On July 27, 2026, the Solicitor General submitted an emergency application in Trump v. California. This case concerns proposed regulations for mail-in ballots. The government filed its reply brief on August 12. After a flurry of litigation in the lower court, and new action by the government, the Supreme Court finally decided the case on August 24. This emergency case took nearly a month.
The majority opinion, at a brisk ten pages, finds the District Court lacked jurisdiction because the case was not yet ripe. Moreover, any alleged injuries were speculative under Clapper. The per curiam opinion reads a lot of Justice Kavanaugh's voice. I do like the word "concretize." Justice Kavanuagh has taken the lead in writing some of the Court's more significant jurisdictional cases. One would think that a former federal courts professor in the majority would get these cases, but apparently not.
Justice Sotomayor's pithy dissent covers all the bases in only four pages.
