Yesterday, we had three opinions.  The Supreme Court announced that there would be another opinion day on Thursday.  However, the Supreme Court did not announce that Thursday was the last opinion day.  As such, especially when you consider the number of cases left, we are likely to see another opinion day on Friday.  It would be highly unusual for the Supreme Court to issue opinions in one of the affirmative action cases on one day and issue the opinion in the related case on a separate day.  So I would not be surprised if we get the student loan cases on one of these two days and the affirmative action cases on the other day.  I also would not be surprised if we get the other three cases on Thursday and the student loan and affirmative action cases on Friday.

Yesterday’s biggest case was the North Carolina redistricting case and there will be a more detailed post on that case later.    But the big surprise may have been the decision on personal jurisdiction over corporations.  And the surprise was not the result but which justice had the case.  As noted over the past several weeks, the custom is to keep the workload balanced by argument session.  Given that there will be eight or nine opinions from November, nobody should have gotten two opinions from November.  But the personal jurisdiction opinion was the second one from Justice Gorsuch in November.  In Saturday’s post, I projected that it looked like there might be an unsigned opinion in the Harvard affirmative action case.  But now, I am leaning back toward it being more likely that there will be two signed opinions in the affirmative action cases.

And with seven cases left, here is where things stand for the entire term.  Assuming that every justice has at least six cases, Chief Justice Roberts is still two opinions short — most likely one of the affirmative action cases and one of the student loan cases.  Justice Alito is three opinions short.  We expect him to get the Title VII religious accommodation case involving the postal service from April.  But this implies that there are at least three opinions from the affirmative action and student loan cases if not four with Justice Alito getting at least one of those opinions.  Justice Sotomayor is one opinion short — most likely the copyright case from March.   But that leaves one case, the December case on free speech exemptions from civil rights laws involving a website designer who wants to be able to decline job requests from couples seeking a website for their same sex marriages.   If there are only three opinions from the student loan cases and the affirmative action cases, this case should go to Justice Alito.  But if there are four opinions from those two sets of cases, we are really back to it being any justice but Justice Kavanaugh (the only justice with seven opinions).