I'm Elizabeth Slattery and I'm Tiffany Bates and welcome to SCOTUS 101 where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This week we're talking about a win for election integrity, a loss for one of the Constitution's lost clauses, and we'll interview Sixth Circuit Judge Jeff Sutton.

Supreme Court issued decisions in four cases on Monday of this week, and I went over to the court

to hear the justices announce a few of those decisions, and noticeably, Justice Anthony Kennedy was

absent from the court. Once I saw that, I figured the decision in Gill v. Whitford, which is the partisan

gerrymandering case, would not be coming out. I have a feeling Kennedy will want to be present

for that one. And it's not all that uncommon for justices to miss a day here or there at the end

of the term. My colleague, who was with me, joke that maybe Kennedy retired and didn't tell anybody.

But I doubt that Anthony Kennedy is ghosting the Supreme Court.

But it has been more than 255 days since Gill was argued.

The longest the court has to take in decide a case in decades.

And according to Adam Feldman from Empirical Scotis,

the longest the case has ever taken to be decided was Holder v. Hall, a 1994 case, which took 269 days. And Adam also reported that since 1950, the court has only taken longer than 255 days to decide 10 cases. So Gill was argued on the second day of this term back on October 3rd,

but of course the justices heard oral argument in Benesek v. Lamone, a second partisan

gerrymandering case, and that was in March. So that could be part of the reason for the holdup here.

Then again, there didn't seem to be very much consensus among the justices coming out of

the Benesek oral

argument. And I think Justice Breyer suggested at the argument that maybe they should get out

a blackboard and try out all the different theories the challengers presented for invalidating

redistricting maps. So maybe that's what they're doing while we're waiting for that decision

to come out. But let's move on to the cases that were decided this week,

including what's being called Ohio's Great Voter Purge.

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