The seamless expansion of same-day registration to so many states proves that there is no legitimate reason to cut off voter registration before Election Day, let alone a full month before. Registration deadlines are just a pretext to prevent less engaged citizens from voting. In many states, you can walk up to the polls on Election Day, register to vote, and cast your ballot. In other states, you have to register up to a full month before Election Day. The only difference is that the first group of states wants people to vote and the second does not.

NEW: A far-right panel of the 5th Circuit rules that it is *illegal* for states to count ballots that arrive shortly after Election Day but are postmarked by Election Day.

18 states + D.C. count these ballots. This decision would shred those laws. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2525… BUT: The 5th Circuit decision only applies to Mississippi, the one state within the circuit that counts ballots received after Election Day.

The 5th Circuit is trying to tee up a Supreme Court decision to strike down ballot laws in many other states, too. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2525…

NEW: The Supreme Court sends a whopping EIGHT Second Amendment cases back to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of its decision in Rahimi.

Much more in today's giant orders list: supremecourt.gov/orders/courtor… The Supreme Court also sends NINE Chevron cases back down to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of Loper Bright. The disruption officially begins: supremecourt.gov/orders/courtor…

🚨The Supreme Court rules that President Trump has "absolute immunity" from criminal prosecution for all "official acts" he took while in office. The vote is 6–3 with all three liberals dissenting. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… Sotomayor, dissenting: Today's decision shields presidents from prosecution "for criminal and treasonous acts" and "makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law." supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…

The Supreme Court's second decision is NetChoice. Justice Kagan's complicated opinion for the court remands both cases to the appeals courts for the proper analysis of a First Amendment facial challenge, which, she says, they flunked the first time. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… HOWEVER: Kagan's opinion for the court holds that content moderation IS "expressively activity" and that social media platforms ARE protected by the First Amendment, no matter their size, from state intrusion. That's a major holding. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…

The Supreme Court's first decision is Corner Post. By a 6–3 vote, the majority allows plaintiffs to challenge an agency action LONG after it has been finalized. All three liberals dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
This article explains why today's outcome in Corner Post will be so destabilizing to the administrative state—it means that agency actions are never really safe from legal assault, even decades after they're finalized. It's a really big deal. americanprogress.org/article/corner…

🚨The Supreme Court overrules Chevron deference, wiping out 40 years of precedent that required federal courts to defer to expert opinions of federal agencies. All three liberals dissent. This is a HUGE decision. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… The Supreme Court's reversal of Chevron constitutes a major transfer of power from the executive branch to the judiciary, stripping federal agencies of significant discretion to interpret and enforce ambiguous regulations. Hard to overstate the impact of this seismic shift.

The Supreme Court's first decision is Grants Pass. By a 6–3 vote, the court holds that penalizing homeless people for sleeping outside when there is no available shelter does NOT violate the 8th Amendment. All three liberals dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… The Supreme Court's decision in Grants Pass wipes out significant precedent in the 9th Circuit that had protected homeless people from punishment when they slept outside due to lack of shelter. Per Gorsuch, the court holds that penalizing such people is not "cruel and unusual."

The Supreme Court's third (but not last) decision is SEC v. Jarkesy. By a 6–3 vote, the court holds that when the SEC seeks civil penalties, the defendant is entitled to a jury trial in federal court.

This sounds technical but it's huge. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… SCOTUS' decision is Jarkesy may well hobble many federal agencies' ability to bring meaningful enforcement actions against wrongdoers. Not just the SEC. Neither the executive branch nor the judiciary have the time or resources to try all these cases before a jury. Nowhere close.

The Supreme Court's first decision of the day is Murthy v. Missouri, the social media "jawboning" case. By a 6–3 vote, the court holds that the plaintiffs lack standing.

Big win for the Biden administration. Another loss for the 5th Circuit. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Alito dissents, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch. He calls it "one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years" and embraces the lower courts' claim that the Biden administration censored users of social media companies by promoting removal of disinformation.

