Latin for "void from the beginning." A judgment that is void ab initio is treated as a legal nullity — as though it never existed — rather than as a valid judgment later cancelled. The distinction matters for the fees question the court is wrestling with here: courts ordinarily have wide discretion to condition vacating a default judgment on the defendant paying the plaintiff's attorney's fees, but if the judgment was a nullity from the moment it was entered, there is arguably nothing to condition — the court simply has a nondiscretionary duty to erase it. That is why the court expresses doubt about its power to award fees even while stating that, if it had the discretion, Stewartson's conduct would warrant it.

"Prima facie" (Latin: "at first face") means evidence that, if unrebutted, is sufficient to establish a fact. When a court decides personal jurisdiction on written submissions rather than an evidentiary hearing, the party with the burden need only make this threshold showing, with uncontroverted allegations taken as true. The wrinkle in this case is that no one knows who bears that burden: the Ninth Circuit has never decided whether the plaintiff or the defendant must make the prima facie showing when a defendant who had actual notice of the suit waits until after default judgment to contest jurisdiction under Rule 60(b)(4). The court ordered supplemental briefing on exactly that question — and then resolved the case without answering it, concluding that Stewartson wins under either allocation.

"Overruled on other grounds" signals that a later decision rejected part of a cited case while leaving intact the part being cited. Here, the court cites Thomas P. Gonzalez Corp. (9th Cir. 1980) for its Rule 60(b)(4) analysis. Decades later, Gonzalez's separate holding — that suits against foreign sovereigns under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act require a "minimum contacts" showing — was rejected in CC/Devas (Mauritius) Ltd. v. Antrix Corp., 605 U.S. 223 (2025). In Devas, a unanimous Supreme Court (Alito, J.) held that personal jurisdiction under the FSIA exists whenever a statutory immunity exception applies and service is proper, with no additional minimum-contacts requirement. That ruling concerned only foreign states; it did not disturb ordinary minimum-contacts doctrine for private defendants like Stewartson, and it left Gonzalez's Rule 60(b)(4) discussion — the proposition cited here — untouched.

Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277 (2014), is the controlling modern authority — and it arose in this same court. Two professional gamblers returning home to Las Vegas had roughly $97,000 in casino winnings seized by Anthony Walden, a Georgia police officer working as a DEA agent at the Atlanta airport. After the funds were returned, they sued Walden in the District of Nevada. A unanimous Supreme Court (Thomas, J.) held Nevada had no jurisdiction: everything Walden did, he did in Georgia. Knowing the plaintiffs had Nevada connections, and even knowing they would feel the harm in Nevada, connected Walden to the plaintiffs — not to Nevada. The defendant's own conduct must create the contact with the forum state, and "the plaintiff cannot be the only link between the defendant and the forum." That principle is the engine of this order: Stewartson's posts targeted Patel, who happens to live in Nevada, which under Walden is not a contact with Nevada itself.

Calder v. Jones is the Supreme Court's foundational case on jurisdiction over out-of-state defamation defendants. The National Enquirer published an article claiming that actress Shirley Jones drank so heavily she could not fulfill her professional obligations. Jones lived and worked in California; the reporter and editor she sued worked in Florida. The Court unanimously upheld California jurisdiction: the defendants had committed an intentional act expressly aimed at California — the article drew on California sources, concerned the California activities of a California resident, and California was the focal point of both the story and the harm. Decided long before the internet, Calder's three-part "effects test" (intentional act, express aiming at the forum, harm the defendant knows will be felt there) became the framework courts adapted for online defamation. The dispute in this case is almost entirely about the second element: express aiming.

Both concepts trace to International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945), the case that replaced rigid territorial rules with the now-familiar requirement of "minimum contacts" consistent with "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice." General jurisdiction allows a court to hear any claim against a defendant, but only where the defendant is "at home" — for an individual, the state of domicile; for a corporation, its state of incorporation or principal place of business. Specific jurisdiction is narrower: it reaches only claims arising out of or relating to the defendant's contacts with the forum. The plaintiffs here did not argue general jurisdiction (Stewartson is domiciled in California), so everything turns on whether his posts created suit-related contacts with Nevada specifically.

A "long-arm statute" is a state law defining when that state's courts may reach beyond its borders to exercise jurisdiction over nonresidents. Some states enumerate specific categories of conduct (transacting business, committing a tort in the state, and so on). Nevada's long-arm statute takes the other approach: it authorizes jurisdiction "on any basis not inconsistent with" the state and federal constitutions — that is, it extends to the full limit of constitutional due process. The practical effect is that the state-law and constitutional inquiries collapse into one: if exercising jurisdiction over Stewartson would satisfy federal due process, Nevada law permits it, and if not, not. That is why the entire opinion is a federal constitutional analysis with no separate discussion of Nevada law.

This language comes from United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, 559 U.S. 260 (2010), the Supreme Court's leading modern case on when a judgment is "void." A Chapter 13 debtor's bankruptcy plan discharged interest on his student loans without the adversary proceeding and "undue hardship" finding the law required. His creditor received notice of the plan, did not object, and years later moved to undo the confirmed plan as void under Rule 60(b)(4). A unanimous Court (Thomas, J.) refused: the confirmation was legal error, but a legally erroneous judgment is not a void one. Rule 60(b)(4) is reserved for the rare judgment resting on a fundamental jurisdictional defect or a due-process violation that deprived a party of notice or the opportunity to be heard. This case sits in that rare category, in the court's view, because personal jurisdiction was absent entirely.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) lists six grounds for relieving a party from a final judgment, including mistake or excusable neglect (b)(1), newly discovered evidence (b)(2), fraud (b)(3), and a void judgment (b)(4). The void-judgment ground is unique: for the other grounds, the court weighs equitable factors and exercises discretion, but if a judgment is void — typically because the court lacked jurisdiction or entered it in violation of due process — the court has a nondiscretionary duty to vacate it, no matter how the defendant behaved. That is why the court does not apply the usual three-factor test (prejudice, meritorious defense, culpability) here, and why Stewartson's conduct in ignoring the suit cannot save the judgment. Stewartson also moved under Rule 60(b)(1) (excusable neglect), but the court did not reach that ground.

A default judgment is entered when a defendant fails to respond to a lawsuit: the court treats the complaint's factual allegations (except as to damages) as admitted and decides the case without the defendant's participation. The default judgment vacated here was entered on August 5, 2025. It awarded the plaintiffs a combined $250,000 — including $100,000 in compensatory and $100,000 in punitive damages to Patel personally — on a complaint that had sought $10 million. The court found the statements defamatory and made with actual malice, while noting the motion offered "scant evidence of harm or damages." This order wipes that judgment out less than a year after it was entered — not because the court reconsidered the merits, but because it concludes it never had power over Stewartson at all.

Jim Stewartson is a California-based writer and podcaster who publishes the "MindWar" newsletter on Substack, focused on what he characterizes as disinformation, psychological operations, and extremism. His posts about Patel — made on Twitter/X and Substack between June 2021 and May 2023 — are the statements at issue. Stewartson initially did not appear in the case; his declaration in this proceeding states he posted from California, has not been in Nevada since attending a UFC event in 2016, and "did not care about [the plaintiffs'] alleged connections to Nevada."

Kashyap "Kash" Patel is a former federal public defender and Justice Department national-security prosecutor who served in the first Trump administration as a senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism, and chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense. He was confirmed as Director of the FBI in February 2025 — after this lawsuit was filed in June 2023, but before this order issued. The Kash Foundation, Inc., his co-plaintiff, is a nonprofit organization Patel founded. The court's earlier default-judgment order found that all of the allegedly defamatory statements were directed at Patel individually, with the Foundation claiming harm only "by implication."

Melville Fuller served as Chief Justice from 1888 to 1910. He dissented in Wong Kim Ark (1898), joined by Justice John Marshall Harlan, arguing that the English common-law rule of jus soli was not carried into the Fourteenth Amendment and that the children of parents owing only “local and temporary allegiance” were not citizens. The majority here observes that this domicile- and allegiance-based theory — the same position the Government and dissenters now advance — “commanded only a dissent in 1898” and never became law. Identifying the Fuller dissent shows readers that today’s competing interpretation has a specific, and losing, historical pedigree.

Elk v. Wilkins (1884) held that John Elk, a Native American born on tribal land who later moved to a U.S. city, was not a citizen by birth under the Fourteenth Amendment, because at birth he owed allegiance to his tribe rather than to the United States and so was not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The Government invoked Elk for a broader, allegiance-based reading of the jurisdiction requirement. The majority distinguishes it: Elk turned on the unique status of tribal members, over whom the United States had ceded part of its jurisdiction to a quasi-sovereign — circumstances with no bearing on children of unlawfully or temporarily present parents. (Congress later granted citizenship to all Native Americans in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.)

United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) is the controlling precedent on birthright citizenship. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who were lawful U.S. residents but, under the Chinese Exclusion Act, ineligible to naturalize; after a trip abroad he was denied reentry on the theory he was not a citizen. In an opinion by Justice Horace Gray, the Court held 6–2 that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause is “declaratory” of the common-law rule and guarantees citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ citizenship, excepting only children of diplomats, of hostile occupiers, and (then) of tribal Indians. The majority here holds that Wong Kim Ark controls and resolves the case.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27) was the first federal statute to define U.S. citizenship, declaring that “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed,” are citizens. Enacted over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, it was designed to override Dred Scott and secure citizenship and equal civil rights for the freed slaves. Because critics doubted Congress’s power to confer citizenship by statute and feared a later Congress could repeal it, its citizenship guarantee was constitutionalized in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause two years later. The Act’s “subject to any foreign power” language and the Clause’s “subject to the jurisdiction” language are both at issue in this case.

Edward Bates (1793–1869) was U.S. Attorney General under President Lincoln from 1861 to 1864 and a rival of Lincoln’s for the 1860 Republican nomination (one of the “Team of Rivals”). In an 1862 opinion (10 Op. Atty. Gen. 382), Bates concluded that free Black men born in the United States were citizens, rejecting the premise that citizenship is hereditary and reasoning that birth on U.S. soil — not race or parentage — “furnishes the rule.” The majority treats Bates’s opinion as an Executive Branch effort to displace Dred Scott in favor of the common-law rule, anticipating the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Roger B. Taney (1777–1864) served as the fifth Chief Justice of the United States from 1836 to 1864, succeeding John Marshall. Though he had earlier freed his own inherited slaves, his legacy is dominated by his authorship of the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), holding that Black Americans could not be citizens. He previously served as U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury under Andrew Jackson. In this opinion the majority quotes Taney’s Dred Scott reasoning to show that even he conceded the freedmen were “born in the country” and “did owe allegiance” — the common-law criteria — yet denied them citizenship on racial grounds.

Lynch v. Clarke (N.Y. Ch. 1844) was the leading antebellum American decision on birthright citizenship. Vice Chancellor Lewis Sandford held that a child born in New York to temporarily sojourning alien (non-citizen) parents was a U.S. citizen by birth under the common-law rule of jus soli. The case concerned an inheritance dispute that turned on whether the New York–born plaintiff was a citizen. Lynch was cited approvingly in the congressional debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, and later figured in Wong Kim Ark. The majority treats it as evidence that the common-law rule was settled American law before the Amendment.

Jus soli (Latin, “right of the soil”) is the legal principle that citizenship is determined by place of birth, regardless of the parents’ nationality. It is contrasted with jus sanguinis (“right of blood”), under which citizenship descends from a parent. The United States follows jus soli for those born in its territory, alongside jus sanguinis for children born abroad to U.S.-citizen parents. According to Pew Research Center data, roughly 30+ countries — concentrated in the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, Mexico, and Brazil — have broad birthright-citizenship laws closely resembling the U.S. rule.

Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon (1812), written by Chief Justice John Marshall, is a landmark case on sovereign jurisdiction and foreign sovereign immunity. It held that a nation’s jurisdiction within its own territory is “exclusive and absolute,” subject only to exceptions the sovereign itself consents to — such as immunity for foreign ministers and visiting foreign warships. The majority uses Schooner Exchange to define what “subject to the jurisdiction” meant to the Fourteenth Amendment’s drafters: nearly everyone physically present in U.S. territory is subject to its jurisdiction, with narrow exceptions (e.g., diplomats) that do not extend to ordinary temporary visitors or unlawfully present persons.

Calvin’s Case (1608), decided by Lord Coke (Sir Edward Coke), is a foundational English common-law decision on subjecthood. It held that a person born within the King’s dominions and under the King’s protection owed allegiance to the Crown and was a natural-born subject — establishing the principle of jus soli (citizenship by place of birth) in English law. The case arose over whether Robert Calvin, born in Scotland after James VI of Scotland became James I of England, could hold land in England. Calvin’s Case is the doctrinal root of the “allegiance and protection” framework the majority traces forward into the Fourteenth Amendment.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) held that people of African descent, whether enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States and had no standing to sue in federal court. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion further held that Congress lacked power to prohibit slavery in the territories, striking down the Missouri Compromise. Widely condemned and a catalyst for the Civil War, the decision was repudiated by the Civil War Amendments — the Thirteenth (abolishing slavery), Fourteenth (whose Citizenship Clause directly overrides Dred Scott’s citizenship holding), and Fifteenth. It is generally regarded as one of the worst decisions in the Court’s history.

Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” was signed January 20, 2025 — the first day of President Trump’s second term — and published at 90 Fed. Reg. 8449. It directed federal agencies to stop recognizing U.S. citizenship for children born in the United States when the mother was unlawfully present (and the father not a citizen or lawful permanent resident), or when the mother’s presence was lawful but temporary (and the father not a citizen or LPR). By its terms it applied only prospectively, to children born on or after February 19, 2025. It was enjoined by federal courts and never took effect.

“Certiorari before judgment” is a procedural device by which the Supreme Court takes a case directly from a federal district court, before the court of appeals has ruled. It is governed by 28 U.S.C. § 2101(e) and Supreme Court Rule 11, which permits it only upon a showing that the case is of “such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice.” Historically rare, it was used in cases such as United States v. Nixon (1974) and the steel-seizure case, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952). Here, the Court granted review of the New Hampshire district court’s decision before the First Circuit decided the appeal.

This sentence states the decision's disposition as to precedent: Colorado II is overruled. The practical effect is that FECA's limits on the amount a political party may spend on campaign activity coordinated with its own candidates are held to violate the First Amendment and are no longer enforceable. The Court is careful to note (in footnote 6) that its decision does not address the separate statutory limits on coordinated expenditures by outside groups, leaving those limits in place.

These figures come from the FEC's statistical summary of the 2023–2024 election cycle. The opinion uses the disparity — political action committees raising roughly $15.7 billion against roughly $2.7 billion raised by political parties — as evidence that parties have become comparatively weaker than outside groups since Colorado II was decided in 2001. The Court treats this shift in relative financial power as a factual development undermining a premise of Colorado II. The dissent responds that any such imbalance was created by the decisions that built the modern Super PAC system, not by Colorado II.

Stare decisis ('to stand by things decided') is the doctrine that courts should generally follow their own precedents. The opinion recites the Court's established framework: stare decisis is 'not an inexorable command' and is 'at its weakest' in constitutional cases, where the Court applies factors including the egregiousness of the precedent's error, the real-world and jurisprudential effects of the decision, and any reliance interests. The Court applies these factors to conclude that Colorado II should be overruled — a conclusion the dissent disputes as failing to identify any 'special justification' beyond disagreement.

FECA's 'earmarking' rule treats a contribution that a donor directs through a party (or other intermediary) to a specific candidate as if it were a contribution to that candidate — meaning it counts against the donor's individual candidate contribution limit. The majority relies heavily on this rule, holding that it (together with disclosure requirements and the base contribution limits) is a sufficiently targeted, less-speech-restrictive alternative to the coordinated-expenditure caps. The dissent's central argument is that the earmarking rule reaches only explicit directions and leaves a gap that the coordinated-expenditure limits were needed to close.

'Quid pro quo' (Latin for 'this for that') corruption refers to the direct exchange of an official act for money — a contribution given in return for a specific government action. The Court's modern campaign finance cases hold that this is the only form of corruption that can justify restricting political speech. The opinion draws a sharp line between quid pro quo corruption (which the government may target) and mere 'influence,' 'access,' or 'gratitude' a donor might gain (which the Court holds the government may not target), and it instructs courts to err on the side of protecting speech.

Marks v. United States (1977) supplies the rule for determining the holding of a Supreme Court decision when no single opinion commands five votes: the controlling position is that taken by the Justices who concurred in the judgment 'on the narrowest grounds.' The footnote invokes Marks to explain that Chief Justice Roberts's plurality opinion in McCutcheon (joined by four Justices, with Justice Thomas concurring only in the judgment on broader grounds) supplies the controlling rule from that case.

'Closely drawn' scrutiny is the intermediate standard of review the Court applies to limits on campaign contributions (as opposed to the strict scrutiny applied to expenditure limits). Under it, the government must show a 'sufficiently important' interest and means 'closely drawn' to avoid unnecessary abridgment of speech. The opinion notes that whether the more demanding strict-scrutiny standard or the closely-drawn standard applies is ultimately 'academic' here, because in its view the limits fail even the less demanding closely-drawn test.

When both the petitioners and the federal government agreed that the law was unconstitutional, no party remained to defend the Sixth Circuit's judgment. In that situation the Supreme Court appoints an amicus curiae ('friend of the court') to brief and argue the position no party will defend. Roman Martinez, a Supreme Court litigator, was appointed to defend the constitutionality of the coordinated-expenditure limits. The Democratic Party committees (DNC, DSCC, and DCCC) separately participated as intervenors making the same defense.

A 'Statement of Candidacy' (FEC Form 2) is the document an individual files with the Federal Election Commission upon becoming a candidate for federal office, triggering reporting obligations. The opinion relies on the fact that, although JD Vance had become Vice President, his still-active Statement of Candidacy and a campaign committee ('JD Vance for Senate') that had raised money kept the controversy live for Article III purposes. The Court treated these filings as sufficient to defeat the mootness argument raised by the court-appointed amicus and the intervenors.

These figures reflect the coordinated-expenditure limits in effect at the time of the decision, which the FEC adjusts for inflation and publishes annually in the Federal Register. The limits varied by office and by state population: for Senate races, the national party committee's ceiling ranged from roughly $130,600 to over $4 million depending on the state. For the most recent presidential election, the limit on coordinated spending was approximately $32.4 million. These caps are what the decision invalidates as applied to political parties.

SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010) was an en banc D.C. Circuit decision (not a Supreme Court case) holding that the government cannot limit contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures. Decided shortly after the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, SpeechNow.org is the decision that gave rise to 'Super PACs' — political committees that can raise and spend unlimited sums on independent political advocacy. The majority cites the growth of these outside groups as a factual change that undercut a premise of Colorado II about the relative power of parties.

FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate (2022) struck down a federal limit on the amount of post-election contributions a campaign could use to repay a candidate's personal loans to that campaign. The 6–3 decision reaffirmed that the only legitimate interest justifying campaign finance restrictions is preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance, and that the government must offer actual evidence — not mere conjecture — that a restriction serves that interest. The opinion repeatedly pairs Cruz with McCutcheon as the post-2001 authority that displaced Colorado II.

McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) struck down the aggregate limit on the total amount an individual could contribute to all federal candidates and party committees combined in a two-year cycle. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the controlling plurality opinion. McCutcheon is central to this opinion because it narrowed the permissible justification for campaign finance limits to preventing 'quid pro quo' corruption alone, and it identified earmarking and disclosure rules as adequate, less-restrictive tools against circumvention — the same reasoning the Court applies here.

Colorado II (FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, 2001) is the precedent this case overrules. By a 5–4 vote, the Court there upheld FECA's limits on political-party coordinated expenditures, reasoning that the limits were 'closely drawn' to prevent donors from circumventing individual contribution limits by routing money through parties. Justice Thomas dissented, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia, and Justice Kennedy. The majority opinion repeatedly relies on that Thomas dissent, which it describes as having been 'amply vindicated' by later decisions.

This is the 1996 decision commonly called Colorado I. There, the Court held that a political party has a First Amendment right to make unlimited independent expenditures — spending done without coordinating with a candidate. The Court did not resolve whether coordinated party expenditures could be limited, leaving that question open. That open question is what the 2001 Colorado II decision later answered (by upholding the limits), and what the present case revisits.

Buckley v. Valeo (1976) is the foundational Supreme Court decision on campaign finance and the First Amendment. Decided per curiam, it established the framework the Court still uses: limits on campaign contributions (money given to a candidate) are subject to less rigorous review, while limits on expenditures (money spent on political speech) receive the most demanding scrutiny. The opinion struck down spending caps as unconstitutional restrictions on speech while upholding contribution limits as justified by the interest in preventing corruption. The contribution/expenditure distinction drawn in Buckley is the dividing line the Court applies throughout this opinion.

Ward v. Rock Against Racism (1989) and United States v. Edge Broadcasting Co. (1993) are First Amendment cases: Ward concerned a New York City regulation of concert sound levels (a "time, place, and manner" speech restriction), and Edge concerned a federal ban on broadcasting lottery advertising (a commercial-speech restriction). Turner Broadcasting System v. FCC (1997), cited later in the opinion, concerned the FCC's cable "must-carry" rules. Each applies a form of intermediate scrutiny developed in the speech context, under which a regulation need only be a "reasonable" fit with the government's interest rather than the least restrictive means. The majority draws on this line for the principle that a classification is judged by its relation to the "overall problem the government seeks to correct," not by its effect in an individual case. These cases arise outside the equal protection context.

This footnote applies the mootness doctrine and its "voluntary cessation" exception. A case becomes moot — and falls outside the federal courts' Article III power — when there is no longer a live controversy. But under the voluntary-cessation rule, a party's decision to stop the challenged conduct does not moot a case unless it is "absolutely clear" the conduct could not reasonably be expected to recur; otherwise a litigant could evade review by temporarily ceasing. Already, LLC v. Nike (2013) applied that standard. Here, respondent Hecox asked the Court to dismiss her own case as moot after stating she would no longer play covered sports; the majority holds the case is not moot, while Justice Sotomayor's separate opinion would dismiss Hecox's case as moot. (It is unusual for a party who prevailed in the lower courts, as Hecox did, to seek dismissal of her own case.)

This citation is to an "in chambers" opinion — a ruling issued by a single Justice acting alone on an emergency application (such as a stay or injunction) arising from the geographic circuit that Justice oversees, rather than by the full Court. Here, then-Justice Stevens, sitting as Circuit Justice, addressed an application concerning a girls' interscholastic sports program. (The "O'Connor" in the caption is the student-plaintiff's surname; it is not Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who did not join the Court until 1981.) Because in-chambers opinions are the work of one Justice, they carry persuasive weight but are not binding precedent of the full Court.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo is the 2024 decision that overruled Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), ending the doctrine under which courts deferred to an agency's reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute it administers. After Loper Bright, courts independently determine the best reading of a statute. The opinion cites Loper Bright not for that holding but for a related point it preserved: that a regulation "issued contemporaneously with the statute" and kept "consistent over time" can be especially useful evidence of the statute's meaning. The majority uses this to treat HEW's 1975 athletics regulations as strong evidence of what "sex" meant in Title IX.

Bostock v. Clayton County held in 2020 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which bars employment discrimination "because of . . . sex" — prohibits firing an employee for being gay or transgender. Writing for a 6–3 Court, Justice Gorsuch reasoned that discrimination against an individual for being gay or transgender necessarily entails discrimination "because of" that individual's biological sex, because changing the person's sex would change the employer's decision. Bostock expressly limited its holding to the Title VII employment context, declining to address bathrooms, locker rooms, dress codes, or "anything else of the kind." B. P. J. argued Bostock's logic should carry over to Title IX athletics; the majority distinguishes it as arising in a "vastly different" statutory and factual context, while Justice Gorsuch's concurrence explains why he reads Bostock as consistent with today's result and the partial dissents argue Bostock's reasoning still applies to Title IX outside the sports setting.

Michael M. v. Superior Court upheld a California statutory-rape law that criminalized sexual intercourse with an underage female but not an underage male. A plurality (1981) reasoned that the sex-based classification was justified because only females can become pregnant, so the sexes were "not similarly situated" with respect to the harms the law addressed. The majority quotes Michael M. for the proposition that intermediate scrutiny permits a classification that "realistically reflects the fact that the sexes are not similarly situated in certain circumstances." Because no single rationale drew five votes, Michael M. is a plurality opinion, which limits its precedential force.

Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS upheld a federal immigration statute that made it easier for the child of a U.S.-citizen mother than the child of a U.S.-citizen father to acquire citizenship at birth when born abroad to a noncitizen parent. Applying intermediate scrutiny, the 5–4 Court (2001) held the sex-based distinction substantially related to ensuring a real parent-child connection, and stressed that a sex classification need not be accurate in every application to survive. The majority cites Nguyen for the principle that intermediate scrutiny does not require an exact fit and does not entitle individuals to case-by-case exemptions; the partial dissent distinguishes it on the ground that the statute there gave fathers an alternative path to the same benefit, so the burden was only "minimal."

Caban and Lehr are a pair of equal protection decisions about a New York adoption law that gave an unwed mother — but not an unwed father — the right to veto the adoption of their child. In Caban v. Mohammed (1979), the Court struck down that distinction as applied to an unwed father who had a substantial relationship with his children, calling the sex-based rule an impermissible "overbroad generalization." In Lehr v. Robertson (1983), the Court upheld the same scheme as applied to an unwed father who had never established a relationship with his child. The majority reads the pair narrowly — as not authorizing individualized "as-applied" exemptions under intermediate scrutiny — while the partial dissent reads them as showing that courts must examine whether a sex classification fits a discrete subclass. The two decisions are the principal battleground between the majority and the partial dissent over the as-applied theory.

