Welcome to the annual roundup of U.S. Supreme Court civil rights cases from the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF). The SCOTUS 2025 Term Roundup provides a snapshot of each case’s issues, outcome, and impact on civil rights. This easy-to-digest summary underscores the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts, to our lives and the future of the nation’s democracy.
Since its inception, LDF has served on the front lines of civil rights litigation efforts, including arguing many groundbreaking cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. During the 2025 Supreme Court term, LDF either litigated or filed an amicus brief in several cases that affect civil rights.
The seminal redistricting case Louisiana v. Callais focused on the constitutionality of Louisiana’s congressional map. In its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which had provided two majority-Black districts following years of litigation under Section Two of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in Robinson v. Landry.
In January 2024, Louisiana redrew its congressional map to add a second majority-Black district in response to Robinson v. Ardoin (later Robinson v. Landry), successful voting rights litigation brought by LDF and others on behalf of the NAACP Louisiana State Conference, Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and nine individual Black voters. LDF successfully argued in Robinson that Louisiana’s 2022 map likely violated Section Two of the VRA by packing Black voters into a single majority-Black district, thereby diluting the voting strength of Black voters in the other districts. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and other legislative leaders decided that rather than accepting a court-imposed map, it was in Louisiana’s best interest to draw their own map that satisfied the VRA. Senate Bill 8 became law in January 2024. However, the legislators deviated from the map that was presented to the court: the new map protected powerful incumbents in Louisiana’s congressional delegation, including U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, while also uniting communities with shared interests along the Red River and the I-49 corridor.
On January 31, 2024, twelve self-described “non-African American voters” filed a lawsuit, Callais v. Landry, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to challenge this newly enacted congressional map as a racial gerrymander in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. They argued that considerations of race predominated the map-drawing process. The Robinson case Plaintiffs intervened in Callais v. Landry as Defendants. Intervention is a legal procedure that permits nonparties to “intervene” in, or join, ongoing litigation to ensure that their interests are fairly represented. By intervening in Callais, the Robinson Plaintiffs aimed to safeguard the hard-won voting opportunities the S.B. 8 map made possible for Black Louisianians. They further sought to protect Supreme Court precedent confirming that it is not an unconstitutional gerrymander for states to fix VRA violations, even when the map considers other factors like incumbency protection.
The District Court’s three-judge panel held a consolidated preliminary injunction hearing and trial in April 2024. On April 30, 2024, the District Court issued a 2–1 decision that Louisiana’s new congressional map violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and struck down the use of the map for future elections. LDF and the State of Louisiana filed applications with the U.S. Supreme Court for emergency stays of the District Court’s decision striking down the map as unconstitutional, pending the case’s appeal. A stay pauses enforcement of a lower court’s decision. The Supreme Court stayed the lower court’s ruling pending the resolution of the appeal, meaning that the S.B. 8 map remained the operative map into the 2024 elections—and therefore, Black Louisianians were able to elect their preferred candidates in two congressional districts. The Supreme Court granted the emergency stay application because it believed that the map was struck down too close to the 2024 elections.
On March 24, 2025, LDF argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the S.B. 8 congressional map that was in place during the 2024 election cycle should remain because it satisfied Section Two of the VRA and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. LDF advanced the position that the 2024 map fairly recognized the political power of Black Louisianians, who compose one-third of the state’s population. Instead of issuing a decision in the 2024 term, the Court issued an order on June 27, 2025, calling for re-argument in the 2025 term. On August 1, 2025, the Court directed the parties to file supplemental briefs addressing an issue that the Callais appellees raised, for the first time, in their Supreme Court brief. The Court narrowed the issue to whether Louisiana’s creation of a second majority-Black congressional district amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, when the map was drawn in response to a federal court’s finding that the State’s prior map with only one such district likely violated Section Two of the VRA. LDF filed its supplemental brief on August 27, 2025. On October 15, 2025, LDF President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 6–3 opinion authored by Justice Alito (with Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson dissenting) the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map and issued a ruling that eviscerates Section Two of the VRA. The Court majority held that “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8” and that the map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” The majority decided that a violation of Section Two occurs only when “the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.” The legal standard courts use to determine whether a map violates Section Two by diluting minority voting power is known as the Gingles test. Although the majority claimed it was only “updating” the test, it instead completely upended it by requiring plaintiffs to show an analysis of racial bloc voting that “controls for party” to supposedly prove that racial bloc voting is explained by partisanship rather than race. The majority also held that plaintiffs must show that maps can be drawn to “meet all the State’s legitimate districting objectives, including traditional districting criteria and the State’s specified political goals.” Taken together, these new requirements make satisfying Section Two impossible where there is evidence of both racially polarized voting and partisan gerrymandering. Applying the new test to S.B. 8, the majority found that the Plaintiffs did not provide an illustrative map that met all of the State’s nonracial goals (specifically incumbent protection) or control for partisan preferences. Finally, the Court concluded that the evidence did not show a likelihood of intentional racial discrimination.
