Good morning, everyone! Sorry for the late arrival! We will have orders momentarily and then can chat more before opinions.
We could have big news with orders. We are waiting to see whether the justices take any of the new (or new-ish, since some of them have been sitting around for over a year) Second Amendment petitions -- and if so, which one.
The order list is up, and there do not appear to be any new grants.
I have now trained myself to scroll to the bottom to look for any opinions related to orders, as there is one today. (As I have noted before, when orders lists are handed out, opinions related to orders are on top.)
The Court denied cert in Wexford Health v Garrett, involving whether a prisoner who does not exhaust – that is, bring his claim through – all of the internal administrative remedies available to him before filing a lawsuit can “cure” that failure to exhaust by filing an amended complaint after he is released from prison. Justice Thomas dissented from the denial of review, in a 3+ page opinion.
The Court denied review of a petition filed by Facebook in a case involving a criminal defendant's right to subpoena service providers.
The virtual five-minute buzzer has not sounded yet.
This is the time of year when the justices switch over to conferences on Thursday, so there will be another conference this week. This also means that the electronic dockets for the petitions on which the justices did not act should be updated very soon -- hopefully this morning.
Also, remember that it appears that when the Court is done issuing opinions, the "R" number (on the Court's webpage) will appear. The Court does not announce how many opinions it will issue on a particular day, so this is our signal when they are done.
WE have the first opinion, in Opati v. Republic of Sudan.
The D.C. Circuit's decision is vacated and remanded in a ruling by Gorsuch. It is unanimous.
And we have the R number, so it appears we have our last opinion of the day as well.
This is a ruling about whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act bars a punitive damages award against Sudan for its role in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The D.C. Circuit ruled that it did, and now the court (with Kavanaugh recused) vacates that ruling.
The court rules that punitive damages are available for the plaintiffs' federal claims and sends the case back for the D.C. Circuit to take another look at its decision about the availability of punitive damages for claims proceeding under state law.
And, as Mark has noted, there is an "R" number next to this opinion, so it would seem that we are done for the day.
I am going to sign off now and get to work, although my order post won't take me long. Thanks everyone for joining us, and have a great weekend!
Well, a one opinion day and an orders list with no grants and putting off some big stuff means that we will have some more eventful days soon. Have a good Memorial Day weekend everyone!
Thanks for joining everyone. Orders expected from this Thursday's conference next Tuesday, and we'll let you know if opinions are expected that morning as well by week's end. We'll be back each time there are opinions from here on out. Have a safe and relaxing long weekend!
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