On June 18, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Hemani. The case was 9-0, though was fragmented. Justice Thomas concurred, finding that possession statute exceeded Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause. Justices Jackson and Sotomayor repeated their view that Bruen was wrongly decided. And Justices Alito and Kagan concurred in judgment, though I still am not entirely sure what they disagreed with the majority about.
Today, the Supreme Court decided Wolford v. Lopez. There was a time when we had to wait more than a decade for the Supreme Court to decide a Second Amendment case. This year, we get two victories in the span of a week! Here, the Court split 6-3, finding that Hawaii's "vampire" law violates the Second Amendment.
Justice Alito, who did not join Hemani, wrote the majority opinion in Wolford. Part I of Alito's opinion offers an extremely thorough, nine-page discussion of Heller, McDonald, Bruen, and Rahimi. This is a perfect capsule summary to teach students about how the doctrine has developed since 2008. But something very significant is missing: Hemani. Indeed, Justice Alito writes that Rahimi was "our most recent Second Amendment." What about Hemani, decided seven days ago? Alito does not cite Hemaniat all. But Justice Barrett's concurrence and Justice Jackson's dissent does cite Hemani.
What's even stranger is the sequencing. Justice Alito's opinion should have been released first, as it laid out all of the Second Amendment doctrine, and then Justice Gorsuch's opinion could have come out second, and cited back to Alito. But Hemani came out first.
Something feels off here. Maybe Wolford was supposed to come out first, but the Chief wanted to force out the 9-0 Hemani to send a signal of bipartisanship, so the ordering was flipped? I don't like that theory as there were no other blockbusters last Friday. I don't think the majority opinion flipped in Hemani. The only person who didn't write from that sitting was Justice Thomas, and his view on the Commerce Clause was never going to command a majority.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but something happened with Hemani and Wolford.
Update: Is it possible that Justice Barrett may have lost the majority opinion in Wolford? Justice Alito's majority opinion is 24 pages and avoids any major traps concerning property law. It is neat and clean, and offers a cogent summary of all the case law. Barrett's 14 page concurrence gets into the weeds of scrutiny. Barrett only brings along Thomas and Gorsuch for Part II-B. I can see Roberts thinking this opinion about property law reads like something a law professor would right (it is), and jumping ship to the safe harbor of Alito. Even now, the Barrett concurrence covers much of the same ground as the Alito majority. And she responds often to the Jackson dissent, as a majority opinion would. Barrett did not write an opinion for January when Wolford was argued. There were seven cases that sitting, so Alito may not have had an assignment.
This theory still doesn't explain why Alito didn't acknowledge Hemani. Something is up.
Update #2: Justice Alito's concurrence cites Molly Brady's Stanford Law Review Article as "forthcoming 2026" with a parenthetical of ("last revised Feb. 27, 2026") followed by a permalink, which was created on June 4, 2026 at 8:47 am. The permalink was also made private, which usually happens in the case of a copyright violation.
Alito's other permalinks were created on Monday, May 25, 2026 at 10:18 pm, 10:19 pm, 10:42 pm. Glad to see the Alito clerks are burning the midnight oil.
The reply brief was filed on January 9, and the case was argued on January 20. This citation was clearly created by the Alito chambers at some point after the case was argued. Brady's article was published in April 2026. Barrett's concurrence and Jackson's dissent both cite Brady's article in its final, paginated form. Barrett also includes permalinks, which were created in 2025, likely by the parties.
I don't know what this means, but the timeline suggests Alito's opinion was written earlier, but finalized later.
With the Birthright Citizenship case still undecided, the Trump Administration has prevailed in every other immigration case before the Court this term, and some are quite consequential.
Today the Trump Administration completed its clean sweep of the non-birthright-citizenship immigration cases at the Supreme Court. Some of these decisions are quite significant. This highlights that the current Court is quite sympathetic to aggressive executive branch action in the immigration sphere--aggressive action often expressly authorized by Congress--even if it is likely to reject the Administration's unlawful attempt to unilaterally rewrite the law of citizenship.
The first immigration decision today was Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, in which the Court held, 6-3 in an opinion by Justice Alito, that an alien seeking to enter the United States from Mexico does not "arrive in the United States" unless and until the alien actually enters the country. This matters because an alien cannot apply for asylum until arriving in the country, and thus allows the federal government to turn away potential asylum applicants before they may seek asylum.
The second immigration decision today was Mullin v. Doe, in which the Court held, again 6-3 in an opinion by Justice Alito, that the statute authorizing "Temporary Protected Status" bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims challenging the revision or rescission of such status. Finding the sole constitutional claim raise in the litigation unlikely to succeed, the Court vacated the district court order postponing the termination of temporary protected status for aliens from Syria and Haiti pending legal challenges to the termination.