Justice Kagan wrote a forceful dissent, joined by Justices Jackson and Sotomayor. The dissent highlighted:
Plaintiffs in Section Two cases must now show that legislators were motivated by a discriminatory purpose, which “as Section 2’s drafters knew, is well-nigh impossible.” Justice Kagan further wrote that the VRA “was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
This case concerns access to the ballot and voter protection. U.S. Rep. Michael Bost of Illinois, along with two former presidential electors, brought a lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections and its executive director. The lawsuit aimed to prevent Illinois from counting mail-in ballots that are postmarked, or certified, by Election Day and received within the subsequent fourteen days, as is consistent with Illinois law. Bost and the former electors argued that the fourteen-day extended ballot receipt deadline improperly extends the federal election timing, violating 2 U.S.C. § 7 and 3 U.S.C. § 1, because it increases the number of total votes cast in Illinois by counting “untimely” ballots. They argued that this in turn dilutes their own votes, in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit alleged that the extended timeline created additional injuries, such as campaign resource burdens and the supposed compromise of an accurate vote tally.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed these claims, ruling that Bost and the electors lacked standing (meaning they did not have the legal right to sue). The District Court also rejected the claims on the merits. In a 2–1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the case on the grounds that voters and candidates in an upcoming election lack standing to challenge the state’s absentee ballot policy and that the allegations of voter dilution due to the later ballots were analogous to “generalized grievances” that any person could raise. The majority also rejected Bost’s arguments about specific injuries such as campaign resource burdens. The dissenting judge concluded that Bost was injured as a political candidate because the law increased his campaign costs. The U.S. Supreme Court granted Bost’s petition for a writ of certiorari.
In a 7–2 opinion by Chief Justice Roberts (with Justices Jackson and Sotomayor dissenting), the Supreme Court held that as a candidate for office, Bost has standing to challenge the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election. This means that political candidates have Article III standing (they have the legal right to sue) to challenge any election rules that relate to the counting of votes. The majority opinion reasoned:
This reasoning essentially creates a looser standing requirement for a political candidate. In other words, political candidates no longer have to show a direct injury from the rule they are challenging as unlawful; instead, it is enough that they are a candidate. Typically, for a plaintiff to prove they have standing, they must demonstrate an injury or harm.
Justice Barrett’s concurrence took issue with the majority’s reasoning, noting that “the Court today relieves candidates of having to show any real harm. . . . I cannot join the Court’s creation of a bespoke standing rule for candidates.” Justice Jackson also noted this departure from typical standing requirements, with her dissent explaining that the majority “subtly shifts from our longstanding actual-injury rule to a presumption that certain kinds of plaintiffs are sufficiently aggrieved to satisfy Article III standing, regardless of whether they will experience any particularized harm.”
This is a consolidation of two cases, Rutherford v. United States and Carter v. United States, arising out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Both cases involve a district court’s discretion to consider non-retroactive changes in sentencing law as one of several “extraordinary and compelling” reasons for reducing a prison sentence.
