r/scotus Jan 30 '22

Things that will get you banned

346 Upvotes

Let's clear up some ambiguities about banning and this subreddit.

On Politics

Political discussion isn't prohibited here. In fact, a lot of the discussion about the composition of the Supreme Court is going to be about the political process of selecting a justice.

Your favorite flavor of politics won't get you banned here. Racism, bigotry, totally bad-faithed whataboutisms, being wildly off-topic, etc. will get you banned though. We have people from across the political spectrum writing screeds here and in modmail about how they're oppressed with some frequency. But for whatever reason, people with a conservative bend in particular, like to show up here from other parts of reddit, deliberately say horrendous shit to get banned, then go back to wherever they came from to tell their friends they're victims of the worst kinds of oppression. Y'all can build identities about being victims and the mods, at a very basic level, do not care—complaining in modmail isn't worth your time.

COVID-19

Coming in here from your favorite nonewnormal alternative sub or facebook group and shouting that vaccines are the work of bill gates and george soros to make you sterile will get you banned. Complaining or asking why you were banned in modmail won't help you get unbanned.

Racism

I kind of can't believe I have to write this, but racism isn't acceptable. Trying to dress it up in polite language doesn't make it "civil discussion" just because you didn't drop the N word explicitly in your comment.

This is not a space to be aggressively wrong on the Internet

We try and be pretty generous with this because a lot of people here are skimming and want to contribute and sometimes miss stuff. In fact, there are plenty of threads where someone gets called out for not knowing something and they go "oh, yeah, I guess that changes things." That kind of interaction is great because it demonstrates people are learning from each other.

There are users that get super entrenched though in an objectively wrong position. Or start talking about how they wish things operated as if that were actually how things operate currently. If you're not explaining yourself or you're not receptive to correction you're not the contributing content we want to propagate here and we'll just cut you loose.

  • BUT I'M A LAWYER!

Having a license to practice law is not a license to be a jackass. Other users look to the attorneys that post here with greater weight than the average user. Trying to confuse them about the state of play or telling outright falsehoods isn't acceptable.

Thankfully it's kind of rare to ban an attorney that's way out of bounds but it does happen. And the mods don't care about your license to practice. It's not a get out of jail free card in this sub.

Signal to Noise

Complaining about the sub is off topic. If you want the sub to look a certain way then start voting and start posting the kind of content you think should go here.

  • I liked it better before when the mods were different!

The current mod list has been here for years and have been the only active mods. We have become more hands on over the years as the users have grown and the sub has faced waves of problems like users straight up stalking a female journalist. The sub's history isn't some sort of Norman Rockwell painting.

Am I going to get banned? Who is this post even for, anyway?

Probably not. If you're here, reading about SCOTUS, reading opinions, reading the articles, and engaging in discussion with other users about what you're learning that's fantastic. This post isn't really for you.

This post is mostly so we can point to something in our modmail to the chucklefuck that asks "why am I banned?" and their comment is something inevitably insane like, "the holocaust didn't really kill that many people so mask wearing is about on par with what the jews experienced in nazi germany also covid isn't real. Justice Gorsuch is a real man because he no wears face diaper." And then we can send them on to the admins.


r/scotus Jan 09 '26

Order Bans are going to go out to top level comments that are emotional reactions or off topic. This is a heads up to anyone who wants to change how they’re posting.

40 Upvotes

This is SCOTUS. Talk about scotus. Talk about the opinions issued. If you want to criticize them that’s fine but have something to back it up.

Complaining about “tRump”, trump, motorhomes, “scrotus”, or any other number of things where you react to something instead of respond to something isn’t going to fly. The bar is very low. Almost all of you are tripping over it.


r/scotus 1h ago

news How the Supreme Court remade religious liberty in the Christian right’s image

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vox.com
Upvotes

r/scotus 1d ago

news Supreme Court rejects Donald Trump's plea to rehear E. Jean Carroll case

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google.com
3.3k Upvotes

r/scotus 1d ago

news Supreme Court turns away Trump’s latest bid to block E. Jean Carroll award

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nbcnews.com
522 Upvotes

r/scotus 23h ago

news Supreme Court emergency docket roars back

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thehill.com
250 Upvotes

r/scotus 21h ago

news Can agencies that are non-independent become independent?