On Tuesday, the Court decided Blanche v. Lau, another 6-3 decision (this one by Justice Thomas) concluding that the Immigration and Naturalization Act does not require a border officer to have "clear and convincing evidence" that a lawful permanent resident has committed a crime of moral turpitude before deeming that individual an "applicant for admission" when re-entering the country. Thus a lawful permanent resident who has committed such a crime, but has not yet been convicted, can be required to reapply for admission after temporary foreign travel. (In this case, Lau had been charged with trademark counterfeiting but was still awaiting trial.)
Not all of the Trump Administration's immigration victories were 6-3, however. Earlier this spring the Administration prevailed in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Jackson. Here the Court concluded that the INA requires application of the fairly deferential substantial-evidence standard to the government's conclusion as to whether a given set of undisputed facts rises to the level of "persecution" for asylum applicants. (The applicants had advocated for de novo review.)
The Court also sided with the Trump Administration in its per curiam opinion in Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges, rejecting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit's attempt to bypass the channeling requirements of the Civil Service Reform Act (based upon issues the parties had not even raised).
Taken together, these opinions show that the current Court is quite willing to embrace broad assertions of executive power over immigration policy, particularly given the expansiveness with which Congress has delegated such authority. It also shows the Court interpreting statutes narrowly, and without regard for broader policy considerations--considerations a majority of the justices believe are for Congress to resolve.
While Section 1401 echoes the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, it should be interpreted in line with the public understanding of those words at the time it was adopted (Cf. Justice Alito's Bostock dissent), and such an interpretation is wholly incompatible with that offered by the Trump Administration. Thus even if one thinks the conventional interpretation of the citizenship clause is mistaken, Section 1401 would control. So, just as the Court has hewed closely to what Congress has authorized in the immigration cases already decided this term, it should reject the Administration's birthright citizenship arguments on statutory grounds.
Today the Court decided four more cases, including three opinions by Justice Alito. How did my predictions from Tuesday fare?
There were no cases decided today from December. I still think the Chief Justice has Trump v. Slaughter. Now that Alito has six opinions for the term, I think he is done. Justice Kavanaugh almost certainly has NRSC v. FEC. But if Alito has NRSC, then my theory about his losing the majority in Hamm fails.
Today the Court decided Wolford from the January sitting. Alito wrote the majority opinion. Outstanding are the two transgender sports cases and Cook. So far, Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh have not written from that sitting. I think Gorsuch is done for the term with seven majority. My thought on Tuesday was that Barrett, a former student athlete, would write both athletics cases while the Chief writes Cook. (Clarification: Barrett did not play college sports, but did participate in track and field in middle school.) But maybe Roberts may write the transgender cases, as he wrote Skrmetti. Then, Justice Kavanaugh may write a "The Fed is different" opinion for Cook.
The February sitting is done.
No new cases today were decided from March. I still think Roberts has Barbara. I wrote that Alito has Watson, but he wrote Al Otroe Lado from that sitting. I think it unlikely that Justice Thomas has the majority in Watson, so the election case will likely go to Justice Barrett. I'm not sure how ACB votes here, so it is a tossup.
For April, my prediction on Monsanto was completely wrong. I thought there might be a shot the plaintiffs win, but it wasn't close. They only got Gorsuch and Jackson. Justice Kagan has Chartie. It should be a fun Fourth Amendment case to read.
There are seven remaining cases. We know there is a session on Monday, and maybe the Court will wrap up on Tuesday to avoid spilling into July.
In the new podcast episode, we discuss the mission of the university and its relationship with academic freedom, diversity initiatives in universities relating to faculty hiring and promotion, and institutional speech by university leaders and faculty bodies such as university departments. I've been on the opposite side of Brian on many of those issues, such as institutional neutrality and diversity statements. A useful and enlightening conversation. Give it a listen here.
From the Ohio State Employment Relations Board in In re City of Youngstown, decided in December by Chair W. Craig Zimpher, Vice Chair Sandra Drabik Collins, and Board Member Robert Walter, but just posted on Westlaw:
City violated RC 4117.11(A)(1) when Fire Chief yelled at, physically threatened, uttered racially oriented names (i.e., "punk ass white boys"), and accused Union President and Vice President of being "racist" when they requested information about, and demanded to bargain over, effects of offering EMT class to bargaining unit employees, constituting restraint and coercion in exercise of rights guaranteed to them.
City violated RC 4117.11(A)(1) when Mayor publicly labeled two Union leaders as being racist for engaging in lawful actions, likely causing reputational harm, and restraining their continued protected activity.
City violated RC 4117.11(A)(3) when Mayor condoned Fire Chief's conduct and ratified his views in media. More likely than not, this led to negative characterization of Captains by at least one citizen and at least one Union member. This, in turn, caused each official to have to defend his reputation for merely exercising his duty as Union officer. This reputational harm constituted a change in conditions of employment for Union President and Vice President, because Mayor's conduct specifically harmed their protected right to maintain their good reputation….