Daniel Rutherford and Johnnie Markel Carter were both convicted of criminal offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c), which mandates a consecutive, mandatory minimum prison sentence for individuals who use, carry, or possess a firearm during and in relation to a federal “crime of violence” or “drug trafficking crime.” In 2003, Rutherford was sentenced to 42.5 years in prison under Section 924(c). Carter was similarly sentenced to seventy years in prison for crimes he committed in 2007, after being convicted of three charges under Section 924(c).
In 2018, Congress passed the First Step Act, which prospectively reduced the mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug and firearm offenses under Section 924(c). At the times Rutherford and Carter were sentenced, Section 924(c) required judges to impose a twenty-five-year minimum sentence for each Section 924(c) violation. This resulted in the “stacking” of sentences, whereby individuals like Rutherford and Carter were sentenced to an exorbitant number of years that often resulted in life sentences, even for first-time offenses. Had they been sentenced today, after the First Step Act eliminated the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences, their sentences would have been fourteen and twenty-one years, respectively. In April 2023, the United States Sentencing Commission issued a policy statement declaring that when district courts are deciding motions for compassionate release, they may consider—as one of several factors—that an incarcerated person would have received a significantly lesser sentence under the First Step Act.
Rutherford and Carter both filed motions for compassionate release because the sentences they are serving differ significantly from the sentences they would have received under the First Step Act. They argued that the disparity constituted an “extraordinary and compelling reason” warranting a reduction in their sentences.
In both cases, the district courts denied their motions, relying on the Third Circuit case United States v. Andrews, 12 F. 4th 255 (3d Cir. 2021). The courts held that treating the length and disparity of a pre-First Step Act sentence as an “extraordinary and compelling reason” would inappropriately override the decision of Congress to not make the amendments to Section 924(c) retroactive. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the district courts’ denials of the sentence-reduction motions. LDF, the NAACP, and Cooley LLP filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Rutherford and Carter.
In a 6–3 decision by Justice Barrett (with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissenting), the Supreme Court held that when Congress declines to make a sentencing amendment retroactive, the resulting sentencing disparity cannot serve as an “extraordinary and compelling reason” that warrants sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)(i). The Court reasoned that holding otherwise would be a backdoor attempt to make the First Step Act retroactive and that it would undermine Congress’s choice to leave the sentences intact. Accordingly, the Court reasoned that the kinds of sentencing disparities Rutherford and Carter have incurred are an unexceptional feature of a system in which non-retroactivity is the default. The Court also reasoned that a disparity resulting from Section 924(c)’s amendment falls outside the heartland of compassionate release, which has typically been defined by the personal circumstances of an incarcerated person such as their medical condition, age, and family circumstances. With regard to the Sentencing Commission’s 2023 policy statement, the Court posited that even though Congress empowered the Commission to give meaning to the compassionate release provision by identifying the circumstances that constitute “extraordinary and compelling” reasons for release, those statements must be consistent with the underlying statute. Ultimately, federal courts have a duty to independently interpret the statute and effectuate the will of Congress. According to the majority, the Commission’s policy statement is invalid because it does not fall within the statutory goalposts of the First Step Act.
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent explained that the question at issue should properly be understood as whether the Sentencing Commission acted unreasonably when it issued its guidance. Under this framework, the dissent concluded that the Commission’s policy statement is consistent with Congress’s commands, as well as centuries of legal practice in which courts look to the totality of circumstances when deciding whether to modify a criminal sentence. The dissent explained that instead, the majority opinion had to search high and low for other statutory limits on what courts may consider when deciding compassionate release motions.
The Rutherford opinion whittles down the First Step Act, a piece of criminal justice reform legislation that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The order stated that after February 19, 2025, citizenship would only be granted to babies born in the United States if at least one parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. The same day, LDF, along with co-counsel the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, Asian Law Caucus, and Democracy Defenders Fund, brought suit arguing that the executive order violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 8 U.S.C. § 1401, and the Administrative Procedure Act. On February 20, 2025, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction in New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support v. Trump blocking the implementation of the executive order against the Plaintiffs.
