean vehicle for the Supreme Court to finally decide whether it is lawful for the president to deny birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...
QUESTION PRESENTED The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that those “born * * * in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” are U.S. citizens. U.S. Const. Amend. XIV, § 1. The Clause was adopted to confer citizenship on the newly freed slaves and their children, not on the children of aliens temporarily visiting the United States or of illegal aliens. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14,160, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, which restores the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause and provides, on a prospective basis only, that children of temporary visitors and illegal aliens are not U.S. citizens by birth. The Citizenship Order directs federal agencies not to issue or accept citizenship documents for such children born more than 30 days after the Order’s effective date. The question presented is whether the Executive Order complies on its face with the Citizenship Clause and with 8 U.S.C. 1401(a), which codifies that Clause.
December 5, 2025 at 6:55 PM