Frontiero v. Richardson was a 1973 decision in which a plurality of the Court (per Justice Brennan) would have held that sex, like race, is a suspect classification warranting strict scrutiny, describing sex as "an immutable characteristic determined solely by the accident of birth." The case involved a female Air Force officer denied the automatic spousal benefits granted to male officers. The strict-scrutiny approach never commanded a majority — the Court later settled on intermediate scrutiny for sex classifications — but Frontiero remains a foundational sex-discrimination precedent and is the source of the "immutable characteristic" language quoted here.

Decided one year earlier (June 18, 2025), United States v. Skrmetti upheld a Tennessee law (SB1) banning puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors seeking to treat gender dysphoria. By a 6–3 vote, the Court (per Chief Justice Roberts) held that the law classified on the basis of age and medical use — not sex or transgender status — and therefore did not trigger heightened scrutiny; it satisfied rational basis review. Skrmetti expressly declined to decide whether transgender status is a suspect or quasi-suspect classification. The majority here relies on Skrmetti for the proposition that a classification turning on biological sex (rather than gender identity) is analyzed as sex-based, and for its framing of judicial deference where there is "medical and scientific uncertainty."

United States v. Virginia (the "VMI case") struck down the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy as a violation of equal protection. Writing for the Court, Justice Ginsburg held that a sex-based government classification requires an "exceedingly persuasive justification" and articulated the modern intermediate-scrutiny standard. The opinion also recognized that some physical differences between men and women are "enduring" — language the majority invokes here to support sex-separated sports. VMI is the leading modern Supreme Court precedent on sex-based equal protection classifications, and it is the centerpiece of the partial dissent's competing argument that a classification can fail heightened scrutiny if it is overbroad as applied to a discrete subclass.

Equal protection doctrine sorts government classifications into three tiers of judicial review. Rational basis review, the default, upholds a law so long as it is rationally related to any legitimate government interest — the easiest standard for the government to meet. Strict scrutiny, applied to classifications based on race or national origin and to laws burdening fundamental rights, requires the law to be narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest — the hardest to meet. Intermediate scrutiny, applied to sex-based classifications, sits between the two: the classification must be substantially related to an important government interest. Because the choice of tier often determines the outcome, much of the dispute in equal protection cases — including this one — turns on which tier applies.

The Javits Amendment is a 1974 amendment to the Education Amendments, named for Senator Jacob K. Javits, a Republican from New York who served in the Senate from 1957 to 1981 and was a leading figure in mid-century civil rights legislation. Enacted as part of Pub. L. 93–380 (§844, 88 Stat. 612), it directed the then-Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to issue Title IX regulations addressing athletics, specifying that they include "reasonable provisions considering the nature of particular sports." This is the statutory directive that produced the 1975 regulations (34 CFR §106.41) permitting sex-separated teams on which the majority relies.

Bagg’s Case (1615), decided by Sir Edward Coke, is among the oldest authorities cited in the opinion. Coke’s court held that a burgess of Plymouth could not be removed from his municipal office without being heard in his defense — “A removal, without hearing the party removed, is bad.” The majority invokes it to show that the right to respond before removal is not a modern invention but a principle of the common law more than four centuries old, reinforcing its reading that the Federal Reserve Act’s “for cause” standard carries an implied notice-and-hearing requirement.

This passage carries the majority’s constitutional holding that the Federal Reserve may remain independent even though the Court, in the companion case Trump v. Slaughter (decided the same day), overruled Humphrey’s Executor and held that for-cause protection for most independent agencies violates Article II. The Fed is treated as a historical exception — a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” in the tradition of the First and Second Banks, language the Court first used in Trump v. Wilcox (2025). Justice Thomas’s dissent disputes the analogy, arguing the First and Second Banks exercised no executive power while the modern Board does; Justice Barrett questions how history can support both Slaughter’s categorical rule and a Fed-specific carveout. The Government did not challenge the Fed’s removal protection here, so the constitutional question was, as Justices Alito and Barrett note, not squarely presented.

Myers v. United States (1926), written by Chief Justice (and former President) William Howard Taft, held that the President has broad constitutional power to remove executive officers — there, a postmaster — without Senate involvement. It is the foundational case for the “unitary executive” view of removal power and is the historical counterweight to Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), which carved out an exception for independent multimember agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, decided the same day as this case, the Court overruled Humphrey’s Executor. The majority cites Myers here for the Founders’ awareness of the dangers of political manipulation of monetary policy, invoking the same historical sources on which removal doctrine is built.

This is the sentence on which the majority’s procedural holding turns. Reagan (1901) and Shurtleff v. United States (1903) both stated that “notice and hearing are essential” where causes of removal are specified or where the term of office is for a fixed period. The majority treats this as an established rule that Congress legislated against when it created fixed 14-year terms for Governors removable only “for cause,” so the statute implicitly requires pretermination notice and an opportunity to respond. Justice Thomas counters that this language is dicta — the officers in both cases lost — and that no “broad and unquestioned” judicial consensus existed to support reading the requirement into the statute.

In re Sawyer (1888) and White v. Berry (1898) are the 19th-century cases for the rule that courts of equity historically would not enjoin the removal of a public officer — title to office was settled at law, through writs like quo warranto or mandamus. The Government and Justice Thomas read them to bar the reinstatement injunction here. The majority reads them more narrowly: they reflect equity’s reluctance to act when an adequate legal remedy exists, but do not forbid interim relief preserving a de facto officer’s position during litigation. Thomas responds that Sampson v. Murray (1974) already applied these cases to interim relief; this is one of the opinion’s sharpest doctrinal disagreements.

This sentence anchors the majority’s test for “cause.” Rather than fully define the term, the Court holds that because the Federal Reserve’s independence — and the appearance of it — is central to its function, removal requires a “substantial threshold” of cause, turning on the seriousness of the alleged misconduct and its nexus to the Governor’s official duties. The concern, the Court explains, is that a lenient standard would let any alleged misstep serve as pretext, pressuring Governors in how they vote on monetary policy. This is a middle path between the Government’s “any concern” standard and Cook’s narrow “statutory causes only” reading, both of which the Court rejects.

Reagan v. United States (1901) is the precedent both sides fight over throughout this opinion. It involved a federal court commissioner removable for “causes prescribed by law,” but Congress had never specified any such causes. The Court there held the removal unreviewable precisely because no causes had been defined by statute. The majority distinguishes Reagan on that ground — the Federal Reserve Act does provide a “for cause” standard — while also relying on a separate line from Reagan (repeated in Shurtleff v. United States) that notice and hearing are essential where an office has a fixed term. Justice Thomas reads that same line as non-binding dicta; the disagreement over Reagan is central to the split.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) is the decision that overruled Chevron v. NRDC (1984), ending the doctrine of “Chevron deference” under which courts deferred to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute it administers. After Loper Bright, courts must independently determine the best reading of a statute. The majority invokes it for the broader proposition that interpreting a statute — including what “cause” means in the Federal Reserve Act — is the judiciary’s job, which undercuts the Government’s argument that the President’s cause determination is unreviewable.

This case reaches the Court on the “interim” or “emergency” docket (sometimes called the “shadow docket”) — an application for a stay, not a decision on the merits. A stay is extraordinary relief governed by the four factors stated here, drawn from Nken v. Holder (2009) and Hollingsworth v. Perry (2010). Because the Government is the party seeking the stay, it bears the burden on all four. The Court resolves the case on the first factor alone (likelihood of success), concluding the Government has not shown it is likely to prevail, and therefore denies the stay without reaching the others in detail.

This is the holding of U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who issued the preliminary injunction on September 9, 2025. (The slip opinion does not name the judge; the public docket does.) The District Court’s reading — that “cause” reaches only a Governor’s conduct while in office — is the narrowest of the three positions in this case. Notably, both the majority and Justice Thomas reject it: the majority holds that pre-office conduct is not categorically excluded, while still requiring a “substantial threshold” for cause and pretermination process. The Court ultimately affirms the injunction on the separate procedural ground rather than on the District Court’s definition of cause.

The referral originated with William Pulte, Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the independent regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte, confirmed to the post in 2025, publicized the allegation by posting his referral letter to social media. The letter was directed to Pamela Bondi, who serves as U.S. Attorney General. A criminal referral of this kind is a request that the Justice Department investigate; it is not itself a charge, and as of this decision Cook had not been charged with any crime and denied wrongdoing.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) is one of the foundational cases in American constitutional law. Chief Justice Marshall, writing for a unanimous Court, held that Congress had implied power under the Necessary and Proper Clause to charter the Second Bank of the United States, and that Maryland could not tax it (“the power to tax involves the power to destroy”). The decision established both the doctrine of implied congressional powers and the supremacy of federal law over conflicting state action. The Court cites it here for Marshall’s historical observation that the lapse of the First Bank’s charter produced financial instability that converted skeptics into supporters of a national bank.

The Court also reserves the question of tenure protections for judges of "non-Article III courts" — tribunals such as the U.S. Tax Court and the Court of Federal Claims, whose judges are not appointed under Article III (and thus lack life tenure and salary protection) but exercise adjudicatory functions. The Solicitor General conceded at argument that this poses "a different set of questions" not briefed here. This reservation, like the Federal Reserve passage, limits the reach of the holding to officers who exercise the President's executive power.

This is the opinion's most closely watched reservation — and the portion (Part III-B) that Justice Thomas notably declined to join. The Court signals that the Federal Reserve may be constitutionally distinct because it follows the tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States, which influenced monetary policy without full presidential control. The same "uniquely structured, quasi-private entity" language appeared in the Court's May 2025 stay order in Trump v. Wilcox. The Fed's removal protections are being litigated separately in Trump v. Cook, argued in January 2026; this opinion expressly declines to decide that question.

This is the application of the majority's rule to the facts. Having concluded the FTC exercises executive power, the Court holds the constitutional question is straightforward: the for-cause provision (15 U.S.C. § 41) is invalid and Slaughter was removable at will. The confident framing contrasts with the dissent's view that Humphrey's made the case easy in the opposite direction. The judgment below is reversed and the case remanded.

This passage catalogs why the Court deems the present-day FTC to wield core executive power: it enforces and administers roughly 80 statutes. Elsewhere on these pages the opinion details three categories — substantive rulemaking carrying the force of law (e.g., under 15 U.S.C. § 57a), in-house adjudication and investigation, and civil enforcement litigation seeking penalties and consumer redress. A footnote notes recent FTC judgments in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars (against Amazon, Epic Games, and Equifax), illustrating the agency's enforcement reach.

Wiener is the only case after Humphrey's in which the Court actually applied it to bar a removal. It involved a member of the War Claims Commission — a body that solely adjudicated compensation claims arising from World War II. The majority emphasizes that Wiener involved a purely adjudicatory entity and that its constitutional analysis was cursory, to argue that Humphrey's was applied narrowly and rarely even at its peak.

This is a celebrated line from Justice Robert Jackson's dissent in FTC v. Ruberoid Co. (1952), criticizing the "quasi" labels: the prefix, Jackson wrote, "is a smooth cover which we draw over our confusion as we might use a counterpane to conceal a disordered bed." (A counterpane is a bedspread.) The majority deploys the quotation to argue that the quasi-legislative/quasi-judicial categories were always a way of papering over the reality that these agencies exercise executive power.

Stare decisis (Latin: "to stand by things decided") is the doctrine that courts should generally follow precedent. The Court treats it as "not an inexorable command," and weakest in constitutional cases, where correction by legislation is impossible. The factors the majority applies — the quality of the prior decision's reasoning, its consistency with related decisions, workability, and reliance interests — are drawn from Knick v. Township of Scott (2019) and other recent decisions. The majority concludes every factor favors discarding Humphrey's; the dissent disagrees, particularly on reliance.

This sentence marks the formal overruling. The majority first argues that intervening cases had already reduced Humphrey's to almost nothing, then holds that "if anything more is left," it is overruled outright. Overruling a 90-year-old precedent triggers the Court's stare decisis analysis (addressed in the surrounding passages). Justice Thomas joined the opinion in full; the other four Justices in the majority joined this overruling, while the three dissenters would have retained Humphrey's.

These are the two most recent removal-power decisions narrowing Humphrey's. Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB (2010) struck down "two layers" of for-cause removal protection for accounting-board members. Seila Law LLC v. CFPB (2020), written by Chief Justice Roberts, held that Congress could not give a single director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for-cause protection, confining Humphrey's to multimember bodies of the 1935 FTC's character. Both refused to extend Humphrey's to "new situations" — setting up the question of whether the present-day FTC still fits the old exception.

Morrison v. Olson upheld the independent counsel statute against a removal-power challenge, in an opinion often read as the high-water mark of tolerance for for-cause protections. The majority quotes Morrison's footnote 28 conceding that the FTC's powers "would at the present time be considered 'executive,'" using the Court's own prior words to show that Humphrey's premises had eroded. Justice Scalia's lone Morrison dissent — arguing for a strict unitary executive — has since become highly influential and is cited approvingly throughout this opinion.