On June 27, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Trump v. CASA, in which it considered the legality of nationwide injunctions that lower courts had issued in multiple cases challenging the birthright citizenship executive order. The Supreme Court held that the universal injunctions likely exceeded the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts, and it directed the lower courts to assess whether a narrower injunction was appropriate. Hours after the CASA decision, LDF and co-counsel filed a new lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, Barbara v. Trump, on behalf of a proposed class of babies subject to the executive order and their parents. On July 10, 2025, the District Court provisionally certified a “children-only” class and granted the motion for a preliminary injunction.
On September 26, 2025, the U.S. government filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari Before Judgment, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in Barbara in the absence of a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and thus ensuring that the Supreme Court would rule on the legality of the birthright citizenship executive order during the 2025-26 term.
In a 6–3 decision by Chief Justice Roberts (with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson joining), the Supreme Court invalidated the president’s executive order. However, the constitutional split among the justices was nuanced, as the six majority justices disagreed on constitutionality of the order. While the majority found the order was unconstitutional, Justice Kavanaugh concurred with the judgment but did not sign on to the constitutional argument. Justice Thomas dissented, with Justice Gorsuch joining, and Justices Alito and Gorsuch filed separate dissenting opinions. Since only five justices held that the order was unconstitutional and affirmed the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, this was technically a 5–4 decision.
The majority opinion held that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship to nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ legal status. The Court relied heavily on the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Throughout the decision, the Court asserted that the rules for becoming a citizen have always been the same, both before and after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court traced the concept of birthright citizenship back to how it was understood when the United States was first created. Citizenship laws were based on the common law (the rules of England). Prior to the nation’s founding, everyone living in the colonies was considered a subject of the king. Because the king protected the people, they owed him their loyalty. A principle emerged that if you were born loyal to the king, you were automatically the king’s subject. In the Barbara decision, the majority accepted this rule as the foundational premise that guides the interpretation of birthright citizenship in the United States.
Examining the common law, the Court found only two historical exceptions to birthright citizenship. These exceptions applied to the children of foreign diplomats and Native Americans who were members of sovereign tribes, since they were not under the full control of the United States. In an important historical note, the Court emphasized that the common law “made no distinction on account of race or color” and asserted that the slave states rule excluding enslaved persons from citizenship was a departure from accepted common law. Similarly, the Court reasoned that the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), was a deviation from the birthright citizenship rule. In Dred Scott, Chief Justice Taney stated that formerly enslaved persons were “born in the country” but “not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution.”
In the Barbara case, the dissent and Plaintiffs argued that before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, domicile created allegiance. Justice Thomas argued that the Citizenship Clause was historically based on legal domicile (where a person permanently resided), not physical birthplace alone. He asserted that only children of parents permanently domiciled in the United States were truly “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s majority rejected this argument. The Court first noted that during congressional debates from the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, there were more explicit and frequent references embracing the English common law citizenship rule. The Court also reasoned that the dissent’s post-enactment history of the Fourteenth Amendment could not override the amendment’s plain language. The Court further noted that Trump’s executive order used words like “mother, father, lawful, temporary,” but since these terms are not in the Fourteenth Amendment, relationships are not part of the requirements for U.S. citizenship.
The Court also affirmed its seminal decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), which essentially held that “the Citizenship Clause incorporated the common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States.” The Court reasoned that in Wong, “the Court exhaustively canvassed the text and history of the Citizenship Clause and at no point identified any evidence that the ratifiers thought themselves to be imposing a domicile limitation.”
The Court’s opinion concluded, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
In his concurrence, Justice Kavanaugh agreed that Trump’s executive order should be blocked but disagreed with the majority’s constitutional argument. He argued that the order violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (8 U.S.C. § 1401(a)), not the Fourteenth Amendment. This distinction is important: Justice Kavanaugh’s reliance on immigration law suggests that Congress could pass a law amending the INA and change birthright citizenship rules.
