US Supreme Court: Interim Docket Sees New Election Disputes

Welcome to September, the final month of the justices’ summer recess. This time next month, we’ll be busy previewing the first oral arguments of the 2026-27 term. On Monday, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, granted the Trump administration’s request to allow construction on the new White House ballroom to continue. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by the court’s three Democratic appointees. For more on the decision, see the On Site section below. Justice Samuel Alito’s financial disclosure for 2025 was released on Monday morning. Find Amy’s overview of it in the On Site section. Two Republican groups have asked the court on its interim docket to block a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit preventing political parties and joint fundraising committees from paying preferential broadcast rates for political ads. For more on the request, see the On Site section. Also on Monday, a Michigan group urged the court on its interim docket to require Michigan election officials to put on the November ballot its proposal for requiring proof of citizenship to vote in the state. Learn more about the request in the Morning Reads section. This Friday at 9:30 a.m. EDT, the court will release its third and final summer order list. (We discussed what these lists typically address in our July 13 newsletter .) Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press On Monday, Americans for Citizen Voting – Michigan, a group seeking to place a proposal for requiring voters in the state “to prove their citizenship status before voting” on the ballot for the Nov. 3 election, asked the Supreme Court on its interim docket to order “the Michigan Secretary of State’s office to declare the constitutional amendment proposal proper and order it placed on the November ballot ahead of the Sept. 4 meeting of the Board of State Canvassers to finalize the listing,” according to the Detroit Free Press . The emergency application addresses the board’s Aug. 24 vote on the proposal. “[T]he board deadlocked 2-2 along partisan lines over whether the group had provided enough valid petition signatures to place the proposal before the voters, effectively barring it” from appearing on the ballot. Americans for Citizen Voting claims “the board waited more than five months to raise questions about the signatures and then relied on a small sample the group does not consider representative of the whole” to make its decision. Kara Arundel, K-12 Dive Two Massachusetts families have filed a petition for review with the Supreme Court, asking the justices “to hear their challenge to a state regulation that allows their private school children to access public school special education services but only at a public school or a ‘neutral’ location,” according to K-12 Dive . “The families, whose children with disabilities attend Jewish day schools, said in their July 20 petition that the Massachusetts’ policy penalizes private school students who have a constitutional right to attend private schools but who want access to publicly funded special education services. They are asking the high court to determine whether its ‘unconstitutional conditions doctrine’ means that governments generally may not make a benefit like special education services conditional on surrendering their constitutional right to attend private schools.” K-12 Dive noted that “[t]he case highlights the tension building between those supportive of private school choice programs that use taxpayer funds and those protective of publicly funded services staying in public schools.” Mattathias Schwartz, The New York Times On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit “overturned a landmark jury verdict that found a Virginia contractor liable for the abuse of three Iraqis detained” in Abu Ghraib prison more than 20 years ago, according to The New York Times . The same 4th Circuit panel “had previously upheld the verdict. But that was before the Supreme Court in June set new limits on