Alright, we're in the home stretch for the Supreme Court's 2025 term. As I've mentioned previously, the end of June saw a flurry of activity from the Court, with the second-to-last day producing four decisions.
Two of those decisions featured a 6-3 split and two featured a 5-4 split, but the lineups were interesting here. We've got a traditional 6-3 authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, with the Court's liberal justices in dissent, but the other 6-3 was authored by Justice Elena Kagan and featured Justices Alito, Thomas, and Barrett in dissent. The Chief Justice also authored a 5-4 decision (with Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett in dissent). And then Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored a 5-4 decision that featured Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh in dissent.
The issues addressed by the Court included the removal of independent agency leaders (with differing results hinging on the nature of the agency at issue), geofencing and the Fourth Amendment, and the meaning of "Election Day." Here's what the Court had to say:
The June 29, 2026 Cases
Date: June 29, 2026
Author: John Roberts
Split: 6-3
Dissent: Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson
Appeal From: D.C. Circuit
Basic Facts:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a regulatory agency that has accumulated vast rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudicatory powers. The FTC’s powers belong not to the President or his appointees alone, but instead to five Commissioners, each of whom serves for seven years and may be removed by the President only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” 15 U. S. C. § 41.
Soon after President Trump began his second term in January 2025, he fired the FTC’s two Democratic appointees, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. He did not identify a cause under the statute. He instead told them their “continued service on the FTC [was] inconsistent with [his] Administration’s priorities” and that they were removed “pursuant to [his] authority under Article II of the Constitution.” App. 28. Slaughter filed suit against the President and other executive officials, seeking relief to restore her to office. She argued that her removal was ultra vires, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and violated the Constitution. The District Court granted Slaughter’s motion for summary judgment. It acknowledged that Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, generally permits the President to remove executive officers at will, but explained that Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602, carved out an exception for the FTC. The court declared the President’s “purported removal” ultra vires and issued a permanent injunction barring interference “with Ms. Slaughter’s right to perform her lawful duties.” App. 90–91. A divided Court of Appeals denied the Government’s motion for a stay pending appeal, and this Court stayed the District Court’s order and granted certiorari before judgment.
Issue:
Can Congress prevent the president from firing FTC commissioners unless he has one of the reasons specified in the statute?
Holding: Reversed and remanded.
The FTC’s for-cause removal provision is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.
Skinny: The FTC doesn’t get to be its own boss — the president can show its commissioners the door.
SEE: SCOTUS Hands Trump Major Separation-of-Powers Victory, Buries Humphrey's Executor
Date: June 29, 2026
Author: John Roberts
Split: 5-4
Dissent: Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett
Appeal From: D.C. Circuit
Basic Facts:
In August 2025, President Trump purported to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Cook was the first Governor to be fired in the central bank’s 111-year history. She promptly filed suit. She alleged that the attempted removal was not “for cause,” as required by statute, and that the President had in any event failed to comply with the statute’s (and the Constitution’s) requirement that she receive pretermination process. The District Court issued a preliminary injunction to prevent her removal. This Court must decide whether the District Court’s order should remain in effect pending the conclusion of litigation over the attempted removal.
The United States has a long tradition of independent central banking. The Nation’s first de facto central bank, the Bank of North America, predates even our Constitution. The structure of the Bank of North America was unusual; it was owned in part by the Government and in part by the public, run by directors accountable only to private stockholders, and yet tasked with public purposes—specifically, the maintenance of a sound national currency.
Although the Bank of North America was short lived, two more national banks soon followed in its footsteps. Both had similar goals to the Bank of North America—and a similar degree of independence from the Federal Government. The first came in 1791, when the First Congress chartered a bank that came to be known as the First Bank of the United States. After the charter for the First Bank was allowed to expire in 1811, Chief Justice Marshall remarked that “a short experience of the embarrassments to which the refusal to revive [the First Bank] exposed the government”—severe financial instability following the War of 1812—“convinced those who were most prejudiced against [a central bank] of the measure of its necessity.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 402. That necessity led to the Second Bank of the United States, chartered in 1816. In 1832, however, President Jackson, unconvinced of the wisdom of an independent national bank, vetoed a bill passed by Congress to extend the Second Bank’s charter.
Eighty years later, after an era of ruinous financial panics, a bipartisan congressional commission recommended the creation of another central bank to assume “the serious duty of protecting public and private interests at times when they are imperiled.” Report of the National Monetary Commission, S. Doc. No. 243, 62d Cong., 2d Sess., 36. What emerged is today’s central bank—called the Federal Reserve System—first created in 1913, and then restructured in 1933 and 1935. The Federal Reserve consists of 12 “independent but affiliated banks,” one for each region. C. Glass, An Adventure in Constructive Finance 173. These regional banks, called Federal Reserve Banks, are privately owned (and operated) by the commercial banks of the area. See 38 Stat. 254, 12 U. S. C. § 341. Above those banks sits the Board of Governors, which supervises the system with an eye to the economy’s “long run growth.” § 225a. The Board consists of seven members, each appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. § 241. Like the directors of its three predecessors, the Federal Reserve’s Governors do not serve at the President’s pleasure—they instead serve staggered 14-year terms, and may be removed only “for cause.” § 242.
