Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court.

I'm John Carlo Conoparo.

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.

Zach, how you doing?

I'm doing okay, G.C. It's the second to last week of the term, and it's been a busy one.

It certainly has. I will start us off with opinions. Some of these are on the technical side,

and in the interest of time, we're going to discuss those ones only

briefly. But first up was the biggest opinion of the week, United States versus Texas.

Several states sued the Biden administration over its policy of not enforcing various

provisions of the immigration laws. Justice Kavanaugh wrote for a majority, including

Chief Justice Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, holding that the states lacked standing to sue. In short, the majority held that the states were not harmed in any way which is judicially cognizable. Justice Gorsuch, joined by Thomas and Barrett, concurred in the judgment only to say that the problem was not a lack of

injury but rather a lack of redressability. The states in their view certainly suffered harm,

especially under existing precedence, but the courts lacked the power under the immigration

laws to force the government to enforce those laws. Justice Barrett, joined by Justice Gorsuch,

concurred in the judgment to, essentially

making that same argument, and Justice Alito alone dissented, recognizing the substantial harm

to border states and arguing that the majority ignored relevant precedents, which actually cut

in the state's favor. Now, let me editorialize for a moment here.

You'll notice that in both the concurrence and the dissents, they accused the majority

of ignoring existing precedents, and they're right.

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