I'm Elizabeth Lattery and I'm Tickey 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 guns, gifts, and we're joined by Sixth Circuit Judge and Woolthapar.

So first up in SCOTUS news, we have a few updates in cases we discussed recently.

First up, the court denied the petition to rehear the non-delegation case, Gundy.

Justice Kavanaugh, as we expected, wrote a statement respecting denial in another similar non-delegation case, signaling

his interest in hearing such a case in the future. The court also denied the National Review

petition. This was a First Amendment challenge to the lower court's refusal to dismiss climate

scientist Michael Mann's defamation claim over attacks on his hockey stick graph. Justice

Sam Alito dissented from the denial, saying the case went to the very heart of the constitutional

guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He wrote, the protection afforded to journalists

and others who use harsh language in criticizing opposing advocacy on one of the most important issues of our day.

And finally, the court denied Anan Syed's petition challenging the lower court's refusal to grant him a new trial based on his lawyer's ineffective assistance, which is not surprising because those cases are very hard to make.

Definitely.

So I suppose that may be the end of the road for the serial case.

Moving on, the court granted cert in one new case since we last met.

It's Tanzan v. Tanvir, and the question presented is whether RFRA permits suits seeking money damages against individual federal employees.

So RFRA, this is the law that protects against government, substantially burdening the free exercise of religion.

The language of RFRA says that litigants may obtain appropriate relief against a government.

The suit was brought by Muslim men, some who are U.S. citizens and others

who are lawful permanent residents, who refused partly based on their religious beliefs,

to provide information about other Muslims to the FBI in a terrorism-related investigation.

They say that FBI agents then place them on the no-fly list as retaliation, and this forced

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