The dissents attempted to provide a counter-historical rendering of the Fourteenth Amendment. Surprisingly, Justice Thomas argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was a narrow, race-conscious measure to correct the Dred Scott decision. Thus, he argued that the amendment applies only to newly freed Black Americans “but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”
In contrast, Justice Jackson’s powerful concurrence asserted that the Reconstruction Amendments were a Second Founding and “an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery.” Relying on the Colored Conventions Movement of the 1800s, Justice Jackson stated:
She also responded to Justice Thomas’s jurisprudential change from endorsing a colorblind Constitution to “surprisingly suggest[ing] that the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial measure, relating only to ‘freed slaves such as Dred Scott.’” Justice Jackson’s opinion is based on the principle that birthright citizenship is fundamentally tied to the remaking of the nation’s soul and a guarantee of equality for all. She asserted that taking this constitutional right away from children on U.S. soil directly contradicts the core principles of the Reconstruction Amendments and the Second Founding.
This case concerns Damon Landor, a devout Rastafarian who made a Nazarite vow to grow his hair without cutting it and did so for nearly twenty years. However, three weeks before Landor completed a five-month state prison sentence in Louisiana in 2020, prison officials handcuffed him to a chair, held him down, cut off his locs, and shaved his head bare, despite his attempts to explain his religious beliefs. Landor even provided a prison guard with a copy of a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit striking down the state’s policy regarding locs and holding that incarcerated people in Louisiana must be permitted to keep their locs, but the guard reportedly threw the opinion in the trash.
Landor filed a lawsuit in federal court against government officials in their official and individual capacities. Landor brought his claims under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), which protects the religious liberties of individuals as well as houses of worship and other religious institutions. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana dismissed his claims against the prison officials in their individual capacities on the grounds that RLUIPA does not permit private individuals to bring claims seeking monetary damages against officials in their individual capacities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The U.S. Supreme Court granted Landor’s petition for a writ of certiorari.
In a 6–3 decision by Justice Gorsuch (with Justices Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissenting) the Court held that state employees may not be held liable in their personal capacities under a spending clause statute such as RLUIPA unless those individuals have voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private lawsuits under the statute. The Court held that because the individual Defendants in this case did not do so, Landor’s case cannot proceed against them. The majority opinion explained that RLUIPA is a spending clause statute because it imposes various conditions on federal funds distributed to state prison systems. One condition requires prison systems to refrain from imposing substantial burdens on the religious exercises of people incarcerated in state prisons, outside exceptional circumstances. If a prison system fails to comply with this condition, Congress may cut off its funding. Congress also included a provision in RLUIPA that calls on state prison systems to agree to answer suits by private plaintiffs asserting a violation of RLUIPA and seeking appropriate relief. To resolve Landor’s case, the majority said they only needed to answer whether, consistent with the Constitution, a plaintiff may bring an RLUIPA suit against individuals (such as the prison officials) who have not formed any agreement with the federal government.
RLUIPA was enacted pursuant to the Constitution’s Spending Clause, which gives Congress the “Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1. The majority argued that the founders rejected the premise that the Spending Clause conferred Congress with the power to regulate conduct. Instead, the majority reasoned that Congress must rely on consent and spending statutes, which should be understood as a “compact” to which the state has assented or a “federal-state agreement.” Applying contract principles, the majority suggested that conditions that are attached to federal funds through the Spending Clause apply only to those who have knowingly and voluntarily agreed to them, writing that “voluntary and knowing consent is key.” Thus, the individual Defendants did not implicitly consent to RLUIPA liability just because they are indirect recipients of federal funds from their paychecks. Otherwise, “Congress would enjoy an effectively unbridled police power,” and federal authorities would have no need to show that their regulations are proper exercises of Congress’s limited and enumerated powers. The majority concluded, “Under the Spending Clause, Congress’s power to spend money does not include the power to regulate. Spending Clause statutes can bind only those who voluntarily and knowingly undertake obligations by agreement with the federal government. Because that essential element is missing here, we affirm the judgment of the Fifth Circuit.”
Justice Jackson’s dissent argued that the majority opinion “transforms a federal statute into an invitation to be accepted or declined, deemed binding only if each particular defendant has explicitly agreed to be penalized.” The dissent explained that the question this case raises is whether Landor can seek monetary damages from the officials who ignored the law, held him down, and “uncrowned him before God.” But, “[i]n the end, the Court reduces some of Congress’s greatest legislative achievements—federal laws that secure civil rights, environmental stability, healthcare, and more—to nothing more than the wheelings-and-dealings of an especially wealthy private party.”