When applying Fourth Amendment doctrine, to what extent can race and ethnicity be considered? The Supreme Court denied cert on Monday in United States v. Carter, a case on this question—specifically, on whether the Fourth Amendment test for whether a person is "seized" factors in the person's race. There's an interesting connection between this issue and last fall's debate over the role of race in immigration stops, raised in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. I thought it might be worth flagging the potential connection, and to ask about ways to distinguish how the law approaches them.
Here's the context. Carter asked the Court to resolve a longstanding open question in Fourth Amendment law: When applying the Fourth Amendment test for when a person is seized—whether a reasonable person in that situation would feel free to terminate the encounter and leave—does the suspect's race matter? There's a split among lower courts. Some courts say that there is one reasonable person standard for people of any and all races. Other courts say that people of different races tend to have different experiences with the police, and that those different experiences can can lead to a different sense of when they are free to leave. Under the first approach, race is irrelevant; under the second approach, race is relevant.
Justice Alito dissented from the denial of certiorari, joined by Justice Thomas. Justice Alito's dissent raised the question of whether a broader commitment to a color-blind Constitution answered the question in Carter:
We have said that our "'Constitution is color-blind.'" Students for Fair Admission, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U. S. 181, 230 (2023). It "almost never" allows government actors to treat persons differently based on their race. Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U. S. ___, ___ (2026) (slip op., at 17). And we have rejected the proposition that the Constitution permits an individual to be treated differently based on a "perception that members of the same racial group—regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live—think alike." Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 647 (1993). It is dangerous to allow an individual to be treated differently based on statistics, studies, or expert testimony that purports to show that members of the racial or ethnic group to which he belongs are more likely to act in a certain way than are members of other groups. Here, the special treatment helped the individual; in other situations it will not. See Buck v. Davis, 580 U. S. 100, 119 (2017).
Perhaps the [lower court's] test has legitimate justifications. In any event, it is important, and it warrants this Court's review. I therefore respectfully dissent from the denial of certiorari.
I don't take Justice Alito to have answered the question of whether a commitment to a color-blind Constitution requires saying race is irrelevant to the seizure analysis, as he was just flagging the question as important and cert-worthy (which seems right to me). Still, Justice Alito's opinion suggests at least that it might do so. And that view has surfaced in some of the lower court caselaw, such as Judge William Pryor's opinion in United States v. Knights, 989 F.3d 1281, 1289 (11th Cir. 2021).
Which brings me to my question: If you believe that a commitment to a color-blind Constitution answers the question in Carter, does it also answer whether race can be used as a basis for cause in making a stop for immigration violations, one of the big questions debated last fall when the Court was considering in Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo?
As you may recall from Noem, one of the issues involved in reviewing that injunction was the use of race and ethnicity to temporarily stop people for immigration violations, which was a major question in light of ICE enforcement activities. That wasn't a new issue in Fourth Amendment law, to be clear. Back in 1975, in United States v. Brignoni Ponce, the Court had held that a person's perceived Mexican ancestry was relevant to whether to stop them for a possible immigration violation but not enough cause on its own. Brignoni Ponce concluded: "The likelihood that any given person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor, but standing alone it does not justify stopping all Mexican-Americans to ask if they are aliens."
In Noem, last fall, that holding was relied on in parts of Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence explaining his vote in favor of the stay of the district court's injunction. That led some to treat Justice Kavanaugh's opinion as the source of that approach, although I think it goes back to 1975 and Justice Powell's opinion for the Court in Brignoni Ponce (which was joined by Justices Marshall and Brennan, among others). And although this isn't a post specifically about Justices Alito and Thomas, it's perhaps worth flagging (given their dissent on Monday in Carter) that we can't be sure that they agreed with Justice Kavanaugh's reliance on Brignoni Ponce for the stay in Noem, but that it seems at least plausible to surmise that they did.
The broad question I want to flag is whether there is a principled basis for saying that the color-blind Constitution forbids use of race in the Fourth Amendment seizure test in Carter, but that it allows use of race in Fourth Amendment doctrine in determining if there is cause to seize someone in a case like Noem. And consider the flip side of it, too: Is there a principled basis for saying that the color-blind Constitution allows use of race in the Fourth Amendment seizure test, but that it forbids use of race in Fourth Amendment doctrine in determining if there is cause to seize someone? More broadly, does the answer to whether the doctrine can account for race, and derive different answers based on race, have to be the same in these two doctrinal contexts?
I think Gorsuch was able to flip the majority and place the Court back on the path to policing the scope of the spending power and the Necessary and Proper Clause.
Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety is an unexpectedly significant case. I thought this was going to be another unanimous religious liberty case like Holt v. Hobbs or Tanzin v. Tanvir, where the conservatives and liberals unite to rule for a non-Christian plaintiff. (Ramirez v. Collier was 8-1, with only Thomas in dissent.) My prediction about Landor was very wrong. The final vote was 6-3. Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the six conservatives, ruling against the Rastafarian whose dreads were cut off. Justice Jackson wrote the dissent for the three liberals, finding that RLUIPA permits monetary damages against the prison guards.
As I read through opinion, and thought about the assignments so far, I speculated that something changed. I think Justice Jackson may have been assigned the majority opinion, with Justice Gorsuch in dissent, and the vote flipped at some point after the transgender sports cases were argued. Here is my evidence.
First, in the November sitting, nine cases were argued. Justice Gorsuch had two majority opinions (Landor and Rico), while Justice Jackson had none. Justice Barrett had two related cases (Fernandez and Rutherford), while Justice Kavanaugh had none. I can see the Chief Justice giving Justice Jackson the majority opinion to signal how the Court is unified on a religious liberty case. Moreover, Justice Gorsuch has seven majority opinions for the term, more than anyone else.
Second, all of the other November cases were decided at least a month ago. Justice Gorsuch's majority opinion in only 18 pages, compared to Justice Jackson's 33 page dissent. There were no other separate writings. A majority opinion of this length should have been ready some time ago, not the penultimate week in June. Something has been in the works.
Third, Justice Jackson's dissent gives off a majority opinion vibe. She has a lot of detailed historical research that may not have been needed in a dissent. It is also, as noted above, nearly twice as long as the majority opinion. Jackson also responds to the majority opinion in footnotes. That seems backwards, as usually the majority opinion comes first. These opinions, I think, were written outside the usual sequence.
Fourth, Justice Gorsuch's majority opinion connects RLUIPA with the pending Tile IX case:
On Mr. Landor's theory, Congress could require coaches at universities that receive federal funds to permit transgender athletes to play women's sports—or face personal liability in suits for damages.
Justice Jackson points out that this line relates to West Virginia, which was argued in January.
The majority warns that, if RLUIPA's individual-capacity damages provision is constitutional, Congress could subject college coaches to liability if they refuse "to permit transgender athletes to play women's sports," or make doctors personally liable if they "administe[r] certain vaccines to children." Ante, at 13. What the majority intends by these examples is not clear. Congress could of course impose these conditions on the colleges and medical practices themselves, assuming they receive federal funds and the laws are otherwise constitutional and not coercive.[FN11]
[FN11] 11A Title IX case currently pending before us asks whether Congress imposed the majority's first "hypothetical" condition on federally funded educational institutions. See West Virginia v. B. P. J., No. 24–43.
I wonder if something is brewing in the Title IX case that helped flip Landor? Maybe Justice Gorsuch recognized that allowing damages under RLUIPA could allow the transgender athletes another way to sue coaches. My guess is that sometime after January, the majority flipped. That chronology would make sense of the timing for an end-of-June drop.
Fifth, I can see how Gorsuch persuaded several of his colleagues to jump ship based on the merits. One of the most consistent projects of the Roberts Court is to constrain causes of action. Just this term, the Court clawed back on causes of action in Exxon and Saba, plus there is a Bivens case on the docket for next term. Viewed in that context, Landor makes sense: Congress should make explicit to prison officials that they are subject to monetary damages. Moreover, for the first time since NFIB, the Court has imposed limits on Congress's spending power and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Last week in Hemani, Justice Thomas wrote that "It has now been 26 years since a party has received relief in this Court based on a Commerce Clause challenge." Yet only a few days later, a party has received relief based on the Spending Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. I can see how Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh could find this enterprise worth pursuing. Why did the Chief jump ship? Maybe he is still feeling some pangs of regret about NFIB. (I am still not over the case). Justice Jackson jabs the Chief hard on this point:
Taking this wisdom to heart, the Court usually exhibits a well-founded "reticence to invalidate the acts of the Nation's elected leaders." National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U. S. 519, 537–538 (2012) (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.). In my view, an ill-formed analogy to contract law is a regrettable basis on which to turn reticence into enthusiasm.
I will have a lot more to say about Landor. This might be the most important enumerated powers case since NFIB.
Update: A colleague writes with another theory: Justice Kavanaugh was assigned the majority opinion on the ground that appropriate relief isn't clear enough in RLUIPA, however, Gorsuch persuaded four others to rule based on the Spending Clause. At that point, Kavanaugh dropped his opinion and went along with Gorsuch. My colleague suggests it makes no sense that Justice Kavanuagh has no November cases, and there is nothing else he could have lost. Moreover, he adds, the conservatives all seemed united in result after argument, so there is no reason to think Jackson ever had two of them. This theory seems persuasive.
Is the D.C. Circuit willing to allow "conservative" panel decisions on hot-button issues to stand? And is en banc review more than a way to ensure further review at One First Street?