These terms are the analytical core of Humphrey's Executor. The 1935 Court reasoned that the FTC exercised "no part of the executive power" — instead performing functions that merely aided Congress ("quasi-legislative") or the courts ("quasi-judicial") — and therefore could be insulated from presidential control. The majority's central critique is that these categories were always artificial: when an agency makes binding rules or prosecutes violations, it exercises executive power regardless of the "quasi" label.

"Black Monday" (May 27, 1935) was the day the Supreme Court handed down three unanimous decisions against the Roosevelt administration: Humphrey's Executor; A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, which struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act on nondelegation grounds; and Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, which invalidated a farm-mortgage relief statute under the Takings Clause. The trio of rulings was a major setback for the New Deal and helped precipitate Roosevelt's 1937 "court-packing" plan.

Humphrey's Executor v. United States is the precedent at the center of this case — and the one the Court overrules. After President Franklin Roosevelt fired FTC Commissioner William Humphrey without cause, a unanimous Court held that Congress may constitutionally protect officers of a "quasi-legislative" and "quasi-judicial" multimember body like the FTC from at-will removal. For ninety years it was the doctrinal foundation for independent agencies. (The case name comes from the fact that Humphrey died during the litigation and his estate's executor pursued his backpay claim.)

The Tenure of Office Act (1867) required the President to obtain Senate consent before removing officials whose appointment had required Senate confirmation. Passed by congressional Republicans over President Andrew Johnson's veto during Reconstruction, it was the basis for Johnson's 1868 impeachment after he removed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The Act was substantially repealed in 1887. Myers treated the Executive Branch's persistent objections to the Act as evidence that the Decision of 1789 had never truly been abandoned.

Myers is the foundational modern removal-power case. Chief Justice (and former President) William Howard Taft, writing for the Court, struck down an 1876 statute that required Senate consent to remove postmasters, holding that the President has an illimitable constitutional power to remove purely executive officers. The opinion is the wellspring of the unitary-executive theory the majority adopts here. "272 U. S. 52" is the citation; the decision is treated as having reaffirmed the Decision of 1789.

The "Decision of 1789" refers to the First Congress's debate over whether the President could remove the Secretary of Foreign Affairs without Senate consent. Led by James Madison, Congress structured the statute on the understanding that the removal power belonged to the President alone under the Constitution — rather than granting it by statute. The majority treats this early legislative judgment as a "liquidation" (a contemporaneous settling) of the Constitution's meaning. The dissent reads the same episode far more narrowly, disputing that Congress endorsed any constitutional rule about Congress's power to limit removal.

These are the two textual pillars of the majority's argument. The Vesting Clause (Article II, § 1) provides that "[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President"; the Take Care Clause (Article II, § 3) directs that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." The majority's theory — the "unitary executive" reading — is that because all executive power is vested in one President who must ensure the laws are faithfully executed, he must be able to remove the subordinates who exercise that power on his behalf.

This phrase — quoted by Judge Neomi Rao in her D.C. Circuit dissent — is a recurring metaphor in separation-of-powers litigation describing independent agencies as a body of officials exercising governmental power while answerable to neither the President nor (directly) the electorate. The image traces to a 1937 report of the Brownlow Committee, which warned that independent commissions formed a "headless 'fourth branch' of the Government." The Court invokes it to frame the constitutional stakes.

Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya were the two Democratic FTC Commissioners fired in March 2025. Both initially sued. Bedoya's separate resignation in June 2025 mooted his claim (a case is "moot" when there is no longer a live controversy for the court to resolve), leaving Slaughter as the sole respondent. Slaughter was first nominated to the FTC by President Trump in 2018 and renominated by President Biden in 2023 for a term running to 2029.

Slaughter advanced three independent theories: that the removal was ultra vires (beyond the President's legal authority), that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act (the statute governing federal agency action, 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq.), and that it violated the Constitution. The phrase "declaratory and injunctive relief to restore her to office" is significant because the second question on which the Court granted certiorari — not reached in this opinion — was whether a federal court may order reinstatement of a removed officer at all, or whether the only remedy is backpay. Judge Rao's D.C. Circuit dissent had argued courts cannot issue reinstatement injunctions.

Certiorari before judgment is a rarely used procedure (Supreme Court Rule 11) by which the Court takes a case directly from a federal district court before the court of appeals has ruled, reserved for cases of "imperative public importance." Here the Court treated the Government's emergency stay application as a certiorari petition and granted review in September 2025, bypassing the D.C. Circuit. The same mechanism was used in cases such as United States v. Nixon (1974) and the 2023 student-loan case Biden v. Nebraska. The District Court citation "791 F. Supp. 3d 1" and the stay at "606 U. S. 1051" mark the two prior stages of this litigation.

Olmstead v. United States held in 1928 that wiretapping a phone line without physical trespass was not a Fourth Amendment search — a property-bound view the Court later abandoned. The opinion's reference is to Justice Brandeis's famous dissent in that case, which argued for "the right to be let alone" and insisted the Fourth Amendment must adapt to new "means of invading privacy." Olmstead's majority was effectively overruled by Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), which adopted the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test, and the Brandeis dissent is now treated as vindicated. The majority invokes it to frame today's holding as continuous with a long tradition of extending Fourth Amendment protection to new technologies.

This footnote records a fact that shapes the practical stakes of the decision: Google has moved Location History storage from its central servers onto users' individual devices. Because Google no longer holds the data in a single searchable repository, it represents that it can no longer respond to geofence warrants seeking Location History. This change began rolling out in late 2023 and was substantially complete by 2025. It is the basis for the dissent's argument that the Court decided a question about a "now-obsolete" procedure — though the majority's reasoning about location data and the third-party doctrine extends well beyond this one technique.

United States v. Karo is the companion to Knotts and cuts the other way. The Court held that monitoring a beeper after it had been moved inside a private residence was a Fourth Amendment search, because it revealed a fact — whether a particular item or person was inside the home — that officers could not have learned from outside without entering. Karo establishes that location tracking reaching into a private space triggers the Fourth Amendment even where tracking on public roads (Knotts) does not. The majority uses Karo to argue that Location History, which can place a phone inside a home and even on a specific floor, must qualify as a search.

United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276 (1983), held that using a radio "beeper" to help track a car traveling on public roads was not a Fourth Amendment search, because a person traveling on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in their movements visible to anyone. The government relies on Knotts to argue that short-term, public-movement tracking falls outside the Fourth Amendment. The majority responds that Knotts expressly reserved the question of more sweeping, technology-enabled surveillance — and that Jones and Carpenter later answered it the other way. Knotts is also distinguishable, the Court says, because it involved only public roads, whereas Location History reaches into private spaces.

Smith v. Maryland is the companion to Miller and the second pillar of the third-party doctrine. The Court held that a telephone subscriber has no reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers he dials, because he voluntarily conveys them to the phone company to complete his calls. The device at issue was a "pen register," which records dialed numbers but not call content. Together, Miller and Smith stand for the proposition that voluntarily conveying information to a third party — a bank, a phone company — forfeits Fourth Amendment protection in it. The question throughout this litigation is whether digital location data is enough like dialed numbers and bank records for that rule to apply.

United States v. Miller is one of the two foundational third-party doctrine cases. The Court held that a bank depositor has no reasonable expectation of privacy in checks and deposit slips held by his bank, because he "voluntarily conveyed" that information to the bank in the ordinary course of business and thereby assumed the risk it would be turned over to the government. Miller (with Smith v. Maryland) supplies the rule the government invokes here: that information shared with a third party loses Fourth Amendment protection. The majority distinguishes Miller; the dissent argues it controls and that bank records are no less revealing than location data.

United States v. Jones, 565 U. S. 400 (2012), held that attaching a GPS tracker to a vehicle and monitoring it for 28 days was a Fourth Amendment search. The Court's majority decided the case on a narrow trespass theory (physically installing the device on the car). But two concurrences — Justice Alito's (joined by four Justices) and Justice Sotomayor's — reasoned that long-term GPS monitoring independently violates a reasonable expectation of privacy in "the whole of a person's physical movements," regardless of any trespass. It is that concurring rationale, not the trespass holding, that Carpenter and this opinion repeatedly invoke.

Carpenter v. United States, 585 U. S. 296 (2018), held 5–4 that the government conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it accesses historical CSLI revealing a person's past movements, and therefore generally needs a warrant. Two features drove the result: cell-phone location data provides a uniquely comprehensive record of a person's movements, and it is not "voluntarily shared" in any meaningful sense because carrying a phone is indispensable to modern life. Critically, Carpenter declined to apply the third-party doctrine to this data, and limited its holding to seven or more days of CSLI while reserving shorter periods. The majority here treats Carpenter as directly controlling; the dissent argues the majority discards the very boundaries Carpenter drew.

The exclusionary rule generally bars the prosecution from using evidence obtained through a Fourth Amendment violation. The good-faith exception, established in United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897 (1984), allows that evidence in anyway when officers reasonably relied on a warrant later found defective — the theory being that suppression deters police misconduct, not magistrate error. This exception is why the District Court admitted the Location History evidence despite finding the warrant unconstitutional, and it is the ground on which the en banc Fourth Circuit ultimately ruled against Chatrie. The Supreme Court declined to review the good-faith question, leaving it open on remand.

CSLI is the record generated each time a cell phone connects to a cell tower ("cell site"). Wireless carriers log these connections for network-management purposes, and the data approximates a phone's location by identifying which tower (and which directional sector of that tower) it used. CSLI is far coarser than GPS or Wi-Fi–based positioning: as the Court notes, a given data point may place a phone anywhere within a sector ranging from one-eighth to four square miles. CSLI is the data type at issue in Carpenter, the 2018 precedent the majority treats as controlling here; the Court's analysis turns on comparing CSLI to Google's more precise Location History.

A geofence warrant (also called a "reverse location" warrant) inverts the usual investigative sequence. A conventional warrant names a suspect and seeks their records; a geofence warrant starts with a place and time and works backward to identify unknown devices — and therefore people — present in that area. Because the request sweeps in everyone who happened to be nearby, not just a named target, geofence warrants have drawn distinct Fourth Amendment particularity objections. The technique depends on a provider that retains precise, centralized location data across its user base; in practice that has overwhelmingly meant Google's Location History.

This is the principle of partial (or "as-applied") preemption: when a state law conflicts with federal law in some applications but not others, only the conflicting portion is displaced, and the rest of the state statute survives. The quoted phrase traces through Foster to Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371 (1880), an early decision on Congress's power over federal elections. The majority uses the principle to dispose of the plaintiffs' late-raised "ballot recall" argument (that a voter could retrieve a mailed ballot after election day): even if recall would conflict with the statutes, that would invalidate only the recall feature, not Mississippi's five-day receipt window, which is the actual issue the plaintiffs litigated. The opinion notes Siebold was "abrogated on other grounds" by a later case, meaning a different part of its holding was overruled while the preemption principle quoted here remains good law.

Maddox is a 1944 Montana Supreme Court decision — a state high court, not a federal court — and it is the closest on-point precedent on the receipt question, which is why both opinions parse it so closely. Montana had passed a wartime statute letting servicemembers' ballots be received weeks after election day; the Montana court held that provision invalid. The majority and dissent disagree about why. The majority reads Maddox as resting on a pre-existing Montana statute requiring ballots in the ballot box by election day, making it a state-law holding (and notes that the concurrence and dissent in Maddox said the legislature remained free to allow later receipt). The dissent reads Maddox as resting on federal law, quoting its statement that the conflict was with a "congressional Act." Because Maddox is a state-court decision interpreting the federal statutes, it is persuasive authority rather than binding precedent for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Foster v. Love, 522 U.S. 67 (1997), is the only prior Supreme Court decision interpreting the federal election-day statutes, which is why both opinions treat it as the controlling precedent. Louisiana ran a unique "open primary" in October in which all candidates of every party appeared on one ballot; if anyone won an outright majority, that candidate was elected and no November vote occurred. Because more than 80% of Louisiana's congressional races ended in October, the Court held the system violated the election-day statutes — an election "may not be consummated prior to federal election day." Foster supplied the "combined actions of voters and officials" definition of "election" that both sides quote here. The fight in Watson is over what that phrase covers: the plaintiffs read "officials" to include the back-end act of receiving ballots, while the majority reads it to mean front-end acts like setting rules and providing ballots. The majority stresses that Foster expressly declined to "isolat[e] precisely what acts a State must cause to be done" on election day.

The "trapped in amber" phrase comes from United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), where the Court upheld a federal law disarming persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders and cautioned that constitutional and statutory text is not frozen to the specific practices that existed when it was adopted. The majority borrows the phrase to reject the plaintiffs' inference that because the election-day statutes date to the 19th century, 19th-century ballot-receipt practices are baked in. The dissent turns the metaphor around, arguing that codifying a rule in a statute is precisely meant to "trap" that rule in amber until Congress amends it.