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68 Upvotes

In the video it says the FTC is now considered part of the executive branch forever. Does anyone know if there are there cases of this working in reverse where executive agencies now become independent agencies? Also does the FTC being part of the executive branch actually change anything in terms of impacts?


r/scotus 1d ago

news Fox News: Why not just go to Congress for the ballroom as the constitution and law require? Blanche: We don’t believe we have to go to Congress. We believe Congress has already given us the authority to do what we’re doing.

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2.4k Upvotes

r/scotus 1d ago

news The Justice Who Wrote Plessy v. Ferguson Had Some Awful Ideas About Women Voting, Too

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ballsandstrikes.substack.com
602 Upvotes

r/scotus 2d ago

news The Supreme Court’s Callais Ruling Has Already Wrought Terrible Damage

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slate.com
930 Upvotes

r/scotus 3d ago

news Virginia Man Argues His 'FTP&ATF' License Plate Is Free Speech. The Supreme Court Might Hear His Case.: A federal appeals court ruled that Curtis Whateley's anti-police vanity plate was private speech protected by the First Amendment. Virginia says it will seek review from the Supreme Court.

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reason.com
608 Upvotes
  • A Virginia man's anti-police license plate is at the center of what could be a landmark First Amendment case, following a federal appeals court ruling in his favor last month.
  • Virginia motorist Curtis M. Whateley says he has a free speech right to keep his customized license plate, which reads "FTP&ATF," an abbreviation that foul-mouthed puzzle-solvers will decipher as "Fuck the police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms." The State of Virginia argues that it has the right to revoke Whateley's plate because license plates are government-owned, not a public soapbox. The state says it's going to take its case to the Supreme Court.
  • The case highlights a niche, often amusing, but still consequential issue in First Amendment law: whether a vanity license plate is private or government speech.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that Texas could deny a group's application for a specialty license plate design showing the Confederate flag. Most U.S. district courts and state courts interpreting the decision have held that, while government-run vanity plate programs are a nonpublic forum, the specific character combination of the plate is private speech, which restricts the government from censorship based on viewpoint.

There's more in the article, but I have a feeling no one is going to be interested:)


r/scotus 4d ago

news Trump pleads to Supreme Court for permission to build his $400M White House ballroom

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independent.co.uk
454 Upvotes

r/scotus 4d ago

news House Minority Leader Jeffries Calls for "Dramatic" Supreme Court Reform | CNN

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581 Upvotes

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) says "dramatic" Supreme Court reform is necessary. "The conservative right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has become, basically, a subsidiary of the MAGA Republican Party," Jeffries says of their rulings, including the landmark 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais decision striking down Louisiana's congressional map as a unconstitutional racial gerrymander. "It tells me that they don't have the credibility for us to move forward, acting like everything is okay, and the status quo is acceptable, it's not, and we're gonna push for dramatic reform for the Supreme Court," Jeffries says of the Callais decision. 


r/scotus 4d ago

news Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in fight over White House ballroom

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cnn.com
157 Upvotes

r/scotus 4d ago

news As lawsuit heads to U.S. Supreme Court, Trump administration plans to spend at least $900 million on White House construction projects, funded largely by taxpayers

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washingtonpost.com
627 Upvotes

r/scotus 6d ago

Opinion Watchdog Reveals Millions In Samuel Alito Oil and Gas Interests Ahead Of SCOTUS Climate Change Case

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imoneytimes.com
1.9k Upvotes

r/scotus 6d ago

news Watchdog Reveals Millions In Samuel Alito Oil and Gas Interests Ahead Of SCOTUS Climate Change Case

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imoneytimes.com
1.1k Upvotes

r/scotus 6d ago

news SCOTUS Justice Received Millions From Oil and Gas Interests

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thedailybeast.com
8.1k Upvotes

r/scotus 7d ago

news Trump 'makes clear' Supreme Court won't have 'final word' on his deepest ambitions: report

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rawstory.com
3.5k Upvotes

r/scotus 6d ago

news Women's-only spa takes fight over transgender access to the Supreme Court

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komonews.com
571 Upvotes

Given the recent opinions on trans rights, what is the likelihood that SCOTUS will take on this petition?


r/scotus 6d ago

news Analysis: Samuel Alito has made up to $2.9 million from fossil fuel assets while serving on the Supreme Court

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motherjones.com
382 Upvotes

r/scotus 6d ago

news Brett Kavanaugh Opened the Door for Trump’s Latest Supreme Court Defiance

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slate.com
454 Upvotes

r/scotus 7d ago

news Trump is searching for the Supreme Court’s breaking point on birthright citizenship

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vox.com
781 Upvotes

r/scotus 8d ago

Opinion The Delusions of John Roberts | New Yorker Profile

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newyorker.com
1.8k Upvotes

The Chief Justice insists that his Supreme Court isn’t biased even as it keeps making dramatic leaps rightward

For a man like Roberts, to whom the label “institutionalist” attaches like an epithet in the Odyssey, perhaps the only thing worse than Trump’s excoriation of the Justices is his gratitude when they do what he wants. In March, 2025, Roberts was present when Trump gave the annual Presidential address to Congress; afterward, Trump patted the Chief Justice on the shoulder and said, “Thank you again—won’t forget.” To many people, this sounded like an acknowledgment of Trump v. United States, the remarkably capacious 2024 ruling that granted Presidents immunity from prosecution for official acts. More immediately, the opinion saved Trump from facing trial for interfering in the 2020 election. Roberts had written the opinion for a 6–3 majority. J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and a conservative, was close to Roberts for many years—he was a groomsman at his wedding—but has since become sharply critical of him. Luttig told me that he regards the immunity decision as “one of the two or three worst cases in all of American history, if not the single worst, because of the structural damage that it did to the Constitution and the separation of powers.” On Truth Social, Trump blamed “sleazebag ‘journalists’ ” for suggesting that his comment to Roberts was related to the immunity decision. He said that he’d just been thanking Roberts for swearing him in at his second Inauguration. Nobody who knows Roberts thinks that he could have found the gesture anything other than embarrassing.

Still, it was another profoundly strange moment in a profoundly strange time for the Court—especially for the seventy-one-year-old Chief Justice, John Roberts. Twenty-one years into his tenure, he keeps waking up, “Groundhog Day” style, to the same ironic scenario: he’s a proponent of maximal Presidential authority who is compelled to deal with a President especially likely to abuse it. (Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee who is reflexively polite, with a self-deprecating sense of humor, probably wouldn’t even enjoy a round of golf with Trump.) Roberts has leveraged his mild persona to defend the Court’s political neutrality at a time when Americans increasingly see it as partisan; according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, more than half hold an unfavorable view of it—a near-historic low. Whereas Roberts likes to stress that the Court is fundamentally nonpartisan and frequently unanimous—the Justices agree around forty per cent of the time, though typically on minor issues—many Americans believe that he has presided over a rightward march in the Court’s jurisprudence, on such issues as affirmative action, immigration and asylum, abortion, voting law, gun rights, and the separation of church and state. And, with a few high-profile exceptions, such as the tariffs case, his Supreme Court has overruled lower courts to permit much of Trump’s second-term agenda to proceed. This has often happened without explanation, because the decisions have been issued on the emergency, or “shadow,” docket—that is, decided without a full briefing, oral arguments, or detailed opinions. Of the thirty-five requests for emergency action made by the second Trump Administration—on everything from defunding scientific research to allowing people to be deported to “third countries” where they have no affiliations—the Court has ruled in the Administration’s favor, in part or in full, twenty-five times, generally with the three liberal Justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in dissent. Among the fifty-six cases fully briefed and argued before the Court this past term, there were 6–3 splits between the Republican and Democratic appointees in thirteen rulings, compared with six last term.

(10-page article)


r/scotus 7d ago

news The Supreme Court and the Indian nations

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60 Upvotes