This case may have significant consequences for other Spending Clause statutes and congressional power more generally. In short, the opinion imposes a “novel consent requirement” that limits Congress’s ability to use its spending power to impact only direct recipients of federal funds. The dissent explained that the majority has adopted the “strong contract theory” that Spending Clause legislation is in fact “nothing but a contract.” The dissent reasoned that although this case does not directly endanger other civil rights laws (such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Clean Air Act, and the Medicare and Medicaid Acts), “the majority’s reasoning casts a shadow that will not easily be escaped” because “[n]o one knows what changes lie at the end of a strict contract-law construction of the spending power.” Furthermore, “Prisoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons—no matter how blatant—will often be left remediless. And encroachments on prisoners’ statutory rights are likely to happen with fair frequency, as state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper.”
This opinion departs from the Court’s campaign to read religious rights expansively and leaves Landor without a remedy for the grave violation of his religious freedom. This decision is a blow to the dignity of incarcerated people and will make it even harder to hold prison officials accountable for their unlawful actions. The reality of frequent transfers, releases, and short-term stays will make it nearly impossible for incarcerated people to vindicate their religious freedom. Beyond the criminal context, this case may also make it more difficult for private parties to enforce federal statutes, including civil rights statutes.
This case concerns the scope of the mail exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which states that no FTCA claims can “aris[e] out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission” of mail.
Lebene Konan is a Black property owner who rents out units in Euless, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth. In 2020, two U.S. Postal Service (USPS) employees began a years-long campaign of racial harassment against Konan. No similar harassment was inflicted on any of Konan’s white neighbors. One USPS employee intentionally changed the lock on the mailbox at one of Konan’s properties and gave the key to a white tenant. They taped a sign with bright red letters to Konan’s mailbox, announcing that they would not deliver mail to tenants. They also imposed an identification policy that applied only to Konan—and not to any of her white neighbors—when she came to pick up mail from the post office. The USPS employees stopped delivering mail to her and her tenants altogether, instead marking it as undeliverable and returning it to the post office. Konan complained to the USPS Inspector General, who confirmed that Konan was the owner and ordered the mail to be delivered.
Konan and her tenants did not receive important pieces of mail, including prescriptions, tax documents, loan payment notifications, credit card statements, medical bills, and car titles. Because the USPS did not deliver any mail to the units, many of Konan’s tenants were forced to move. Konan signed up for the USPS Informed Delivery service to receive notification of her mail that was being held at the local post office. When she attempted to retrieve her mail in person, the USPS employees resisted. This harassment continued for two years, while white-owned properties in the community continued to receive their mail as usual. Konan submitted more than fifty complaints to the USPS, including a formal administrative complaint, to no avail.
Ultimately, Konan filed a complaint in 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas under the FTCA against the United States and the USPS. In her complaint, she alleged state law tort claims for nuisance, conversion, tortious interference with prospective business relationships, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She also sued the USPS employees in their individual capacities, seeking monetary and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1985.
The FTCA waives the United States’ sovereign immunity “under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable.” However, the FTCA contains several exceptions to its waiver of sovereign immunity, including a “postal-matter” exception in 28 U.S.C. § 2680(b) that preserves immunity for “[a]ny claim arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter.”
The District Court concluded that the postal-matter exception codified in 28 U.S.C. § 2680(b) preserved the United States’ sovereign immunity with respect to each of Konan’s state law tort claims because her claims arose out of the “loss” and “miscarriage” of postal matter. The District Court dismissed Konan’s claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 for failure to state a claim, on the grounds that 42 U.S.C. § 1981 only authorizes claims against individuals acting under color of state law, and the USPS employees were acting under color of federal law. The District Court also dismissed the 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) claims for failure to state a claim.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit unanimously reversed the dismissal of Konan’s FTCA claims on the grounds that the plain language of the FTCA and Supreme Court precedent in Dolan v. USPS, 546 U.S. 481 (2006), both make clear that an intentional refusal to deliver mail is not a “loss,” “miscarriage,” or “negligent transmission” within the meaning of the postal-matter exception. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of Konan’s civil rights claims.
