Supreme Court Term 2025-2026

Abdullahi Khalif Noor is a Somali refugee, who was a cab driver living in Seattle when convicted of rape and assault, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He has always maintained his innocence. He challenged his convictions in Washington state courts, arguing that prosecutors had suppressed evidence of his innocence in violation of due process and Brady v. Maryland.   Unsuccessful in the Washington state courts, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. He was again unsuccessful, and sought to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Ordinarily, when a party loses in federal district court they can immediately appeal the decision. But Mr. Noor was barred from doing so because he had not obtained a document Congress has required habeas petitioners receive from federal courts before they can appeal since 1908 — then called a certificate of probable cause, but now called a certificate of appealability (COA).

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the law firm Covington & Burling LLP filed a lawsuit challenging several Ohio laws that together force abortion patients to wait a minimum of 24 hours after receiving unnecessary state-mandated information in person before they can access their desired abortion care. These laws violate Ohio’s constitutional right to reproductive freedom passed on November 7, 2023. Ohio is one of four states that have amended their constitutions to enshrine a fundamental right to abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Right now, an entire class of eligible voters in Delaware — those incarcerated in Delaware facilities while awaiting trial (“pretrial detainees”) or who have been convicted of misdemeanors, which are not disqualifying under state law (together with pretrial detainees, “eligible incarcerated voters”)—have no constitutional means of voting. Delaware does not permit in-person voting in its correctional facilities. And a recent Delaware Supreme Court decision has now foreclosed these voters from voting absentee. This leaves these voters completely disenfranchised ahead of the 2024 elections, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.