WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Thursday, March 28

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Thursday morning read:

• As Supreme Court weighs abortion drug, a look at pill usage since Roe v. Wade (Sara Chernikoff, USA Today)
• The Shameless Oral Arguments in the Supreme Court’s Abortion-Pill Case (Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker) 
• A controversial Supreme Court decision could hurt Biden in November (John Blake, CNN)
• Supreme Court’s Texas Order Highlights Abuse of Dubious Shortcut (Will Havemann, Bloomberg Law)
• The Supreme Court Got It Wrong: Abortion Is Not Settled Law (Melissa Murray & Kate Shaw, The New York Times)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Wednesday, March 27

The justices will hear oral argument today in Erlinger v. U.S. and Connelly v. Internal Revenue Service. Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Wednesday morning read:

• Supreme Court Appears Unlikely to Upend Abortion-Pill Access (Jess Bravin & Jan Wolfe, The Wall Street Journal)
• US Supreme Court declines Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument cases, upholding 2017 expansion (Jane Vaughan, OPB)
• ‘Cancel culture’: Supreme Court rejects case on dust-up between Catholic student and Native American (Maureen Groppe & Andrew Wolfson, USA Today)
• Retired Justice Stephen Breyer discusses new book in interview with ABA Journal (Randy Maniloff, ABA Journal)
• A prosecutor removed me from jury service for questionable reasons. Could it have been because of the color of my skin? (Patricia McTier, Atlanta Journal Constitution)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Tuesday, March 26

At 10 a.m. EDT, the justices will hear oral argument in Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read:

• Supreme Court to hear abortion pill case today as justices weigh access to widely used drug (Melissa Quinn, CBS News)
• A Supreme Court abortion pill case with potential consequences for every other drug (Nina Totenberg, NPR)
• Biden administration defends abortion pill access at US Supreme Court (Andrew Chung & John Kruzel, Reuters)
• A Supreme Court Justice Sounds a Warning (Ankush Khardori, Politico)
• Why the Supreme Court abortion pill case is so fraught for the right (Aaron Blake, The Washington Post)

CASE PREVIEW

Abortion access again before Supreme Court

Since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022, 14 states have enforced total bans on abortion and seven have imposed previously unconstitutional restrictions. On Tuesday, the justices will hear arguments in a case seeking to roll back access to mifepristone, the drug used in medication abortions, which account for more than half of all abortions in the United States. The court’s ruling could affect the availability of the drug nationwide, including in the states where abortion remains legal.

The drug at the center of the case is known by the generic name mifepristone. It was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 as part of a two-drug protocol (along with the drug misoprostol) to end pregnancies in their early stages.  

When it initially approved the drug, the FDA imposed a variety of conditions on how the drug could be prescribed and used. The agency required, for example, the drug to be dispensed in person by a doctor, and only through the seventh week of pregnancy. Women taking mifepristone had to make three visits to a health-care provider: A first visit to take mifepristone; a second visit two days later to take misoprostol; and a third visit two weeks after the initial visit to confirm that the pregnancy had been terminated.

CASE PREVIEW

Justices to hear estate tax dispute over shareholder’s life-insurance policy

After a hearing another high-profile dispute over abortion access, the justices will return to the bench on Wednesday to consider a routine practice in estate planning for closely held corporations. To help keep the business in the family upon the death of a shareholder, businesses frequently purchase a life insurance policy on the life of an aging shareholder. Then, when the shareholder dies, the corporation uses the proceeds of that life insurance policy to purchase the shares from the shareholder’s estate. That way, the remaining shareholders (often family members) will own the company without having to come up with money out of pocket to purchase the shares.

The question in Connelly v. Internal Revenue Service is how to treat the money that flows into the closely held corporation – here, Crown C Supply Co. Inc. Thomas Connelly, the executor of his brother Michael’s estate and the company’s only remaining shareholder, argues that the life insurance money is basically a wash, because the moment it appears on the corporation’s balance sheet, the corporation will spend it to redeem the shares.