This distinction is the hinge of the historical dispute. "Field voting" meant the army set up polling places at the front, with military officers acting as election officials who collected and counted ballots on site — so casting and receipt happened together on election day, just as with in-person voting back home. "Mail-in voting" meant soldiers marked ballots and sent them home, where officials received them later. The majority's point is that field voting (the more common Civil War system) tells us nothing about whether states believed ballots had to be received by election day, because receipt was automatic. Only the mail-in states faced the receipt-timing question, and the two sides dispute how many there were and what their election-day deadlines proved. The dissent argues that even mail-in states required receipt by election day, which it reads as evidence of the original meaning.

This is the "related-statute" or "in pari materia" canon of statutory interpretation: statutes addressing the same subject are read together as a coherent body of law ("corpus juris"). The wrinkle here is the majority's use of a later statute (UOCAVA, 1986) to interpret earlier ones (1845–1914). The majority and dissent agree this canon governs but disagree on its strength: the majority (quoting Scalia and Garner's Reading Law) says a later enactment will "often" inform an ambiguous earlier provision; the dissent (quoting West Virginia Univ. Hospitals v. Casey) says a later statute controls an earlier one only when necessary to avoid making "nonsense out of the corpus juris." The dispute over how much interpretive weight a later Congress can carry is one of the central methodological divides between the two opinions.

The 2022 amendment is the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 (ECRA), signed December 29, 2022, as part of the year-end omnibus. ECRA was Congress's response to the January 6, 2021 disruption of the electoral-vote count; it rewrote the 1887 Electoral Count Act to clarify the Vice President's ceremonial role, raise the threshold for congressional objections, and define "election day." The provision the opinion quotes — 3 U.S.C. §21(1) — newly defines "election day" as the November Tuesday, "except" that if a state "modifies the period of voting" because of "force majeure events that are extraordinary and catastrophic," then "election day" includes the modified voting period. The majority reads Congress's choice to define election day by reference to "voting" as confirming that voting, not receipt, is the regulated act.

United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 (1941), is the source of this "expression of the electorate's choice" definition, which both the majority and the dissent accept as the meaning of "election." Classic itself was a criminal case: it upheld federal charges against Louisiana election commissioners who altered and falsely counted ballots in a congressional primary, and it held that Congress's power to regulate elections reaches primaries that are an integral part of choosing a representative. The case is best known in constitutional law for that primary-regulation holding; here it is cited only for its definition of the word "election."

UOCAVA (1986, codified at 52 U.S.C. §20301 et seq.) requires states to let active-duty military members and U.S. citizens living abroad register and vote absentee in federal elections, and it creates a federal write-in absentee ballot as a backstop. It is administered by the Department of Defense's Federal Voting Assistance Program. The opinion leans on UOCAVA as a "related statute": because several UOCAVA provisions cross-reference state-law deadlines "for receipt" of ballots, the majority reasons that Congress assumed states — not federal law — set receipt deadlines. The dissent reads the same cross-references narrowly, arguing they make sense for primaries (which the election-day statutes do not govern) without implying anything about general elections. Roughly 4 million servicemembers and overseas citizens rely on UOCAVA voting.

The case carries the name Wetzel in the lower courts (Republican National Committee v. Wetzel) but Watson at the Supreme Court because the named Mississippi defendant changed as the case moved up; Michael Watson is the Mississippi Secretary of State and petitioner here. The procedural path: the Southern District of Mississippi granted summary judgment for the state in 2024 (742 F. Supp. 3d 587); a Fifth Circuit panel reversed (120 F. 4th 200); the full Fifth Circuit denied rehearing en banc over a dissent (132 F. 4th 775); and the Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2025. The Libertarian Party of Mississippi's parallel suit was consolidated with the RNC's, which is why both appear as respondents.

The Seventeenth Amendment (ratified 1913) shifted the election of U.S. Senators from state legislatures to direct popular vote. Before it, voters did not elect Senators at all, so there was no Senate "election day" to fix. The 1914 statute referenced here (38 Stat. 384) folded Senate elections into the same November Tuesday already set for the House in 1872 (17 Stat. 28) and for presidential electors in 1845 (5 Stat. 721). That is why the opinion repeatedly speaks of "three federal statutes" that all converge on a single date — they were enacted across nearly 70 years (1845, 1872, 1914) but use parallel language.

The "Tuesday after the first Monday in November" formula was a practical compromise. November fell after the autumn harvest but before harsh winter travel; Tuesday gave rural voters a full day to reach the county seat without traveling on the Sunday Sabbath; and beginning the count after the first Monday avoided November 1 (All Saints' Day) and kept Election Day from coinciding with the first-of-the-month settling of merchants' accounts, which lawmakers worried could let the prior month's economic results influence the vote. The same formula was later applied to House elections (1872) and Senate elections (1914), so that all three federal election-day statutes share the date.

This is the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It assigns the primary power to regulate the "Times, Places and Manner" of congressional elections to state legislatures, while reserving to Congress the power to "make or alter such Regulations." The Clause is the source of the preemption question in this case: the federal election-day statutes are an exercise of Congress's "make or alter" authority, and the dispute is over how far that exercise reaches into Mississippi's choices about ballot receipt. A parallel grant for presidential elections appears in Article II, §1, cl. 2 and 4, which the opinion discusses in the same passage.

A second, independent reason for the result. Even setting aside whether the voter file is covered at all, Title III's § 20703 lets the Attorney General compel records only by a written demand that contains “a statement of the basis and purpose” for the request. The court reads that to require both a basis and a purpose in a single demand, and finds none of DOJ's three letters supplied both: the earlier letters stated a basis but no Title III purpose, while the August 14 letter stated a purpose but no basis. Because the requirement is mandatory, the court holds Michigan did not violate Title III by refusing to produce the file. (The dissent reads the letters together as composing one adequate demand.) This procedural holding could recur in DOJ's other pending voter-roll suits.

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is the unit that issues authoritative legal opinions binding within the executive branch. Here, DOJ submitted a newly issued OLC opinion to the court — by the court's account, the day before oral argument and about 66 years after Title III was enacted — concluding that Title III reaches statewide voter-registration lists. Under Loper Bright, an executive interpretation carries the most persuasive weight when it is roughly contemporaneous with the statute and has stayed consistent over time. The court found this one was neither, and rejected it on the merits as well.

This recent Sixth Circuit case is closely related background. In Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Benson, a private organization sued the same Michigan Secretary of State, claiming Michigan failed to adequately maintain its voter rolls under the NVRA. The court rejected that claim, holding that the NVRA requires only a “reasonable effort” — “a serious attempt that is rational and sensible,” not a “perfect, or even optimal” one — and that Michigan's program satisfied it. The majority cites the case here for the factual point that the qualified voter file draws on many data sources unrelated to “acts requisite to voting”; the dissent separately invokes it on the question of DOJ's stated basis for its demand.

Two interpretive canons drive the majority's holding. The harmonious-reading canon directs courts to read overlapping statutes so they work together rather than conflict: reading Title III to “freeze” the voter file (no alterations for 22 months) would collide with the NVRA and HAVA duties to keep updating it, so the court rejects that reading. The surplusage canon, discussed on the next page, holds that statutory words should not be rendered meaningless; the court reasons that reading Title III to reach every record in an official's possession would make the limiting phrase “come into [her] possession” do no work. Together, the two canons support the narrower construction the court adopts.

Loper Bright (2024) is the Supreme Court decision that overruled Chevron v. NRDC and ended “Chevron deference” — the doctrine under which courts deferred to an agency's reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. After Loper Bright, courts must independently determine a statute's “single, best meaning” using the ordinary tools of construction. That framework resurfaces late in this opinion: it is why the court gives no controlling weight to the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel's reading of Title III and instead asks only whether that reading is persuasive — concluding it is not.

A note on posture. The district court dismissed the case on a motion to dismiss — a ruling that the complaint failed as a matter of law, with no factual trial. On appeal the government pressed only its Title III claim, abandoning the NVRA and HAVA theories it had also pleaded below. “De novo” review (stated in the next sentence) means the court of appeals decides the legal question afresh, giving no deference to the district court's reasoning. So this opinion resolves a pure question of statutory interpretation: whether Title III reaches Michigan's voter file at all.

Michigan's “qualified voter file” (QVF) is its centralized statewide voter-registration database. Beyond names and addresses, it contains each registered voter's date of birth, driver's-license or state-ID number, and partial Social Security number, plus voting history and (historically) digitized signatures — the full statutory contents are reproduced in the opinion's footnote 1. Michigan law and the privacy laws of most states restrict disclosure of that sensitive personal information, which is why Benson released only a redacted “public version” of the list rather than the full file. The distinction between the unredacted QVF and the public list is the practical heart of the dispute.

This March 2025 executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” directed a range of federal election-related actions, including instructing the Attorney General to prioritize enforcement of laws restricting noncitizen voting and to act against states deemed noncompliant with the NVRA and HAVA's list-maintenance requirements. The order set off DOJ's nationwide demands for state voter data, including the demands to Michigan at issue here. Several of the order's provisions have been challenged in separate lawsuits, and courts have blocked portions of it; those challenges are distinct from this case, which turns only on the scope of Title III.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (codified at 52 U.S.C. § 21083) was Congress's response to the disputed 2000 presidential election and the Florida recount that ended in Bush v. Gore. Among other reforms, HAVA required every state to build a “single, uniform, official, centralized” computerized statewide voter-registration list. That mandate is why Michigan's “qualified voter file” exists in its current consolidated form — the very database DOJ sought here. In effect, the record at the center of this case exists largely because a different federal statute required states to create it.

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (codified at 52 U.S.C. § 20501 et seq.) is widely known as the “Motor Voter” law because it requires states to offer voter registration at motor-vehicle agencies and other public assistance offices. Alongside expanding registration, the NVRA imposes the voter-list-maintenance duties — removing registrants who have died or moved — that the 2025 executive order and DOJ's demand letters relied on as their justification for seeking the rolls. Those same maintenance duties become central to the majority's reasoning: because the NVRA requires Michigan to keep updating its file, the court concludes Title III cannot also require the state to freeze it.

Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 is codified today at 52 U.S.C. §§ 20701–20706. Enacted five years before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it was designed to give federal investigators access to local voting records at a time when those records were often the only way to prove racial discrimination in registration. Its central command — the requirement in § 20701 that election officers retain voting records for 22 months after a federal election — still governs federal election-record retention. But the statute was written for a paper-records era, and this case concerns whether it can be used to compel production of a modern, centralized statewide database.

This sentence situates the case in a nationwide effort. Beginning in 2025, and following an executive order on election integrity, the Department of Justice sent letters to election officials in nearly every state and the District of Columbia seeking their complete, unredacted statewide voter-registration lists. Roughly 30 states and D.C. declined, citing state and federal privacy laws, and provided only public versions of their rolls; DOJ then sued more than two dozen of them. By the date of this decision, at least nine federal district courts had dismissed those suits, and none had ordered production. This is the first federal court of appeals to rule, and because Kentucky and Tennessee also sit in the Sixth Circuit, the opinion is binding precedent on DOJ's pending suits there.

A roadmap of the order, in its own terms. Granted: the court preliminarily stays, under 5 U.S.C. § 705, “part (i)” of the Department’s “professional degree” definition and the preamble’s “supervised by a licensed professional … cannot be performed independently” requirement. Denied: (1) the PA plaintiffs’ request to also stay “part (ii)” of the definition; (2) the AANP plaintiffs’ broader request to enjoin enforcement of the statutory loan caps in 20 U.S.C. § 1087e(a)(4) until a new rule issues; and (3) the PA plaintiffs’ request to have PA students treated as “professional students.” The court also directed the parties to file a joint status report and proposed schedule by July 2, 2026, and the order stands until further order of the court. The reasoning is in the separately filed Memorandum Opinion this order accompanies.

“Physician associate” and “physician assistant” name the same credential. In 2021 the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA) voted to adopt “physician associate” as the profession’s official title; the change is being recognized state by state and does not alter scope of practice. PAs are licensed clinicians who diagnose, treat, and prescribe. Under the RISE rule, PA programs fall outside the “professional degree” definition and so are subject to the lower graduate borrowing caps. The PA plaintiffs’ specific request here — to have current and incoming PA students treated as “professional students” for loan-limit purposes — is the request this order denies.

Section 1087e sets the terms and conditions of loans under the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program. The order — quoting the plaintiffs’ proposed order — points to subsection (a)(4) as the statutory source of the borrowing caps for graduate and professional students (the $20,500 / $50,000 annual limits added by Public Law 119-21). The citation underlies a question the court pressed at the June 23 hearing: because the dollar caps themselves are fixed by statute, the plaintiffs are not attacking the caps, but the Department’s rule defining who counts as a “professional” student eligible for the higher limit. Consistent with that line, this order denies the AANP plaintiffs’ separate request to enjoin enforcement of the statutory caps.

This requirement appears in the rule’s preamble (91 Fed. Reg. 23787) rather than in the codified text, and it is central to the dispute: nurse practitioner and physician associate practice is, in many states, structured around collaboration with or supervision by a physician. Scope-of-practice rules vary considerably by state, however — some grant nurse practitioners full, independent practice authority, while others require a collaborative or supervisory relationship; physician associate practice likewise ranges from required physician supervision to expanded-autonomy (“PA modernization”) models. The plaintiffs contend this “cannot be performed independently” criterion has no footing in the statute; the Department defends it as a permissible interpretation. It is among the requirements this order preliminarily set aside.