In a 5–4 decision by Justice Thomas (with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson dissenting), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the United States retains sovereign immunity for claims arising out of the intentional non-delivery of mail because both “miscarriage” and “loss” of mail under the FTCA’s postal exception can occur as a result of the USPS’s intentional failure to deliver the mail. According to the majority, the postal exception to the FTCA reflects Congress’s judgment that redress for harms related to the USPS’s transport of mail should not come from tort suits. Otherwise, the majority reasoned, tort suits would create a significant burden for the government and courts given the frequency of postal workers’ interactions with citizens. The majority contended that a “miscarriage” of mail includes any failure of mail to properly arrive at its intended destination, regardless of why it happened. To the majority, this is the best understanding of the dictionary definition and ordinary usage of “miscarriage.” The Court applied this same reasoning to the term “loss.” The majority concluded that when Congress enacted the FTCA, the “loss” of mail ordinarily meant a deprivation of mail, regardless of how the deprivation was brought about. In other words, a “loss” cannot be limited to only inadvertent losses. The majority also rejected Konan’s argument that the postal exception’s “negligent transmission” category narrows the meaning of “miscarriage” and “loss.” The opinion asserted that Congress intentionally limited the “negligent” qualifier to “transmission,” and therefore did not use it to also qualify “loss” or “miscarriage.” Finally, the majority insisted that their reading of the statute is not overbroad, but rather that Congress likely used broad, overlapping terms to better keep complaints about mail delivery out of court.
The dissenting justices argued that the postal exception is not as broad as the majority holds. For example, Congress could have granted immunity for all claims arising from the “mail activities” of the USPS, but instead identified particular misconduct for which the government was not assuming financial responsibility. According to the dissent, it follows from this understanding that by using specificity over generality, Congress intended for the postal exception to be less encompassing than a broader exception would have been. Thus, it is clear from the statute that Congress intended for the government to assume financial responsibility for some misconduct. Looking at the text of the statute, the majority explained that neither “loss” nor “miscarriage” capture intentional misconduct. The dissent, authored by Justice Sotomayor, noted that “even if ruling for Konan today would mean more suits against the Government for mail-related intentional torts tomorrow, that would not provide this Court with authority to change the text Congress enacted.”
As a result of the majority opinion, Konan is left without a remedy for the racial discrimination she experienced by the USPS’s intentional non-delivery of her mail. Beyond Konan, this decision prevents other individuals from suing the USPS should a postal employee refuse to do their duties, even if that refusal is impermissibly motivated by racial discrimination.
In March 2020, Idaho passed House Bill 500, known as the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, Idaho Code §§ 33-6201–06 (2020), which imposed a categorical ban on the participation of transgender women and girls in women’s student athletics in public schools. The law bars all transgender girls and women from participating in, or even trying out for, public school girls’ or women’s sports teams from primary school to college, and at every level of competition from intramural to elite teams. The law also establishes a sex dispute verification process that permits any individual to “dispute” the sex of any student participating in girls’ or women’s athletics in the state. The verification process requires the challenged individual to undergo intrusive medical procedures, including gynecological exams. Student athletes who participate in boys’ or men’s sports are not subject to a comparable dispute verification process.
In April 2020, Lindsay Hecox, a trans woman, and Jane Doe, a cisgender woman, filed suit against Idaho. Hecox wanted to try out for the Boise State University women’s track and cross-country teams. Doe already played high school varsity sports but feared that her sex would be “disputed” under the law because of her masculine presentation.
In August 2020, the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho preliminarily enjoined the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. Applying heightened scrutiny, the District Court found that the Act likely violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it subjects only students who want to play in female sports to the sex verification process and categorically bans trans girls and women from playing on any girls’ teams. The District Court concluded that Idaho failed to provide any evidence showing that the Act is substantially related to its supposed interest in advancing sex equality or expanding opportunity for women athletes. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s ruling. Idaho and individuals seeking to uphold the ban petitioned for a writ of certiorari, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted their petition.
