NEW: Supreme Court's conservatives OK trans sports bans. Kavanaugh wrote the court's opinion, but Sotomayor dissented to explain for the liberal trio what the court got wrong about equal protection law. Today, at Law Dork:

??? On that chance that this is a real question: Supreme Court justices are appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. Any changes the regulations around the supreme court would likely start in Senate Judiciary. The Senate is, pretty much, the only available regulator on the Court.

You are aware that there is an election this year and Schumer might well become the Senate Majority leader ONCE AGAIN. AS HE WAS BEFORE. DURING WHICH TIME HE ALSO DID NOTHING TO CURTAIL THE POWER OF THE COURT. Yes?

and I've now written about Kavanaugh's OTHER bad opinion today in NRSC v. FEC, the corruption enthusiasts on the Supreme Court made it even easier for billionaires to buy politicians ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/nrsc-...

NRSC v. FEC has been a bit slept on but it's arguably the biggest campaign finance case since Citizens United the GOP justices are drowning democracy in big money ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/nrsc-...

To give the libs (some) credit, they dispute the majority’s finding that sex in Title IX need be sex at birth. Sotomayor’s opinion dodges by saying BPJ didn’t ask for a different interpretation, Jackson more explicitly says she’s open to another interpretation. Neither goes far enough. /1

How a once-mocked argument against birthright citizenship got four votes at the Supreme Court 👇 www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...

there is a literacy crisis at the Supreme Court: only 5 of 9 justices are capable of reading the Fourteenth Amendment AND it took them a year and a half to do so tragic tbh ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/birth...

extremely rich for Kavanaugh and the other Republican justices to bellyache about campaign finance laws consigning political parties to "second-tier status" oh is the Court worried about creating tiers of citizenship? since when? surely this is news to...everyone ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/nrsc-...

Will be on MSNOW shortly talking about the Supreme Court’s bad campaign finance decision which should not get lost in this news cycle

If you want an optimistic take on today's birthright ruling, @mford.bsky.social has you covered newrepublic.com/article/2125...

Nostalgic. Remembering when this used to be a law-abiding democracy led by a mostly competent group of ppl who cared more about this nation than their own pockets.

After federal agents shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, a New Yorker sent ICE's director an email in January comparing him to a Nazi. This week, DHS agents stalked him across New York. His home. A hotel. They gave his wife a letter warning of criminal prosecution. www.syracuse.com/news/2026/06...

Roberts trying to win back some cred.

Beer K found that the EO did NOT violate the 14th amendment, but violated a federal statute. so, to be accurate, this is really a 5-4 decision--with 4 justices saying that the words of the 14th amendment are meaningless...if rogue judges don't like them..

This decision should be reason enough to remove three of the justices for malpractice. It's plain language in the Constitution. Arguing that birth right citizenship isn't constitutional is as far away from calling balls and strikes as you can get.

It should have been 9-0.

Roberts on ramifications of Thomas' argument: "If the test truly is whether a person is 'amenable to the laws' of two governments at once, then it is a test that every child born to a foreign parent fails—a result that even the principal dissent cannot stomach"

Alito Fox News brainwormed as ever: "As interpreted by the Court today, the 14th A confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country incl the children of “birth tourists,” women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child &then promptly return home"

Oof, Thomas: "In doing so, the Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support."

Kavanaugh says that Constitution is an "enduring document" and that new exceptions to birthright citizenship can be added for "modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers"

Stunning that Kavanaugh dissents from the constitutional holding — says executive order removing birthright citizenship for undoc immigrants violates only a law (that Congress could change) not the 14th Amendment. So only 5-4 in terms of limiting birthright citizenship as constitutional violation

Jackson: "Of course, the ultimate irony is that for all the talk about the detestable Dred Scott decision, the Government and the principal dissent propose a return to its core tenet. Their bottom line is that, for certain people, being born on American soil will not suffice to confer citizenship."

"Nor did they seek to advance their own position relative to, or at the expense and exclusion of, other marginalized groups," she wrote.

Roberts: Arguments for limiting birthright contend "that natural allegiance was no longer sufficient for citizenship and that some greater quantum of allegiance (based on domicile) was required. There is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view"

Jackson concurrence rebuts Thomas' contention that birthright citizenship was meant to apply narrowly to Black Americans not immigrants: "Freed Blacks did not advocate for a unique set of rules that catered only to their situation..." (1/2)

New: Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship. Roberts writes for majority, joined by Barrett and the libs. Kavanaugh concurs in part and dissents in part. Jackson writes concurrence joined partially by Sotomayor. Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas all dissent (+ Gorsuch also signs on to Thomas' dissent)

It is almost time. Any Democrat hoping to win election, & everyone running should be, must be ready to change the makeup of SCOTUS. We are not now, nor have we ever been a colorblind society. Their is no reason for us to become one. Skin color isn't the problem. A racial hierarchy is.

