Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.

I'm John Carlo Canoparo.

I'm Zach Smith.

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.

Welcome back to SCOTUS 101. G.C., it's been a big week at the court for oral arguments.

That it was. We heard oral arguments in the challenges to Texas's abortion law, SB 8,

times two. Times two, and arguments in the big Second Amendment case, New York State Rifle and Pistol

versus Bruin.

But first, there were a few noteworthy news items this week and orders.

Zach, what can you tell us about those?

Yeah, there are two items I wanted to follow up on that we mentioned in our last episode.

First up, Elizabeth Pralager was confirmed as the U.S. Solister General, and in fact,

she jumped right into her duties arguing in one of those SB8 cases in front of the court.

The other item, last week we mentioned an interesting challenge to Maine's vaccine requirement

for health care workers. It's a case called

Doe v. Mills. And as a reminder, this was an emergency request to stop Maine's COVID-19 vaccine

requirement for health care workers because it lacked a religious exemption. The request came to

Justice Breyer and he referred it to the court. and since our last episode, the court declined to grant an emergency stay by six to three vote.

Justice Gorsuch wrote a dissent from the denial, which Justice Thomas and Alito joined.

Interestingly, Justice Barrett, who is joined by Justice Kavanaugh, wrote a short

concurrence in the denial, and there are two interesting tidbits I want to talk about with Justice Barrett's

concurrence. First, she said that when the court is asked to grant extraordinary relief, like issuing an emergency injunction,

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