Yesterday, in Make the Road New York v. Mullin, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated a district court's stay blocking the Department of Homeland Security from applying "expedited removal" processes more broadly. Judge Walker wrote the opinion for the court. Judge Rao concurred in part and concurred in the judgment. Judge Wilkins concurred in part and dissented in part. Given the subject matter of this case, and the panel's composition, I suspect Make the Road will seek en banc review, and that there's a strong chance such a petition will be granted, as the full D.C. Circuit is significantly more liberal than this panel.
Judge Walker's offered this summary at the start of his opinion:
Thirty years ago, Congress created a new process for deporting illegal aliens. It is called "expedited removal." Unlike other statutorily required procedures that can take years to complete, expedited removal often takes just a few days.
At issue here is the provision allowing the Secretary of Homeland Security to designate certain aliens already in the country for expedited removal. Congress excluded many people from that provision. Any aliens admitted or paroled are excluded, even if they are here illegally. So too is anyone who can prove he has lived here — legally or illegally — for at least two straight years.
Today was a busy day at the Court. The Justices handed down five opinions, though none were major. I've read Cisco, Exxon, and Pung. I'll finish the other two later. Here, I'd like to venture authorship predictions for the outstanding cases. These guesses are worth what you paid for them. (And unlike an increasing number of tenured law professors, I do not charge a subscription fee for my blog posts.)
Let's go sitting-by-sitting.
Ten cases were argued in the October sitting and all ten were decided. Justice Jackson had two opinions, and the other Justices each had one.
Nine cases were argued in the November sitting and all nine were decided. Justices Kavanaugh and Jackson had none. Justices Gorsuch and Barrett each had two.
Eight cases were argued in the December sitting. Five of those cases were already decided, and Hamm v. Smith was DIG'd. Two cases remain outstanding: Trump v. Slaughter and NRSC v. FEC. So far, Justices Thomas, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson have written for December. The Chief Justice and Justices Alito, Sotomayor, and Kavanaugh have not yet written. In May, I speculated that Justice Alito lost the majority opinion in Hamm. I predict that Chief Justice Roberts has Slaughter and Justice Kavanaugh has NRSC. I do not think Justice Sotomayor has an opinion from the sitting.
Seven cases were argued in the January sitting. Three of those cases were authored by Justices Thomas, Sotomayor, and Jackson. Four cases remain outstanding, and they are all huge. First, I am reasonably confident Chief Justice Roberts will write Cook. This is the sort of case he will certainly keep for himself. But now that Jerome Powell is no longer Chairman of the Fed, Cook seems must less hot. I suspect one Justice will write a single opinion for both Little v. Hecox and W.V. v. B.P.J. My best guess is Coach Kavanaugh, who has a special interest in female athletics, or Justice Barrett, who was a direct beneficiary of Title IX. The one wildcard will be if Justice Kagan, who was sympathetic to traditional view of Title IX, finds a way to write some narrow majority opinion that convinced the Chief. Kagan only has five majority opinions for the term, while Sotomayor and Jackson both have six. Kagan is due for a big one. Justice Gorusch wrote Hemani, but I don't think he also writes Wolford. Gorsuch is already at seven for the term. My guess is that whoever doesn't write the transgender sports cases will write Wolford.
Seven cases were argued in February. All seven cases were already decided. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Jackson did not write from that sitting.
Eight cases were argued in March. Five were already decided. So far, Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Barrett have not written for March. Once again, I think Chief Justice Roberts will keep Trump v. Barbara for himself. This case is too important to give up. Watson v. RNC considers whether late-arriving ballots can be counted. If the Court affirms the Fifth Circuit, I think Justice Alito has the opinion; if the Court reverses the Fifth Circuit, Justice Barrett will have the opinion. Mullin v. Al Otro Lado concerns aliens who are detained on the Mexico-side of the border and seek asylum. I suspect Barrett or Alito--whoever does not write Watson--will have Watson.
Nine cases were argued in April, and six were already released. Justice Alito, Kagan, and Kavanaugh have not yet written for April. The three outstanding cases are: Monsanto, Chatrie, and Mullin v. Doe. These assignments are a bit tricky to make since I am not sure how these cases will turn out. When Monsanto was argued, I thought it would be tough for the chemical company to count to five. Alito and Kavanaugh are solid votes for preemption. If they have the majority, then Roberts and/or Barrett voted for preemption. But if not, Kagan has the majority opinion. Chartrie is a Fourth Amendment case about geofences. I could see Kagan or Kavanaugh getting this case as well. And Doe concerns suspension of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, Syrians, and other groups. I could see Kagan or Kavanaugh getting this one. Then again, the Haitian plaintiffs have asked the Court to DIG this case, so someone may have lost a majority opinion. I think a DIG is unlikely. The SG replied that the newfound documents do not concern the issue at play in this case. Moreover, these documents are not blockbusters like the submissions in the 2020 census case. The records seem to show (shockingly!) that political appointees make policy decisions. This basic point may upset those in the Deep State, but reflects a reality of governance. See Slaughter.