Cook’s term on the Board of Governors was set to expire in 2038. On August 20, 2025, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Director posted to social media a letter in which he accused Cook of mortgage fraud. President Trump posted to social media that “Cook must resign, now!!!” and he later told reporters that he would “fire her if she doesn’t resign.” Complaint in No. 1:25–cv–02903 (D DC), ECF Doc. 1, p. 14. Three days later, the President purported to fire Cook for cause. In a letter to Cook, he stated that he had “reason to believe” that she “may have made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements.” ECF Doc. 1–4, p. 2. He told her that he lacked “confidence in [her] integrity” and that he had determined that “faithfully executing the law requires [her] immediate removal from office.” Id., at 3. After Cook filed suit, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction to prevent her removal. The Court of Appeals declined to stay the injunction, and the Government filed an application for stay in this Court.
Issue:
Should the Court let President Trump remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her lawsuit challenging the grounds for her firing and the lack of an opportunity to respond proceeds?
Holding: Application for stay denied.
The Government’s application is denied.
Skinny: At the Fed, “You’re fired” requires more than the president’s say-so. Cook stays put while the case proceeds.
SEE: After Expanding Trump's Removal Power, SCOTUS Draws the Line at the Federal Reserve
Date: June 29, 2026
Author: Elena Kagan
Split: 6-3
Dissent: Alito, Thomas, Barrett
Appeal From: 4th Circuit
Basic Facts:
On May 20, 2019, a man robbed a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Local police officers learned from witness interviews and surveillance footage that the robber had approached the credit union from a corner of an adjacent church while appearing to talk on a cell phone, but they could not find out anything more, and the robber remained at large. On June 14, the police officers applied to a Virginia magistrate for a geofence warrant directed to Google, which would require Google to hand over data about the cell phones located within a 150-meter radius of the credit union—the so-called “geofence”—near the time of the crime. The application described the cell-phone location data Google collects through a service called Location History, which records the location of a user’s cell phone every two minutes or so. The application also explained how that cell-phone location data could help identify the robber, possible accomplices, or additional witnesses. The warrant described a three-step process that the police would follow: at step one, Google would produce anonymized location data for all cell phones within the geofence 30 minutes before to 30 minutes after the robbery; at step two, officers would attempt to narrow the list, and Google would provide additional anonymized data for that narrowed list, consisting of cell-phone locations both inside and outside the geofence during a two-hour period surrounding the robbery; and at step three, officers would further narrow the list, and Google would turn over identifying information, including names and phone numbers, for users on the final list. The magistrate issued the warrant, and through this process, Google ultimately produced three cell-phone users’ identifying information, including petitioner Okello Chatrie, whose location data showed that he entered the geofence about ten minutes before the robbery and headed toward a residential area immediately after leaving the bank.
Following further police work, a federal grand jury charged Chatrie with robbery and related firearms offenses, and he moved to suppress the information the police obtained from Google. According to Chatrie, the officers had acquired that data through a Fourth Amendment search, and the warrant ostensibly authorizing that search was invalid. The District Court found that the geofence warrant “plainly violates the rights enshrined in [the Fourth] Amendment” but denied the motion based on the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule. 590 F. Supp. 3d 901, 905, 937–938. A divided panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed on different reasoning, holding that no search occurred because Chatrie “did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in two hours’ worth of Location History data voluntarily exposed to Google.” 107 F. 4th 319, 325. The Fourth Circuit granted rehearing en banc and affirmed in a one-sentence per curiam, with the court dividing evenly on whether a Fourth Amendment search had occurred. This Court granted certiorari solely on the question whether the police violated the Fourth Amendment in obtaining Chatrie’s location data.
Issue:
Does obtaining someone’s cell-phone location history from Google count as a search under the Fourth Amendment?
Holding: Vacated and remanded.
Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.
Skinny: Google can map your movements, but it doesn’t give police a detour around the Fourth Amendment.
Watson v. Republican National Committee
Date: June 29, 2026
Author: Amy Coney Barrett
Split: 5-4
Dissent: Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh
Appeal From: 5th Circuit
Basic Facts:
The federal election-day statutes set the day for the “election” of Representatives, Senators, and the President on a Tuesday in November. See 3 U. S. C. § 1, 2 U. S. C. §§ 1, 7. Mississippi permits certain residents, such as college students away from home and senior citizens, to vote in federal elections by absentee ballot. Miss. Code Ann. § 23–15–713. Mississippi is one of roughly 30 States that count at least some absentee ballots mailed by election day but received afterward. Absentee voters in Mississippi may dispatch their ballots by mail or common carrier, and all absentee ballots must be “postmarked on or before the date of the election and received by the registrar no more than five (5) business days after the election.” §§ 23–15–637(1)(a), (3).
In 2024, the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, and various individuals sued the Mississippi secretary of state and several election officials, contending that federal law prevents Mississippi from counting absentee ballots received after election day. According to plaintiffs, the election-day statutes use the word “election” to refer to two acts—ballot casting and ballot receipt—so by setting the day for the “election,” these statutes set the deadline for both. The Libertarian Party of Mississippi filed a similar suit, and the District Court consolidated the cases, and then granted summary judgment to Mississippi. The Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that Mississippi’s statute is preempted because the federal election-day statutes require ballots to be received by election day.
Issue:
Does federal law prohibit Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day but received within its five-business-day grace period?
Holding: Reversed and remanded.
The federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter; nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day.
Skinny: Election Day is the voters’ deadline — federal law doesn’t make it the mailman’s, too.
SEE: Mississippi's Election Law Is Upheld in SCOTUS Decision on 'Watson v. RNC'