The challenged definition is codified here. Under the rule, a “professional degree” is one awarded in a core list of fields — medicine, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, chiropractic, optometry, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, law, theology, and clinical psychology (eleven in all: the ten long enumerated in 34 C.F.R. § 668.2, plus clinical psychology, added during the rulemaking) — or a degree that satisfies a multi-part test. As published, that test requires, among other things, that the degree be “generally at the doctoral level,” require at least six academic years of postsecondary coursework, generally require professional licensure, and carry a four-digit CIP code in the same intermediate group as a listed field. (CIP — Classification of Instructional Programs — is the standardized program taxonomy maintained by the National Center for Education Statistics.) The order acts on “part (i)” and “part (ii)” of this definition; the exact text of each prong, and the effect of the court’s ruling on each, are set out in the accompanying Memorandum Opinion.

The RISE rule implements the student-loan provisions of Public Law 119-21 — the 2025 budget reconciliation law styled in the rule as the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act” and commonly called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA). For the first time, that law set separate federal borrowing limits for “graduate” versus “professional” students: professional students may borrow up to $50,000 per year ($200,000 aggregate), while other graduate students are capped at $20,500 per year ($100,000 aggregate). The law also ended the Grad PLUS program for new borrowers, which had let graduate and professional students borrow up to the full cost of attendance. Because the statute ties the higher “professional” limits to the meaning of “professional degree,” the Department’s regulatory definition of that term — the subject of this suit — controls which students reach the higher caps. The rule takes effect July 1, 2026.

The American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) is the largest national professional organization for nurse practitioners. It and co-plaintiffs brought the first of the two consolidated suits (No. 26-cv-1780). The second (No. 26-cv-1941) was filed by the PA Education Association (PAEA) and others; PAEA is the national association of physician assistant/associate educational programs. Both sets of plaintiffs challenge the same Department of Education rule, and the cases were consolidated before Judge Howell. Separately — and not before the court in this order — a coalition of states and a coalition of nursing organizations led by the American Nurses Association have filed their own challenges to the rule.

Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act lets a reviewing court, pending judicial review, postpone the effective date of an agency action (or otherwise preserve status and rights) when justice so requires. It is the mechanism the AANP plaintiffs invoked alongside a request for a preliminary injunction. A § 705 stay and a preliminary injunction are related but distinct: a stay suspends the challenged agency action itself, while an injunction is a court order directing a party’s conduct. Courts in this circuit generally evaluate a § 705 stay under the same four factors used for preliminary injunctions — likelihood of success, irreparable harm, the balance of equities, and the public interest.

CoreCivic, Inc. v. Governor of New Jersey, 145 F.4th 315 (3d Cir. 2025), struck down New Jersey's AB 5207 — a law barring contracts for civil immigration detention — but only "as applied to CoreCivic," a private detention contractor, on intergovernmental-immunity grounds (2-1, Judge Bibas writing; Judge Ambro dissenting). The Third Circuit's reasoning distinguished laws that bar private parties from contracting with the federal government in a market where the government is the only buyer (impermissible, per GEO Group, Inc. v. Newsom, 50 F.4th 745 (9th Cir. 2022) (en banc)) from laws that merely restrict a state's own entities while leaving the federal government free to use private contractors (permissible, per McHenry County v. Kwame Raoul, 44 F.4th 581 (7th Cir. 2022)). The court here reads CoreCivic narrowly: it does not invalidate AB 5207 as applied to state and local governments, so AB 5207 remains an independent bar on municipal immigration-detention contracts — a further obstacle to the government's detention-agreement theory of injury.

Redressability is the third element of Article III standing (Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992)): it must be likely, not merely speculative, that a favorable decision will remedy the plaintiff's injury. The principle stated here — that relief is not redressable when an independent, unchallenged source would keep causing the same injury — is the core of the ruling. The court draws it from Fischer v. Governor of N.J., 842 F. App'x 741 (3d Cir. 2021), and the Supreme Court's McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93 (2003). Applied here: because the ITD independently forbids the same conduct, enjoining only the city policies would leave municipal officers bound by the ITD, so it would produce no practical change.

A Rule 12(b)(1) motion challenging subject-matter jurisdiction can be either a "facial" attack — accepting the complaint's allegations as true and arguing they are jurisdictionally insufficient on their face — or a "factual" attack, which disputes the actual facts underlying jurisdiction and permits the court to weigh evidence outside the pleadings (Const. Party of Pa. v. Aichele, 757 F.3d 347 (3d Cir. 2014)). Because the cities filed pre-answer motions challenging standing, the court treats them as facial attacks and takes the complaint's well-pleaded facts as true. It may still consider matters subject to judicial notice — such as the ITD, the relevant statutes, and the prior court decisions — without converting the motion to one for summary judgment.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 25(d) provides that when a public official who is sued in their official capacity leaves office, their successor is automatically substituted as a party — no motion required. That is why the caption and Defendant list reflect current officeholders (Mayors Jabbour, Solomon; council presidents Ramos, Ridley, Mimms) rather than the officials who were in office when the policies issued or when suit was filed. The substitution is purely procedural and says nothing about the merits; it reflects that the suit targets the offices, not the individuals personally.

All three concrete examples of non-cooperation in the complaint involve the Essex County Correctional Facility, which releases detainees despite ICE detainers. But under New Jersey law, jails are run by counties, not municipalities (N.J. Stat. Ann. §§ 30:8-1, 30:8-19), and Essex County is not one of the four defendant cities. Essex County is bound by the ITD and by none of the challenged city policies. The court treats this as significant for standing: the only specific injuries the government identified are traceable to a non-party county facility governed by the unchallenged ITD, not to any defendant's policy — underscoring the traceability and redressability gap.

Intergovernmental immunity is a Supremacy Clause doctrine, traceable to McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), that bars states from (1) directly regulating the federal government or (2) discriminating against the federal government or those it deals with. It is distinct from preemption: preemption asks whether a federal statute displaces state law, while intergovernmental immunity asks whether a state law impermissibly targets or controls federal operations. The modern formulation the opinion quotes comes from United States v. Washington, 596 U.S. 832 (2022), and North Dakota v. United States, 495 U.S. 423 (1990). Two of the government's three counts rest on this doctrine.

In United States v. New Jersey, No. 20-1364, 2021 WL 252270 (D.N.J. Jan. 26, 2021), the federal government directly challenged the ITD on the same preemption and intergovernmental-immunity theories it advances against the cities here. Judge Wolfson rejected those arguments, holding (among other things) that the ITD regulates only state and local law enforcement and does not directly regulate or discriminate against the federal government. The government did not seek reconsideration or appeal. The court notes that any future attempt by the United States to relitigate the ITD's validity would have to confront ordinary preclusion principles (Montana v. United States, 440 U.S. 147 (1979)).

This is the Third Circuit decision affirming that the ITD is not preempted by federal law. The opinion was written by Judge Thomas Hardiman. Because it is a precedential Third Circuit decision, it binds the district court: under Third Circuit practice, only the court of appeals sitting en banc or the Supreme Court can overrule it (United States v. Garner, 961 F.3d 264 (3d Cir. 2020)). That binding status is why the court rejects the government's argument that a favorable decision here could eventually unsettle the ITD — a single district judge cannot disturb circuit precedent.

The two prior challenges are central to why this suit cannot indirectly reach the ITD. First, in County of Ocean v. Grewal, 475 F. Supp. 3d 355 (D.N.J. 2020), two counties and others argued the ITD was preempted by 8 U.S.C. §§ 1373 and 1644 (federal information-sharing statutes); Judge Wolfson rejected the challenge, and the Third Circuit affirmed in Ocean County Bd. of Comm'rs v. Att'y Gen. of N.J., 8 F.4th 176 (3d Cir. 2021), on the ground that those statutes regulate only government entities, not private actors, and so cannot preempt. Second, in 2020 the federal government itself directly sued over the ITD on the same preemption and intergovernmental-immunity theories — and lost, without appealing.

Section 287(g) authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to enter written agreements deputizing state and local officers to perform specified federal immigration-enforcement functions under federal supervision. Participation is voluntary — a locality must opt in. The ITD and the challenged city policies both bar New Jersey law enforcement from entering or exercising authority under such agreements (with narrow exceptions). The provision recurs throughout the opinion because the agreements are one of the specific forms of cooperation the policies decline to provide.

The ITD is Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive No. 2018-6, issued by then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal in November 2018 and amended in September 2019 to add the bar on new Section 287(g) agreements. In New Jersey, the Attorney General is the state's chief law enforcement officer and can issue directives that bind all police departments statewide with the force of law (N. Jersey Media Grp. v. Twp. of Lyndhurst, 229 N.J. 541 (2017)). That statewide binding force is why the directive reaches the defendant cities' own police regardless of the cities' separate policies. (Grewal later became Director of Enforcement at the SEC.)

The Immigrant Trust Directive (ITD) is the linchpin of the entire ruling. It is a statewide law-enforcement directive that independently binds every state, county, and municipal law enforcement agency in New Jersey — including the agencies in the four defendant cities — and imposes substantially the same limits on voluntary immigration-enforcement cooperation as the cities' own policies. Critically, the federal government did not sue over the ITD in this case and New Jersey is not a defendant. The court's logic follows from that gap: because the ITD would keep binding municipal officers even if the city policies were struck down, an injunction against the city policies alone would change nothing on the ground.

"Sanctuary city" is a political label, not a legal term of art, and policies grouped under it vary widely. What they generally share is a refusal to devote local resources to voluntary assistance with federal civil immigration enforcement — they do not, and constitutionally could not, bar federal agents from enforcing federal law themselves. The anti-commandeering principle (Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997); Murphy v. NCAA, 584 U.S. 453 (2018)) holds that the federal government cannot compel states or localities to administer a federal regulatory program, which is the doctrinal backdrop for why a locality may decline to assist. The opinion uses the term descriptively and then sets it aside to focus on standing.

The opinion notes that only one European country — Ukraine — held a TPS designation when the current term began, and that designation had not yet come up for review (it was extended through October 19, 2026; see 90 Fed. Reg. 5936). The only other European states ever designated for TPS were Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, both during the 1990s Balkans conflicts and both since terminated. This factual point is offered in response to the plaintiffs' argument that no predominantly white nation has had its TPS terminated under the current policy.

The opinion refers to the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, a regiment of more than 500 free men of color from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) who fought on the American/French side at the 1779 Siege of Savannah. It was the largest unit of soldiers of African descent to serve in the Revolutionary War. Among them, by tradition, was a young drummer named Henri Christophe, who later became a leader of the Haitian Revolution and ultimately King of Haiti. A monument to the regiment was dedicated in Franklin Square, Savannah, in 2007–2009.

The plurality concludes that the statements the plaintiffs cite were "not overtly racial" and could rest on race-neutral justifications, and it declines to reproduce them. The dissent quotes them at length and characterizes them as racially coded, including statements attributed to the President describing Haiti in derogatory terms and associating Haitian immigrants with disease and crime. The factual record on which both opinions draw comes from the district court in the Haiti case (Miot v. Noem), where Judge Ana Reyes found the existing record "strongly suggests" the decision was motivated at least in part by racial animus. Whether those statements establish a discriminatory motive under Arlington Heights is the precise point on which the plurality and dissent divide; it remains unresolved on the merits because this ruling addresses only interim relief.

Arlington Heights (1977) sets the framework for proving that a facially neutral government action was motivated by a racially discriminatory purpose. A challenger need not show race was the sole or even the primary motive — only that it was "a motivating factor." Courts conduct a "sensitive inquiry" into circumstantial and direct evidence, including the historical background, the sequence of events, and contemporary statements by decisionmakers. The plurality and the dissent agree this is the governing test but disagree on its application: the dissent emphasizes that under Arlington Heights race need only be one factor among several, while the plurality concludes the cited statements are insufficient to show race was a motivating factor at all.

Trump v. Hawaii (2018) upheld the third version of the travel ban restricting entry from several countries, most of them majority-Muslim. The Court there applied a highly deferential rational-basis review, asking only whether the policy was "plausibly related" to a legitimate government objective. The Government argued that same deferential standard should govern here; the plaintiffs argued Hawaii applies only to the exclusion of aliens seeking to enter, not to those already lawfully present. The plurality sidesteps the dispute by assuming (without deciding) that the more demanding Arlington Heights standard applies and finding the claim fails even under it.

This is the clear-statement rule from Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592 (1988): a statute will not be read to bar judicial review of constitutional claims unless Congress's intent to do so is clear. The plurality declines to decide whether the TPS bar meets that standard, resolving the equal protection claim on the merits instead. (Justice Thomas, concurring separately, would hold that the bar does clearly preclude even constitutional claims — but his is a one-Justice view and is not part of the Court's holding.)