Fair market value often fails to fully compensate property owners for their losses. This makes the Supreme Court's recent decision allowing compensation below fair market value even worse.
In a previous post, I outlined some of the many reasons why today's Supreme Court decision in Pung v. Isabella County, allowing below-market value compensation for tax foreclosure takings is wrong. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires "just compensation" and giving owners far less than the property's fair market value doesn't measure up. Here, I add an additional point: The problem with fair market value compensation is not that it is too much, but that - all too often - it is actually too little. This isn't just my idiosyncratic view. It's a common criticism of current takings doctrine by scholars across the political spectrum.
The Fifth Amendment specifically mandates that owners receive "just compensation," which the Supreme Court has long interpreted as the "fair market value" of the property. In reality, however, studies show that most owners get less than that, especially less affluent owners. That is true of both takings by state and local governments and takings conducted by federal government, such as those for President Trump's border wall. Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Homeland Security has a history of low-balling property owners.
Even full fair market value is often not enough to fully compensate owners for their losses. Many people value their property above what they could get for it on the market. Consider, for example, homeowners and small businesses who have been in the same location for years, and have longstanding relationships with friends, neighbors and customers in the area. Nonprofit institutions such as churches and other houses of worship also often have great value that goes beyond the market price of the land they sit on. Such "subjective value" is often left uncompensated when property gets condemned, even if the owners get the full market value of the land. That's true even in some cases in which the government takes only part of the owner's property, as when it seizes land to build a road or a border barrier that cuts through the owner's lot, thereby impairing his or her use of the rest of the property.
As I note in the article and elsewhere, figuring out how much more compensation governments should pay beyond fair market value is often a difficult task. In many situations, it may be so difficult that fair market value is the least bad available option. In addition, there are dangers of overcompensation, as well as undercompensation. If you pay too much, you might even get situations where - perversely - property owners actually lobby to get their property condemned.
Nonetheless, fair market value compensation is often actually far too little; and standard compensation processes often fail to get property owners even the value that the fair market value test is supposed to require. That state of affairs makes the Supreme Court's decision in Pung even more indefensible.
According to reports, Kannon Shanmugam dropped out of arguing T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Corporation to focus on arguing Cisco Systems v. Doe. As things turned out, Elizabeth Prelogar subbed in for T.M., but lost the pro bono case. And Kannon won, big league. Cisco will be pleased.
Cisco is a major case that effectively slams the door shut on possible liability under the Alien Torts Statute. Businesses will no longer need to decide between providing lucrative settlements or rolling the dice on devastating litigation. But even more importantly, this ruling sends a clear signal to lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit: Bivens is on borrowed time. The Court stated the issue plainly:
While our cases at one time permitted courts to provide redress if Congress remained silent, "we have since rejected the practice of fashioningrights of action as we see fit," FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund, Ltd. (2026). That is so because "[h]ome-grown causes of action are difficult to reconcile with 'the Constitution's separation of legislative and judicial power.'"
Fittingly, yesterday the Court grantedNielsen v. Watanabe, a Bivens case from, you guessed it, the Ninth Circuit. Cisco may have closed the door. Nielsen will hermetically seal the door across the board.
Let's start with the vote count, which is a bit quirky. Justice Barrett's majority opinion has six solid votes. There is no daylight between the Court's conservatives on this issue. Justice Sotomayor wrote a full-throated dissent. Justice Jackson wrote separately, joined by Justice Kagan. I am a bit confused with how to score Jackson's vote. The syllabus said Jackson "filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part." But the separate writing begins "concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part." I remain confused how a Justice can concur in "part" of a judgment. The Court issues a single judgment: affirm or reverse. Those judgments cannot be split into parts. The choice is binary: affirm or reverse. Still, a search reveals that is fairly common for a Justice to concur in part of a judgment.
In Cisco, Jackson agreed to reverse and remand the case to the Ninth Circuit because Cisco was not liable under the Torture Victim Protection Act. She wrote:
I therefore concur only in the judgment as to the majority's TVPA holding.
But Jackson would not have remanded the case under the Alien Tort Statute, since she agrees with Justice Sotomayor.
I agree with JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR's discussion of the Alien Tort Statute.
No matter how you slice it, Jackson voted to reverse and remand the case back to the Ninth Circuit. That is a reversal. Jackson should have said something to the effect of "concurring in part, dissenting in part, and concurring in judgment." Jackson's labeling strikes me as an effort to create some confusion over how she actually votes. There were some similar attempts to obfuscate the labelling in San Francisco v. EPAand Department of State v. Munoz.
