Supreme Court Changes Its Schedule

Exterior view of the Supreme Court building on June 11, 2024 in Washington, DC. The court added an additional opinion day on Monday.

The Supreme Court made a last-minute change to its schedule, adding another opinion day this week as it aims to wraps up its 2023-2024 term.

On Monday, the justices said that Friday would also be an order day, during which the court "may announced opinions" on the cases before them. Thursday was already scheduled to be an order day. Opinions are typically announced at 10 a.m. when the court convenes for a public non-argument session.

Dan Urman, a law professor who specializes in the Supreme Court at Northeastern University, told Newsweek that the announcement is expected given the number of cases that the court still has yet to decide this term, and that more dates are likely to be added before the end of next week.

"With so many cases pending, the Court will likely be adding opinion days," Urman wrote in an email. "The justices would like to be finished with the term by the end of June and probably want to avoid issuing too many decisions on a single day. That means we will likely see additional opinion days before June 28..."

The Supreme Court has about two dozen opinions to announce before the end of the month. Those include major decisions related to former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity claims, Second Amendment rights argued in United States v. Rahimi, the Chevron doctrine that gives administrative agencies authority to implement is own rules and regulations and First Amendment rights on social media.

"Thursday and Friday will be critical to the future of democracy," Mark Elias, lawyer and founder of progressive platform Democracy Docket, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to the addition of a second opinion day.

Texas-based lawyer Frank Reilly said reports that fencing is being erected at the Supreme Court also foretell "a possible release of the Trump immunity case."

Last week, the Supreme Court issued six new rulings. Among the decisions released Thursday was the court's ruling in the Mifepristone case. The court unanimously threw out the Republican-led effort to significantly restrict access to the abortion pill.

The justices also ruled in a major gun case last Friday, striking down the bump stock ban that was implemented by the Trump administration in the wake of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. In a 6-3 ruling, with the bench's conservative majority on one side and its liberal justices on the other, the court found that the Justice Department was wrong to declare that the gun accessory transformed semiautomatic rifles into illegal machine guns.

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