In 2021, West Virginia passed a law banning girls who are transgender from participating on all-girls sports teams from middle school to college. B.P.J., a fourteen-year-old transgender girl who had begun receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy, attempted to try out for the girls’ sports teams at her middle school. After the middle school informed B.P.J. and her family that she would not be allowed to play sports on all-girls sports teams, her mother brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. The lawsuit argued that West Virginia’s law violates Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in schools receiving federal funding, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The District Court granted a preliminary injunction halting the enforcement of the statute pending the outcome of the litigation. The District Court found that B.P.J. was likely to succeed on the merits of her claims and ordered West Virginia to allow her to compete in girls’ sports. However, the District Court ultimately ruled for West Virginia at the next stage of summary judgment, rejecting both of B.P.J.’s claims. On the Equal Protection claim, the District Court held that West Virginia’s “definition of ‘girl’ as being based on ‘biological sex’” was “substantially related to the important government interest of providing equal athletic opportunities for females.” On B.P.J.’s Title IX claim, the District Court relied on regulations that authorize sex-separate sports in the same manner as the West Virginia law, so long as the overall opportunities for each sex are equal. The District Court thus rejected the claim because B.P.J. was still permitted to “try out for boys’ teams.”
On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that West Virginia’s law excluding B.P.J. from participating on girls’ teams violated Title IX and that the District Court should not have dismissed her Equal Protection claim. The U.S. Supreme Court denied West Virginia’s emergency application to enforce the law while the case proceeded through the lower courts.
The Court consolidated the Hecox and B.P.J. cases.
In a 6–3 decision by Justice Kavanaugh, the Court held that state laws that categorically ban transgender women and girls from all-girls scholastic sports teams do not violate Title IX or the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented from the Equal Protection portion of the majority’s opinion.
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., the argument was made that state laws banning transgender girls from participating in women’s and girls’ sports teams violate Title IX. The Court reasoned that Title IX clearly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and the implementing regulations expressly permit schools to maintain separate teams for members of each sex. The Court concluded that the statutory and regulatory definition of “sex” refers exclusively to biological sex. In addition, the Court found that “Title IX regulations allowed separate sports teams precisely because of the biological differences between the sexes—namely, the inherent physical differences between biological women and biological men” and thus “the safety and competitive fairness concerns that would arise if males were allowed to compete in female sports.” The Court also relied on the absence of language in the statute and regulations affirmatively requiring schools to allow biological males to participate in women’s and girls’ sports.
The Court rejected B.P.J.’s argument that, under the regulations, the “reasonableness” requirement is not met when transgender women are prohibited from participating in all-girls sports. The Court stated that maintaining separate sports teams based on biological sex is reasonable because “[g]iven the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women’s and girls’ teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition.”
The Court also rejected B.P.J.’s argument that prohibiting participation in all-girls sports blocks them from participating in any competitive sports teams at the school. The Court found that the statute and regulation require only equal opportunity and do not guarantee that every student receives a spot on a sports team. In addition, the Court held that the provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §2000e–2(a)(1), prohibiting employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” should not apply to Title IX because Title VII applies to employment discrimination and Title IX applies uniquely to sports.
Both cases challenged the respective laws as unconstitutional. Rejecting this argument, the Court held that state laws maintaining all-girls sports teams for biological females do not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court applied the intermediate scrutiny test, that “sex-based classifications are permissible only when the classification is ‘substantially related’ to achieving an ‘important’ government objective.” In applying this test, the Court found that the states’ interests in safety and competitive fairness are governmental interests that justify limiting women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex.
Justice Sotomayor, in an opinion joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, agreed that West Virginia’s ban did not violate Title IX, but she would have remanded the constitutional claims back to the lower court for more fact-finding. In her dissent, she stated:
Notably, while the majority decision held that state laws banning transgender girls from participating in women’s and girls’ sports teams are lawful, the Court did not hold that states are prohibited from enacting laws that permit transgender girls from participating in all-girls sports teams.