Onto the merits. This is the sort of opinion where Justice Barrett can shine. It might be her best writing since CASA last term. Professor Barrett clearly thought about implied causes of action before she joined the bench. Moreover, unlike with Employment Division v. Smith, Barrett is proud to say how much she agrees with Justice Scalia. Now Barrett can elevate separate writings from Scalia, as well as Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh to majority status. Justice Sotomayor expresses her palpable frustration with this sub silentio overruling of Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004).
The Court nonetheless closes the courthouse doors not just to respondents, but to virtually every future litigant seeking redress for a violation of international law under the ATS. It thus overrules Sosa, without even acknowledging that it is doing so. Today's decision marks yet anotherlow point in this Court's esteem for its precedents. . . . . The majority instead turns down a different road, one paved not with the opinions of the Court, which are the law, but with the opinions of individual Justices, which are not. . . . These five opinions, however, are not, and never have been, the law.
The vote in Sosa was 6-3. Justice Souter kept Justices O'Connor and Kennedy on board by writing a narrow opinion that at least left the door opinion to recognizing new causes of action in the future. My general rule of thumb is that a precedent loses stare decisis value when all members of the Court's majority have left the Court. Since Justice Breyer's departure, the remaining Sosa majority was reduced to a null set. Perhaps the doctrine may be extended if a Justice's clerk becomes a Justice, as is the case for Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson. But, as they say, stare decisis is not an inexorable command.
Barrett also uses some nice turns of phrase. She refers to "judicial creativity," a term I have used before. And she smacks down the dissent's lack of "judicial humility":
The dissent is confident about the ability of federal courts to "improve foreign relations" and make judgments that are "'consonant with U. S. foreign policy interests.'" Post, at 16 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). The Constitution's allocation of power, however, requires greater judicial humility.
Justice Sotomayor tries to return the volley, but she doesn't clear the net:
The majority urges "judicial humility" when it comes to matters of foreign affairs. Ante, at 9, n. 1. True judicial humility, however, is following precedent and respecting the wisdom of the jurists who precede us.
Ah yes, the "jurists of wisdom," including Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter who wrote Casey. That argument is not going to work. The entire notion of creating new causes of action is the antithesis to humility. These "jurists of wisdom" are injecting the judiciary into foreign disputes. It can never be humility to defer to judicial arrogance.
Today, the Supreme Court issued a terrible Takings Clause decision in Pung v. Isabella County. It's the worst Supreme Court takings decision in a long time, and perpetuates the Court's tradition of issuing awful property rights decisions on June 23 (which is the anniversary of Kelo v. City of New London). The ruling is unanimous, albeit with a concurring opinion by Justice Thomas, joined by Gorsuch, which is really more of a dissent.
Isabella County, Michigan seized the late Timothy Pung's house because he supposedly failed to pay some $2200 in taxes and fees (his estate claims he didn't actually owe anything). They then sold the property at auction for about $76,000; the County kept the $2200 it thought was owed and transferred the remaining funds (about $73,800) to Pung's estate. But the County had earlier appraised the value of the property at $194,400 and the winner of the auction resold the home for $195,000. That's strong evidence the auction price undercompensated the Pungs, and the County failed to pay the "just compensation" required by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
In Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023), the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "home equity theft" (the use of tax foreclosure auctions to take more than the owner owed) is a taking, and emphasized "[t]he principle that a government may not take more from a taxpayer than she owes." Nonetheless, today, in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court ruled that owners whose property is taken by tax foreclosure are only entitled to the difference between the auction price and what they owed in delinquent taxes. This goes against the longstanding principle that "fair market value" is the standard for just compensation, and that the compensation is based on what the owner lost, not what the government gained.
Justice Alito cites two major justifications for the decision: that longstanding precedent supports it, and that a contrary ruling "would impose unprecedented burdens on jurisdictions that wish to collect unpaid taxes and might well make tax sales impractical" because local governments might end up suffering a "net loss" from foreclosure auction sales that sold for significantly less than fair market value.
Both of these arguments are badly flawed. None of the precedents Alito cites actually holds that fair market value compensation isn't required. None of them even addresses that issue. They all simply state that, under the Takings Clause or (in some cases) various federal and state statutes, the owner of the property is entitled to the surplus value obtained at the foreclosure auction beyond what he or she owed in delinquent taxes. They do not consider whether, in some cases, the Takings Clause actually requires more than that.
The only case cited by Alito that rejects fair market value compensation at all is BFP v. Resolution Trust Corp.(1994). But that ruling is not about the Takings Clause (which isn't even mentioned in the Court's opinion). It construes the meaning of "reasonably equivalent value" under the federal Bankruptcy Code. Significantly, BFP doesn't even involve a tax foreclosure, but one for an unpaid mortgage. Such a foreclosure likely doesn't qualify as a taking at all, because it is the creditor, not the government, that has the right to foreclose in such cases.