Roberts has made clear in the VRA cases that if you're a right winger, you can take as many bites at the apple as you want and eventually you might get one. Why wouldn't he try it?

Apparently picking up on the implicit invitation in Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence, President Trump is asking Congress to turn his EO mangling birthright citizenship into a statute. He doesn't seem to clock the fact that five justices said today that the 14th am thwarts any such effort.

fundamentally, Alito and Thomas believe that the 14th Amendment established a hierarchy of citizenship or allowed the elected branches to do so. but that is totally ass backwards! it was explicitly written to *preclude* any hierarchy of citizenship. it is right there in the text!

actually a third thing: alito quite literally sounds like the unreconstructed opponents of the 14th amendment, right down to the notion that his citizenship is degraded by the fact that it is equal with that of someone from a lower station than him.

two things. first, always an irony that alito recapitulates the exact same arguments made against his immigrant forbearers. second, if this is all the 14th amendment did it would not have repudiated dred scott

7/ another tweet, if you argue that this isn't clear you should be removed from the court.

6/ Don't matter how many word games your latest FedSoc star wants to play. The constitution creates a senate. Full stop. You can't not see that. The citizenship clause is just as clear - in its plain words, in the explicit intent of the people who wrote it, from every perspective. As I said in ...

5/ is THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY TO MISTAKE THE MEANING OF THE AMENDMENT. It's too clear. You might as well have a random FedSoc lawyer come up with some grand new theory about how the US senate is unconstitutional and doesn't exist. I mean, IT'S FUCKING RIGHT THERE IN THE DOCUMENT! There is a senate.

4/ the amendment IS JUST TOO CLEAR. There's simply no way to mistake its meeting. Needless to say in 1898 people involved in writing the amendment were still around. But that didn't necessarily matter since the amendments were already being gutted in other ways. But again, the point ...

3/ felt about Black Americans, though obviously LOTS of white Americans felt that way about Black people too. My point though is that it would have been really obvious to a lot of white Americans that like well obviously chinese can't be Americans, they can't be citizens. But the language of ...

2/ racism wasn't maybe 'worse' than other forms of racism, though that's certainly arguable. But it had a specific character of just a powerful sense of asians are from this different part of the world and they just can't be any part of America, in a sense almost more than white society ...

In a way one of the clearest proof points of the citizenship clause is the United States v. Wong Kim Ark case, 1898. And not because it was the precedent. It is difficult to grasp just how racist the US was in 1898, both in a "hard" biological as well as a general cultural sense. Anti-Asian ...

A year a half a ago, this professor made a plainly false statement that “an entire literature” existed— it didn’t—and then got multiple justices to buy into the historical fiction he backfilled, covering 800 years in a few weeks. A bastardized history, not in the search for truth, but for power.

She is not always on the side of common sense or democracy.

Two of Trump's three SCOTUS appointees ruled today that his EO on birthright citizenship is perfectly consistent with the 14th amendment. If he had picked, say, Ho or Oldham to replace RBG—rather than Barrett—we would have a different constitution today.

I understand SCOTUS, know who they are, & by all rational accounts it feels so naive to say: "I can't believe 4 of 9 justices said the Constitution doesn't protect birthright citizenship." And yet, I can't believe 4 of 9 justices just said the Constitution doesn't protect birthright citizenship.

@jaywillis.net unpacks this point: ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/birth...

"Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product," he said. bbc.com/news/article...

NEW: Donald Trump’s effort to single-handedly impose his preferred election system on the nation — one forged in the fire of his 2020 grievances — has slammed into endless and likely insurmountable legal obstacles. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/06...

Big in Louisiana today: State Supreme Court upheld decision vacating the conviction of Chris Duncan, who spent 26 years on death row claiming innocence. Context: 80% of people on Louisiana death row have been exonerated; this conviction hinged on discredited doctors. We reported on case here:

I’m not going to hail Barrett and Roberts for allowing us to count our votes. It’s a huge win for democracy, but it shouldn’t have even been a question. That we were one vote away from disenfranchising votes is all the more reason to expand the court in 2029.