In McNary (1991), the Court held that a statutory bar on review of "a determination respecting an application" under a farmworker amnesty program did not block broad challenges to the procedures used to administer the program, because "determination" there described a single act — a ruling on an individual application. Both the majority and the dissent cite McNary: the dissent reads it as authority that "determination" means a discrete decision, not the surrounding process; the majority distinguishes it as turning on the specific narrower wording of that different statute. The case recurs throughout this opinion as the central precedent the two sides read oppositely.

The majority leans on Patel v. Garland, 596 U.S. 328 (2022), for the principle that the phrase "with respect to" broadens a statute's coverage to matters relating to its subject, not just the subject itself. Patel was itself an immigration case construing a different jurisdiction-stripping provision (8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B)) and reading it broadly to bar review. The dissent's footnote 1 contests this move, arguing that "with respect to" modifies "determination" in a way that does the majority "no good" if a determination is only the final decision.

In 2025, the Court twice stayed district court orders that had blocked the termination of Venezuela's TPS designation — referred to here as NTPSA I and NTPSA II. Those were emergency-docket ("shadow docket") stay orders issued without full briefing or a signed majority opinion, so they set no binding precedent on the merits. The Government argued the lower courts in these Syria and Haiti cases should have followed NTPSA; the plaintiffs argued unreasoned stay orders do not control. This decision is the Court's first full-opinion ruling on the TPS judicial-review bar.

Executive Order 14159, issued January 20, 2025 (90 Fed. Reg. 8443), directed Cabinet officers to ensure TPS designations are "appropriately limited in scope" and last "only so long as may be necessary" under the statute. The order is the policy origin of the across-the-board review that followed: under it, the Secretary terminated every TPS designation that came up for renewal — 13 of the 17 then-existing designations. The order's framing of immigration as an "invasion" is itself cited by the Miot plaintiffs as context for their equal protection claim.

Somalia was designated for TPS in 1991 and the designation has been continuously extended since. Other long-running designations the opinion cites include Nicaragua and Honduras (1999) and El Salvador (2001), each over 25 years old. The recurring extensions reflect that the statute requires re-designation or extension whenever country conditions still meet the criteria; critics across administrations have noted that "temporary" protected status has in practice often become indefinite.

This is 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A), the provision the entire case turns on. In full, it states: "There is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection." The dispute is over the scope of "determination" — whether it reaches only the Secretary's ultimate decision about country conditions (the plaintiffs' and dissent's reading) or also the procedural steps leading up to it, including the consultation requirement (the majority's reading).

The statute (8 U.S.C. §§ 1254a(b)(2)–(3)) requires the Secretary to review each TPS designation at least 60 days before the end of its current period, which can run from 6 to 18 months. At each review the Secretary must consult appropriate agencies, evaluate whether conditions still meet the statutory criteria, and either extend or terminate. If the Secretary takes no action, the designation automatically extends for six months. This mandatory periodic-review structure is the procedural framework the plaintiffs say was not followed — specifically the consultation step.

Before TPS existed, the Executive Branch granted similar humanitarian relief on a purely discretionary basis through "Extended Voluntary Departure," beginning around 1960. Under EVD there were no statutory standards governing when relief was granted or withdrawn, and the D.C. Circuit had concluded the decisions were unreviewable exercises of prosecutorial discretion (Hotel & Restaurant Employees Union, Local 25 v. Smith, 846 F.2d 1499 (CADC 1988)). The opinion recounts this history because Congress created TPS specifically to add standards to that previously standardless regime — a point both the majority and dissent draw on for opposite conclusions about reviewability.

Congress created TPS in the Immigration Act of 1990 (Pub. L. 101–649), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1254a. It allows the Secretary of Homeland Security (originally the Attorney General) to designate a country whose nationals already in the United States cannot safely return because of armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Designated nationals receive protection from removal and work authorization, but TPS confers no path to permanent residence or citizenship on its own. As of the start of the current administration, 17 countries held TPS designations.

The cases are captioned "Mullin v. Doe" because Markwayne Mullin is the current Secretary of Homeland Security and is automatically substituted as the named party under the rule for suits against officials in their official capacity (Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 25(d)). The actual termination decisions at issue, however, were made by his predecessor, Kristi Noem, who served as Secretary when the Syria and Haiti TPS designations were terminated in 2025. The opinion refers throughout to Noem because she signed the determinations being challenged.

“Non-refoulement” is the core protection of international refugee law: the principle that a state may not return a refugee to a territory where their life or freedom would be threatened on account of a protected ground. The French term “refouler” — meaning to repel, drive back, or turn away — appears in the authoritative text of Article 33.1 alongside “expel or return.” Its precise scope was the crux of Sale: the majority in that case read “return (‘refouler’)” narrowly, as referring to the exclusion of those already at or within a nation's borders rather than action taken extraterritorially. How far the non-refoulement duty reaches — and whether physically blocking someone at the threshold of a port of entry implicates it — is the unresolved question the dissent presses here.

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is the foundational international treaty defining who qualifies as a refugee and the protections owed to them. It was drafted in the aftermath of World War II and initially limited to European refugees displaced before 1951; the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees removed those geographic and temporal limits and extended the Convention's core protections globally. The United States is not a party to the 1951 Convention directly but acceded to the 1967 Protocol in 1968, thereby binding itself to Articles 2 through 34 of the Convention — including the Article 33 bar on refoulement at issue here. Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980 to bring U.S. statutory law into conformity with these obligations.

In Sale (1993), the Supreme Court held 8–1 (Stevens, J.; Blackmun, J., dissenting) that neither the INA's non-return provision nor Article 33 of the Refugee Convention applied to the Coast Guard's interdiction and forced repatriation of Haitian asylum seekers intercepted on the high seas. The Court reasoned that Article 33's bar on “refoulement” does not govern a nation's conduct toward people outside its own territory. The majority here treats that holding as foreclosing respondents' treaty-based argument: because noncitizens standing in Mexico are outside U.S. territory, declining to admit them does not violate Article 33. The dissent distinguishes Sale on the ground that it concerned conduct on the high seas, not U.S. officers physically stationed on U.S. soil blocking entry — a fact pattern Sale did not address.

The presumption against extraterritoriality is a canon under which courts assume that federal statutes apply only within U.S. territory unless Congress clearly indicates otherwise. The Court applies a two-step framework (from Morrison and RJR Nabisco): first ask whether the text unmistakably reaches foreign conduct; if not, ask whether the statute's “focus” is on domestic or foreign conduct. The majority reasons that reading the asylum and inspection duties to attach while a person is still in Mexico would give the provisions extraterritorial reach, so the presumption counsels against that reading. The dissent's rejoinder is that all the relevant conduct — U.S. officers, standing on U.S. soil, allegedly withholding inspection — is domestic, so the presumption does no work here.

The canon against surplusage is the interpretive presumption that every word in a statute should be given effect, so that no clause is rendered redundant or meaningless. Respondents argued that if “arrives in the United States” requires physical presence, it adds nothing to the neighboring phrase “physically present in the United States,” making it surplusage — so “arrives in” must reach people not yet inside. The majority responds that the canon is “not an iron rule,” that Congress sometimes enacts overlapping language, and that any redundancy here is partial and explainable (it links the asylum provision to the newly created expedited-removal trigger). The dissent counters that the canon is at its strongest when one reading would render another part of the same sentence superfluous.

IIRIRA was a sweeping 1996 overhaul of federal immigration law. Among other changes, it abolished the prior distinction between “exclusion” proceedings (for those seeking entry) and “deportation” proceedings (for those already inside), merging them into a single “removal” process; it created expedited removal; and it made “admission” — defined as lawful entry after inspection — the pivotal concept in the statute. Both provisions at issue in this case took their current form in IIRIRA, which replaced the Refugee Act's phrase “physically present in the United States or at a land border or port of entry” with the current “arrives in the United States.” Whether that wording change narrowed the provision's reach is the central interpretive dispute between the majority and the dissent.

The majority cites Keene for a well-known interpretive canon usually traced to Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16 (1983): when Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it from another, the disparate inclusion or exclusion is presumed to be intentional. Here the Court applies it to the observation that other INA provisions expressly reach “attempts” to enter (e.g., the criminal entry statutes), while §§ 1158(a)(1) and 1225(a)(1) refer only to those who “arrive” — supporting the inference that Congress did not mean to cover attempted entry in the asylum and inspection provisions. The dissent's response is that Congress's use of different words elsewhere does not foreclose using different language to reach the same result.

Federal appeals are normally decided by three-judge panels. “En banc” rehearing is a rare procedure in which a larger group of the circuit's judges reconsiders a panel decision — in the Ninth Circuit, an 11-judge en banc court rather than the full bench, because the court is so large. A party can petition for en banc review, but it is granted only when a majority of active judges vote for it, typically for questions of exceptional importance or to resolve intra-circuit conflicts. Here the court declined to rehear the case, but 12 judges publicly recorded their disagreement with that denial — an unusually large dissent that often signals a circuit split or an issue ripe for Supreme Court review.

This is the Ninth Circuit decision under review (decided 2025). A divided three-judge panel affirmed the District Court, holding that a noncitizen “arrives in the United States” — triggering the duties to inspect and to allow an asylum application — when, standing on the Mexican side of the border, the person encounters a U.S. official. Judge Ryan Nelson dissented. The full Ninth Circuit then declined to rehear the case en banc, over the recorded dissent of 12 judges (Judge Bress, joined by 11 active judges, plus Judge Bea and two senior judges). “138 F. 4th 1102” is the citation to volume 138 of the Federal Reporter, Fourth Series, page 1102.

A “putative” class action is one filed on behalf of a proposed class that has not yet been certified by the court. Certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 is a separate step requiring the plaintiffs to show, among other things, that the class is sufficiently numerous, shares common questions, and is adequately represented. Until the court certifies, the case is “putative.” Here the District Court did later certify a class — defined as noncitizens who sought or will seek asylum at certain U.S.-Mexico ports and were or will be denied access — which is what made the declaratory relief class-wide in effect.

“Metering” (also called “queue management”) refers to the practice, formalized at the southwest border beginning in 2016, of limiting how many asylum seekers CBP would process at ports of entry on a given day. Officers physically stationed at or near the border line turned back arrivals once a daily threshold was reached. The policy operated under two presidential administrations before a third rescinded it in 2021. According to the document, the Government's stated rationale was port capacity and safety; the dissent points to an inspector-general finding that metering was often invoked regardless of actual capacity. The named defendant, Markwayne Mullin, is sued in his official capacity as Secretary of Homeland Security, so the case caption reflects the office rather than any individual conduct.

These are the five “protected grounds” that define a refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A): race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, and political opinion. The list is drawn directly from the 1951 Refugee Convention and was incorporated into U.S. law by the Refugee Act of 1980. To qualify for asylum, an applicant must show persecution (or a well-founded fear of it) “on account of” one of these five grounds — meaning generalized hardship, crime, or poverty, without a nexus to a protected ground, does not suffice. “Particular social group” is the most litigated of the five, because its boundaries are not defined by statute.

A “credible fear” interview is the first screening step for an arriving noncitizen who seeks asylum while in expedited removal, conducted by a trained asylum officer rather than an immigration judge. The standard is whether there is a “significant possibility” that the person could establish eligibility for asylum (8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1)(B)(v)) — a deliberately low threshold meant to screen out only clearly meritless claims and to funnel plausible ones into full proceedings. A negative finding can be reviewed by an immigration judge on a “prompt” and limited basis; a positive finding results in detention for further consideration of the asylum application.

Expedited removal is a streamlined deportation process Congress created in IIRIRA (1996), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1). It allows immigration officers to order certain arriving noncitizens removed without a hearing before an immigration judge and without the procedural protections of ordinary removal proceedings. It typically applies to people who lack valid entry documents or who are found to have committed fraud or misrepresentation. The major exception, central to this case, is that an officer may not proceed with expedited removal if the noncitizen expresses an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution — at which point the “credible fear” screening process begins.

After Bruen named six jurisdictions with "proper cause"-style carry regimes (Hawaii, California, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey), several responded with the same "default flip" Hawaii adopted — barring firearms on private property open to the public absent the owner's express consent. The opinion cites parallel statutes in California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. Because those laws share Hawaii's structure, this decision's holding has direct implications beyond Hawaii: the same reasoning would bear on the comparable provisions in those States. The Ninth Circuit had in fact reviewed Hawaii's and California's versions together below.

This figure describes Hawaii's licensing regime before Bruen, when state law allowed carry licenses only in an "exceptional case." The "four licenses" statistic comes from Young v. Hawaii, Ninth Circuit litigation over that prior regime. That "exceptional case" standard is the same type of "may-issue" discretionary scheme that Bruen held unconstitutional in 2022 — which is why Hawaii had to replace it. Understanding how restrictive the old system was clarifies the opinion's framing that Hawaii responded to Bruen by "replacing its old law on carry permits with new laws that achieved a similar result." Note: the practical scarcity of permits under the old regime is the State's point too — it is the backdrop for Hawaii's argument that residents never expected armed carry.