Justice Alito largely ignores the vast body of precedent indicating that "fair market value" is the usual standard for "just compensation" and that the proper measure is what the owner has lost, not what the government gains. For details, see the amicus brief I submitted on behalf of the Cato Institute, and a group of property and takings scholars, including myself.
He does claim that fair market value is generally the standard only in "eminent-domain cases." But there is no justification for this arbitrary limitation. Indeed, Knick v. Township of Scott(2019), the case he cites for this proposition, is actually a regulatory takings case where the government did not initiate any eminent domain proceedings, because it claimed there was no taking at all.
Yet another error in the majority opinion is its perpetuation of the myth that the Supreme Court incorporated the Takings Clause against the states in 1897. In reality, as discussed in Chapter 2 of my book The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain, the Court did not incorporate the Clause at that time, and only later retroactively claimed that it had done so. This matters for the present case because tax foreclosures are almost always conducted by state and local governments. The lack of incorporation in the 19th and early 20th centuries helps explain why there were no Fifth Amendment Takings Clause decisions requiring fair market value compensation at that time.
Justice Alito notes (correctly) that precedent holds that fair market value need not be the standard '[W]hen market value has been too difficult to find, or when its application would result in manifest injustice to owner or public." Tax foreclosure sales rarely, if ever, fall in the former category, given that local governments that impose property taxes regularly appraise property in their jurisdiction (as happened in the Pung case itself).
Alito contends requiring fair market value compensation would be unjust because a delinquent property owner could potentially sell for fair market value before a foreclosure occurs, and because requiring fair market value compensation might render tax foreclosure auctions "impractical." Both theories are wrong.
A property owner facing foreclosure may not have the time or means needed to sell for fair market value. Moreover, there is often uncertainty about whether the foreclosure will actually occur, or whether a deal with the government can be worked out. Regardless, the fact that the owner might have been able to sell the property before the government takes it in no way vitiates the government's constitutional obligation to pay full compensation.
As detailed in our amicus brief (pg. 18), and others, states have a variety of options for structuring foreclosure auctions in ways that avoid the problem of net losses. For example, they can simply mandate a minimum auction bid equal to fair market value, or close to it.
If states cannot find a way to structure tax foreclosure auctions without often suffering net losses, that's a sign that those auctions are unjust and unconstitutional, and they should find some other way to deal with property tax delinquencies - or find some other way to fund local government. As Justice Thomas points out in his concurring opinion:
The County [claims that] if it is not able to take people's homes and sell them at auction in the manner that it did here, it will not be able to efficiently collect taxes. It argues that a fair-market-value rule would impede "the government's ability" to foreclose on homes in order to collect delinquent taxes…
In my view, that is the point of the Takings Clause, which necessarily prioritizes homeowners' property rights over the government's interest in efficiency and public necessity. "William Blackstone wrote that 'the law of the land . . . postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property.' " Kelo, 545 U. S., at 505 (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (quoting 1 Blackstone 134–135). Whatever utilitarian desire the State may have for a tax-collection system that effectively confiscates citizens' homes based on small tax debts, citizens such as the Pungs have an antecedent and higher right to those homes.
Exactly so.
Speaking of Thomas's concurring opinion (joined on most points by Justice Gorsuch), it is really more of a dissent. Justice Thomas agrees with the majority that tax foreclosures need not always require fair market value compensation. But he also emphasizes that "Just compensation generally requires paying fair market value. Regardless of when exactly the history of tax foreclosure sales can justify a departure from that rule, my initial impression is that it cannot do so in this case." He goes on to point out that foreclosure auction rules historically required the government to first try to seize personal property to pay off a delinquent tax debt, and then - if that fails - try to settle the debt by taking only part of the owner's land, instead of all of it. He also emphasizes the vast discrepancy between the assessed market value of the Pung property and what the estate received from the proceeds of the foreclosure auction. He concludes that "[w]hat Isabella County did to the Pungs was wrong, and, on my initial view, likely unconstitutional."
Given these points, it seems like Thomas (and Gorsuch) believe the Pung estate deserves to prevail in this case, not the County. They should have just dissented. They nonetheless concur in judgment, possibly because the majority opinion does not rule for the County outright, but rather vacates the lower court decision and remands for further proceedings.
In addition to rejecting the Pung estate's Takings Clause argument, the Court also rejects the argument that foreclosure violated the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment. The Court does not decide the issue of whether the foreclosure procedure was sufficiently "fair" (a question much-discussed during oral argument). That will, presumably, be considered on remand.
But, regardless of what might happen in this specific case after remand, today's decision is a terrible mistake that is likely to perpetuate abusive and unconstitutional tax foreclosure auctions. As noted in our amicus brief, such abuses are particularly likely to victimize elderly, disabled, minority, and legally unsophisticated property owners.
NOTE: The Pung estate is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm which is also my wife's employer. She, however, is not one of the attorneys on the case. The estate is also represented by other attorneys.
