On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court struck down California's donor disclosure requirement for non-profits in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. As Ilya Shapiro observed, the Court's decision is a victory for Americans' freedom of association.

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee to uphold Arizona's common-sense voter integrity laws is perhaps the most significant win for federalism and election integrity in recent history, especially at a critical time when Democrats are doing all they can to undermine the security of elections. 

BREAKING: The Supreme Court issues its opinion in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. https://t.co/lwki9GofGX

— RNLA ⚖️ (@TheRepLawyer) July 1, 2021

On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the U.S. Department of Justice would be using Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to sue the state of Georgia over its 2021 election law package recently signed into law. As reported by Margot Cleveland for The Federalist:

First, the DOJ complains that Georgia prohibits the distribution of unsolicited absentee ballot applications then also bars private organizations from distributing duplicate absent ballot applications. Next, the DOJ challenges Georgia’s requirement that in requesting an absentee ballot that voters either provide their driver’s license number or present a photocopy of another form of identification — but even a utility bill would suffice.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brandi Levy who sued her high school district after being punished for posting a profanity-filled rant on Snapchat upon not making the varsity cheerleading team. The New York Times reported:

The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that a Pennsylvania school district had violated the First Amendment by punishing a student for a vulgar social media message sent while she was not on school grounds.

In his upcoming book The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics, United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer reflects upon the "authority of the Supreme Court—how that authority was gained and how measures to restructure the Court could undermine both the Court and the constitutional system of checks and balances that depends on it." 

And if Justice Breyer's motivation for writing the book wasn't easy enough to see from the book's description, "measures to restructure the Court" is Justice Breyer's way of calling out Democrats' efforts to – you guessed it – pack the court.  Justice Breyer's opinion on court-packing could not be any clearer:

“Proposals have been recently made to increase the number of Supreme Court justices,” [Justice] Breyer notes. “I aim to make those whose reflexive instincts may favor significant structural (or similar institutional) changes, such as forms of court-packing, think long and hard before embodying those changes in law.”

A recent column for Bloomberg Law by two professors for advocating for the expansion of the U.S. Supreme Court is attempting to redefine court-packing yet again. The professors suggest that the Court should be expanded to 15 justices, but that this wouldn't technically qualify as court-packing because, under their scheme, most cases would only be heard by a panel of 5 justices:

Real reform is required, and for that we need a court of 15 justices, with the justices sitting in three panels of five judges on any normal case. On very important cases, the court could vote to sit all 15 justices together en banc.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every level of the legal system all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. Since last year, the Court has been conducting oral arguments via telephone. One byproduct of this change is that Justice Clarence Thomas has been a more active questioner than he has ever been since joining the Court. The New York Times reports: 

Justice Clarence Thomas, who once went a decade without asking a question from the Supreme Court bench, is about to complete a term in which he was an active participant in every single argument.

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights held a hearing entitled, "Supreme Court Fact-Finding and the Distortion of American Democracy." The two witnesses called by the Republican members of the Committee were Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher and the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro. As Shapiro pointed out during the hearing and in his prepared remarks, the title of the hearing itself is overblown:

I actually think that the hearing title is a bit loaded: first, because the Supreme Court doesn’t generally engage in fact-finding in the way trial courts do, but rather applies the law to novel facts, as any appellate court is supposed to; and second, because however much one thinks American democracy is “distorted,” the Supreme Court, a reactive institution, is hardly at fault. Indeed, the court is the most respected government institution other than police and the military, so hand-wringing over its role in governance—or broader questioning of its legitimacy—principally arises when the justices rule in ways that disagree with progressive orthodoxy or, more broadly, when progressives are frustrated that there’s a major institution they don’t control. The chairman himself filed a brief in last year’s Second Amendment case admonishing the Court to “heal itself before the public demands it be restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.”

Earlier today, the White House announced that it will be forming the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. The move fulfills a promise that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden made last October during an interview with "60 Minutes" in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. The press release announcing the Commission explains:

President Biden will today issue an executive order forming the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, comprised of a bipartisan group of experts on the Court and the Court reform debate. In addition to legal and other scholars, the Commissioners includes former federal judges and practitioners who have appeared before the Court, as well as advocates for the reform of democratic institutions and of the administration of justice. The expertise represented on the Commission includes constitutional law, history and political science.

As part of the Scalia Lecture series to Harvard Law School, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer cautioned against structural changes to the Court on Tuesday. As reported by USA Today:

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer warned Americans to think "long and hard" about structural changes to the nation's highest court, such as adding justices through "court-packing," in a wide-ranging address Tuesday.