The plaintiffs sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal statute that lets individuals sue state officials for violating constitutional rights, naming Hawaii's Attorney General. Procedurally, this case reaches the Court at the preliminary-injunction stage — a request to block enforcement of the law while the litigation proceeds, not a final judgment after trial. The District Court enjoined the rule as applied to private property open to the public; a Ninth Circuit panel reversed that injunction; and the full Ninth Circuit denied rehearing en banc ("en banc" meaning reheard by an expanded bench of the court rather than the usual three-judge panel), over a dissent by Judge VanDyke joined by five other judges. The Supreme Court granted review limited to the private-property-open-to-the-public question.

Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016) was a Second Amendment case decided by an unsigned ("per curiam") opinion in which the Court unanimously vacated the conviction of Jaime Caetano, a woman who carried a stun gun to protect herself from an abusive ex-boyfriend and was prosecuted under a Massachusetts law banning stun guns. The Court held that the Second Amendment extends to "all instruments that constitute bearable arms," including those not in existence at the founding. Justice Alito — the author of the present opinion — wrote a separate concurrence in Caetano (joined by Justice Thomas) detailing Caetano's circumstances; the opinion here draws its extended hypothetical about a "young woman" running daily errands directly from that concurrence.

This 1865 Louisiana statute is the analogue the majority calls Hawaii's "most remarkable." It was enacted as part of Louisiana's Black Code — the body of post-Civil War laws Southern States passed to control the newly freed Black population. The majority gives two reasons for rejecting it: first, it was neither widespread nor widely accepted (and so carries little weight under Bruen regardless of its content); and second, as a tool designed to disarm Black citizens, it cannot, in the majority's view, illuminate the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms. Justice Jackson's dissent devotes a full section to this statute, arguing that the majority cannot both make history the test and then categorically exclude an uncomfortable part of the historical record. "Black Codes" were the racially discriminatory state laws enacted in 1865–66 across the defeated Confederacy.

This 1721 Pennsylvania statute is the lead example in a cluster of colonial-era laws (others cited are a 1722 New Jersey act, a 1728 Maryland act, a 1763 New York act, and a 1771 New Jersey act) that restricted carrying guns onto another person's "improved or inclosed" land without permission. The legal fight is over what principle these laws stand for. The majority reads them narrowly, as anti-poaching measures aimed at the specific harms of unauthorized hunting (theft of game, stray gunfire, property damage), and concludes they are too different from Hawaii's general rule. The dissents read them at a higher level of generality, as laws protecting a landowner's right to exclude armed entrants — a principle they say Hawaii's law shares. Both sides agree these are the strongest analogues Hawaii offers.

A "historical analogue" is an older law — typically from the founding era (around 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified) or Reconstruction (around 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified) — that a court compares to a modern regulation to decide whether the modern law fits within an accepted tradition. Under Bruen, the government evaluates analogues along three lines: how many jurisdictions adopted them, how well-accepted they were, and whether they are "relevantly similar" to the modern law in terms of "how" and "why" they burdened the right. The bulk of this opinion is an argument over whether Hawaii's proffered analogues — colonial anti-poaching statutes and a Reconstruction-era Louisiana law — are close enough to its modern rule to count.

This is the analytical structure at the center of the case. Step one asks whether the Second Amendment's "plain text" covers the conduct the law restricts (does it burden "the people" in "keeping" or "bearing" "Arms"?). If so, the law is "presumptively unconstitutional." Step two shifts the burden to the government to show the law is "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation" by identifying historical analogues. Much of the disagreement among the opinions in this case is about which step does the work: the majority resolves step one easily and decides the case at step two, while the principal dissent argues the challenge should fail at step one because there is no right to enter private property without consent in the first place.

United States v. Rahimi (2024) was the Court's most recent Second Amendment decision before this one. By an 8–1 vote, with Chief Justice Roberts writing and Justice Thomas the lone dissenter, the Court upheld 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), the federal statute barring a person subject to a domestic-violence restraining order from possessing a firearm. Rahimi is significant to this opinion because it clarified how the Bruen historical test operates when a modern law addresses a problem the founders did not face: the government need not produce a "historical twin," only a "relevantly similar" analogue consistent with "the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition." Both the majority and the dissents here invoke Rahimi's "principles, not a mold" approach — they disagree over how to apply it.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen (2022) held, 6–3, that the Second Amendment protects a right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, striking down a New York law that required applicants to show "proper cause" to obtain a carry license. Justice Thomas wrote for the majority. Bruen is the case the present opinion applies: it set out the two-step "text-and-history" framework — first ask whether the conduct falls within the Second Amendment's plain text, then ask whether the government can point to a historical tradition of analogous regulation. Hawaii enacted the law challenged here in direct response to Bruen, which had specifically named Hawaii as one of six jurisdictions with a "proper cause"-type regime.

McDonald v. Chicago (2010) "incorporated" the Second Amendment against the States — that is, it held the right applies to state and local governments, not just the federal government, by operation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The vote was 5–4, but the majority split on reasoning: a four-Justice plurality (Alito, writing, joined by Roberts, Scalia, and Kennedy) located the right in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, while Justice Thomas concurred only in the judgment, providing the fifth vote on the theory that the right is secured instead by the Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause. "Incorporation" is the doctrine by which Bill of Rights protections, which originally restrained only the federal government, are applied to the States.

District of Columbia v. Heller was the Supreme Court's first decision to hold that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, independent of service in a militia. By a 5–4 vote, with Justice Scalia writing for the majority, the Court struck down a District of Columbia law that effectively banned handgun possession in the home. The case was brought by Dick Heller, a D.C. special police officer who carried a handgun on duty but was denied a permit to keep one at home. Heller is the foundation for every later Second Amendment case discussed in this opinion; its instruction to interpret the right "by looking to history" became the basis for the test the Court applies here.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) is the decision in which the Supreme Court overruled Chevron deference, ending the doctrine that courts defer to an agency's reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute it administers. Durnell invokes it to argue that EPA's pesticide-labeling regulations exceed the agency's actual statutory authority under FIFRA and so should not receive preemptive effect. The majority rejects the argument, holding that FIFRA's text itself — not deference to EPA — directs the agency to make registration and labeling determinations, so Loper Bright does not undermine those regulations.

This is one of EPA's ongoing oversight tools. FIFRA requires EPA to formally re-evaluate every registered pesticide at least once every 15 years through "registration review," reassessing whether the product still meets the statutory standard in light of current science. It operates alongside EPA's other continuing powers — requiring new data, mandating label changes, and cancelling or suspending registrations. The majority catalogs these tools to rebut the argument that preemption leaves the public unprotected against new safety information: EPA, not state juries, is the designated mechanism for updating pesticide labels over time.

Monsanto, the original developer of Roundup, was acquired by the German pharmaceutical and life-sciences company Bayer AG in 2018. Bayer inherited the glyphosate litigation along with the acquisition and has since faced tens of thousands of Roundup cancer claims and several large jury verdicts. The corporate relationship surfaces again in the dissent, which notes that a Bayer subsidiary is among the manufacturers that have previously added state-specific cancer warnings to pesticide labels as "minor modifications" — a fact the dissent uses to dispute the majority's claim that such warnings require EPA's prior approval.

This is the circuit split the Court took the case to resolve. The federal and state courts had divided over whether FIFRA preempts a Roundup failure-to-warn claim. The Third Circuit in Schaffner (2024) held such claims preempted; the Eleventh and Ninth Circuits (Carson, Hardeman) and several state appellate courts held they were not. As the dissent emphasizes, the great majority of courts to reach the question had rejected preemption — making the Third Circuit's Schaffner decision the outlier that the majority now effectively vindicates.

This citation flags an important wrinkle: EPA's 2020 interim glyphosate decision — one of the determinations the majority relies on — was vacated by the Ninth Circuit in 2022. In Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA, the court found EPA had not adequately supported its conclusion that glyphosate poses no unreasonable risk to human health and sent the human-health portion back to the agency for further analysis. The opinion cites this vacatur in a string citation; it indicates that EPA's no-cancer-warning position, while longstanding, has not gone unchallenged in the federal courts.

The IARC classification is the scientific event that triggered the Roundup litigation wave. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer — the World Health Organization's cancer research arm — classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans" (Group 2A), citing limited human evidence and sufficient animal evidence, and noting an observed association with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma specifically. That conclusion diverged from EPA's longstanding position and from other national regulators. IARC's classification is a hazard assessment (whether a substance can cause cancer under some conditions), which differs methodologically from the risk assessment EPA conducts. The opinion notes EPA re-examined glyphosate in 2017 and 2019 after IARC but adhered to its prior view.

The 1972 Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act is what transformed FIFRA from a labeling statute into the comprehensive regulatory regime at issue here. It moved pesticide authority to the newly created EPA (established 1970), required EPA to affirmatively find that a pesticide "will not generally cause unreasonable adverse effects" before registering it, and strengthened EPA's enforcement powers. The majority leans on this transformation to argue that modern EPA registration reflects a substantive safety judgment — unlike the near-automatic registration under the 1947 Act.

FIFRA was first enacted in 1947, but in a much weaker form than exists today. The original Act required pesticides to be registered with the Secretary of Agriculture, but gave the Secretary an essentially passive role — registration was largely mandatory and did not signal that a product met any safety standard. The majority and dissent both draw on this history: the dissent notes that § 136a(f)(2) (registration is only "prima facie" evidence of compliance) is a vestige of this earlier era, while the majority argues that the 1972 overhaul fundamentally changed the regulatory picture.

This is the statutory core of the case. Under FIFRA, a pesticide is "misbranded" — and therefore illegal to sell — if its label is false or misleading, or if it omits a warning "necessary and adequate to protect health and the environment." 7 U. S. C. §§ 136(q)(1)(A), (G). The misbranding prohibition is the requirement the dissent says Durnell's failure-to-warn claim simply parallels (and therefore should survive preemption), while the majority locates the operative federal requirement instead in EPA's specific approval of Roundup's label. Nearly every argument in both opinions traces back to what "misbranded" means and who decides when a label meets the standard.

The Medical Device Amendments of 1976 (MDA) amended the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to give the FDA authority over medical devices, including a premarket approval process for high-risk (Class III) devices. Its express preemption clause, 21 U. S. C. § 360k(a), bars states from imposing device requirements "different from, or in addition to" federal requirements — wording that closely tracks FIFRA's § 136v(b). Because the two clauses are textually similar, the majority treats Riegel's interpretation of the MDA clause as controlling here. The dissent's key counterpoint is that the MDA contains no provision analogous to FIFRA's § 136a(f)(2).

Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc. (2008) is the precedent the majority calls dispositive. It interpreted the preemption clause of the Medical Device Amendments of 1976 — language the Court describes as nearly identical to FIFRA's — and held that the FDA's premarket approval of a medical device imposes federal "requirements" that preempt state tort claims demanding additional or different safety measures. The case involved a balloon catheter that ruptured during a coronary angioplasty. The majority reasons by analogy that EPA's pesticide registration works the same way; the dissent argues the two statutes differ in a way that breaks the analogy.

Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC (2005) is the Supreme Court's foundational interpretation of FIFRA's preemption clause and the case both the majority and dissent treat as the central precedent. The Court there held that FIFRA preempts state labeling requirements that are "in addition to or different from" federal ones, but that state-law claims "equivalent to" FIFRA's own misbranding requirements survive. Bates arose from Texas peanut farmers who alleged a Dow herbicide damaged their crops; the Court remanded for the lower courts to decide whether the specific failure-to-warn claims were equivalent to FIFRA's standards. The majority and dissent in this case divide sharply over what Bates requires.

This references Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831 (2025), the Supreme Court decision that sharply limited the ability of federal district courts to issue "universal" (nationwide) injunctions. After CASA, injunctive relief generally must be limited to what is necessary to give the actual plaintiffs "complete relief," rather than barring the government's conduct against everyone everywhere. That rule shapes the remedy section here: the court tailors the § 7(a), § 7(b), and § 4(a) injunctions to the plaintiff States only. For §§ 2(a) and 3(d), however, the court still enjoins the provisions nationwide — reasoning that because they govern a single national Federal Form and Federal Post Card Application, the plaintiff States cannot obtain complete relief unless the form-related provisions are blocked in full. The First Circuit's post-CASA decision in Doe v. Trump supports that a broader injunction remains permissible where a narrower one would leave the plaintiffs' harms unremedied.

This is the most significant "what to watch" footnote in the opinion. In Republican National Committee v. Wetzel, 120 F.4th 200 (5th Cir. 2024), the Fifth Circuit held that the federal Election Day statutes (2 U.S.C. § 7; 3 U.S.C. § 1) require ballots to be received by Election Day, not merely cast by then — meaning state laws counting late-arriving but timely-postmarked ballots conflict with federal law. That reading is the legal theory underlying §§ 7(a) and 7(b) of the Executive Order. This court, like the D.C. and W.D. Washington courts, declines to follow Wetzel. But the Supreme Court has granted certiorari (sub nom. Watson v. Republican National Committee), so the question whether states may count ballots received after Election Day is now pending before the Justices — and a ruling there could directly affect the § 7 holdings in this case.