The Supreme Court's fifth AND FINAL decision is Rahimi. By an 8–1 vote, the court upholds a federal statute that temporarily disarms individuals subjected to a domestic violence restraining order. Only Thomas dissents. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… While Roberts wrote the opinion in Rahimi, SIX justices expressed further views by writing or joining concurrences, a highly unusual number of separate concurrences. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…

The Supreme Court second decision is Department of State v. Muñoz. By a 6–3 vote, the court holds that U.S. citizens have no constitutional liberty interest in their non-citizen spouses being admitted to the country. All three liberals dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… Justice Sotomayor, in dissent, accuses the conservative supermajority of cutting back the rights guaranteed in Obergefell—the same-sex marriage decision—and of repeating "the same fatal error" it made in Dobbs. A very ominous opinion. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…

The Supreme Court's third AND FINAL decision is Starbucks v. NLRB. Justice Thomas' opinion for the court is an 8–1 defeat for labor that will make it harder to halt allegedly unfair labor practices. Only KBJ dissents. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… Justice Jackson accuses the majority of blessing an "aggrandizement of judicial power where Congress has so plainly limited the discretion of the courts," a persistent theme of her jurisprudence so far. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…

The Supreme Court's first decision of the day is FDA v. AHM! Justice Kavanaugh unanimously holds that the anti-abortion plaintiffs in this case lack standing to challenge the FDA's regulations allowing access to mifepristone for medication abortion. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
On first review, it looks like NO justices wrote separately to flag the Comstock Act as a potential nationwide ban on medication abortion, or perhaps all abortions. Surprising!

Justice Thomas writes separately to argue that "associational standing" is likely unconstitutional.

Two professors at @UTAustin, John Hatfield and @DanielBonevac, are suing for the right to penalize their students who miss class because they are obtaining an abortion out-of-state. media.aflegal.org/wp-content/upl… Hatfield and @DanielBonevac say they "do not intend to accommodate student absences from class to obtain abortions—including illegal abortions and purely elective abortions that are not medically required." They want to penalize any student who misses class for this reason.

The Supreme Court's second decision is Alexander v. SC NAACP. By a 6–3 vote, the majority REVERSES a district court decision that had struck down a South Carolina congressional district as a racial gerrymander. Alito writes; all three liberals dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… In a solo concurrence, Clarence Thomas declares his belief that racial gerrymandering claims should be deemed non-justiciable political questions, permanently prohibiting federal courts from scrutinizing allegedly racist redistricting. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…

The Supreme Court's third and FINAL opinion of the day is in the CFPB. In a 7–2 opinion by Justice Thomas, the court UPHOLDS the CFPB's funding structure, concluding that it does NOT violate the appropriations clause.

Alito and Gorsuch dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…
Today's decision is a HUGE victory for the CFPB and a major defeat not only for the corporate lobby, but for the 5th Circuit, which embraced a theory so radically anti-historical and atextual that JUSTICE THOMAS wrote the opinion emphatically reversing it. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…

Today's decision effectively means that abortion is now illegal in Florida beyond six weeks, before most people know they're pregnant.

BUT: The citizens of Florida will have a chance to enshrine permanent abortion protections via ballot initiative in November.

https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1774890095494967349

Note that the Florida constitution already provides explicit protections for the "right to privacy." For decades, the Florida Supreme Court held that this guarantee protected access to abortion. The conservative majority just overturned all those precedents.

The Supreme Court's third and final opinion of the day is in Pulsifer v. U.S. In a 6–3 opinion, Justice Kagan reads the First Step Act's safety-valve provision narrowly, to prevent many defendants from obtaining relief. Gorsuch, Jackson, Sotomayor dissent. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf… Today's decision in Pulsifer will be a grave disappointment to many, many individuals seeking relief under the First Step Act from harsh mandatory minimum sentences. It shrinks the law's safety valve by reading the word "and" to mean, in effect, "or." Unfortunate in my view.

The five-justice majority's opinion in the Trump ballot removal case has a lot of ambiguous language that leaves many questions unresolved. How you read that language, of course, determines how far you think the majority goes to dismantle the insurrection clause. It's debatable! I tend to think the three liberals are correct that "the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office."

Reading the opinion that way, you easily see how it forecloses any enforcement of the insurrection clause.

If you double click where it says "JJ." at the top, then copy and paste it, that line reads: SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.

And if you do a control-F search for "SOTOMAYOR , J., concurring in part and dissenting in part," it highlights that same line. It looks like the liberals' opinion was originally styled as a partial dissent written by Justice Sotomayor, but got changed to a concurrence in the judgment authored jointly by all three liberals. supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf…