Welcome back, Deadline: Legal newsletter readers. The Supreme Court wrapped up its first two-week hearing session of the term, while adding a DOGE-related case to the docket, handing the GOP another emergency win ahead of the midterms, and giving John Eastman a spark of hope for his law license.
The DOGE grant appeared on Tuesday’s order list announcing the latest action on pending petitions. Among the new cases the justices agreed to decide this term was the Trump administration’s plea for help against a watchdog group that has been fighting for information about the Elon Musk-backed Department of Government Efficiency.
In a previous round of DOGE litigation, the high court’s Republican-appointed majority ordered the lower courts to narrow discovery into the purported efficiency initiative. The administration is hoping to prevail again in its latest fight for secrecy.
The order list also produced a notable pairing in Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch. The two have joined forces before to call out what they’ve seen as government abuses, even when their colleagues have stayed silent. That happened again Tuesday, when the Obama appointee issued a statement lamenting the “constitutional absurdity” of Jesus Herrera-Salazar’s double prosecution.
He had served time for being “found in” the U.S. after his removal and was told to stay in Oklahoma while on supervised release. But abiding by that instruction led to him being charged again for the same crime of being “found in” the country he was told to stay in. Joined by the Trump appointee, who has shown a libertarian streak in some cases, Sotomayor said that courts faced with this situation in the future should “avoid the constitutional absurdity that occurred here and give the Double Jeopardy Clause its full weight and meaning.”
Read the rest of my roundup here.
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