The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear Avery Dennison's appeal of a lower court's decision upholding a patent involving tracking tags that was the subject of a $62.4 million infringement award won by ADASA Inc., reported Reuters. The case would have provided the court an opportunity to clarify a standard established in 2014 that requires a two-part test to determine if an invention involves an unpatentable abstract idea, natural phenomenon or law of nature and whether it includes an inventive concept. Critics say the standard created confusion about what inventions can be legally protected. President Joe Biden's administration had encouraged the Supreme Court to hear that case.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 today in favor of a 94-year-old woman who claimed that a Minnesota county violated the U.S. Constitution's Takings Clause by taking her $25,000 equity as profit when it sold her home in a tax foreclosure sale, reports Reuters. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted, "A taxpayer who loses her $40,000 house to the state to fulfill a $15,000 tax debt has made a far greater contribution to the public fisc than she owed.” Roberts added: “The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but no more."

The U.S. Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision announced today agreed to reverse a lower court's decision that had prevented an Idaho couple from building a home on property the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had deemed protected under the Clean Water Act of 1972, Reuters reports. The court held the law covers only wetlands “with a continuous surface connection” to those waters, wrote Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. for five justices. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion with the court’s more liberal justices, said the decision would harm the EPA’s ability to combat pollution. The Clean Water Act bars discharging pollutants into the "waters of the United States," which regulators have said covers navigable waters as well as adjacent wetlands like swamps and marshes. Both courts and regulators have issued conflicting rulings on how much of a connection to a waterway is legal to allow for a building permit.

Speaking at a dinner last night in Washington, D.C., U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said there is more the court can do to “adhere to the highest standards” of ethical conduct and that the justices “are continuing to look at the things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment.” He also said he is “confident there are ways to do that consistent with our status as an independent branch of government and the Constitution’s separation of powers.” Roberts provided no specifics though, the Associated Press reports. Roberts was attending the American Law Institute's annual dinner, where he received the Henry J. Friendly Medal.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch failed to recuse themselves when considering cert petitions involving their book publishers, the ABA Journal reports. Sotomayor received over $3 million in advance payments between 2010 and 2012 from Penguin Random House. Her disclosure forms also show nearly $500,000 in book royalties and advances from 2017-2021. Penguin had cases before the court in 2013, 2019 and 2020. Gorsuch reported earnings of $655,000 on his book published in 2019 according to financial disclosure for 2018, 2019 and 2020. He did not recuse himself from considering a cert petition in a recent case, according to the Journal. In related news, an article today from SCOTUSblog has information about all of the justices’ 2023 financial disclosures.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to halt the scheduled execution of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip on Friday while justices consider two pending petitions for appeal as reported by Reuters. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond had earlier filed a motion urging an Oklahoma appeals court to vacate the conviction and return the case to the federal district court. In a statement, Drummond said an independent counsel investigation had “cast doubt on the conviction.”  

In addition to not disclosing years of luxury travel and a real estate deal, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also failed to disclose that billionaire Harlan Crow paid for Thomas’ grandnephew’s boarding school tuition. According to a ProPublica investigation, Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas had disclosed a gift of $5,000 for his grandnephew’s education from another friend.

Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Congress “has the power under the Constitution” to “enact laws prescribing the ethical standards applicable to the nonjudicial conduct and activities of the Supreme Court of the United States,” CNN reports. The hearing on ethics was called by committee Chair Richard J. Durbin, D-Illinois, after recent reports that Justice Neil Gorsuch failed to disclose a real estate transaction with the chief executive of a law firm that often does business before the court and Justice Clarence Thomas had omitted luxury gifts and real estate deals from his disclosure statements for decades. Last week, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts declined an invitation to appear before the committee, citing concerns about judicial independence.

The U.S. Supreme Court today announced it will hear a case that could significantly scale back federal agencies’ authority, with major implications for the future of environmental and other regulations, The Hill reports. During the next term, the justices will consider whether to overturn a decades-old precedent that has come to be known as the “Chevron” doctrine, which grants deference to agencies when Congress leaves ambiguity in a statute. In the case accepted for review, a fishing company is appealing a lower court ruling that upheld a National Marine Fisheries Service regulation based on the doctrine.

The Tennessean reports that three U.S. Supreme Court justices penned a dissent on Monday after the court declined to hear the case of Kevin B. Burns, a Tennessee man who was convicted of murder and is currently awaiting execution. Burns argued that counsel at his 1995 trial and sentencing were ineffective and that they failed to introduce key facts and challenge the state’s narrative that Burns himself pulled the trigger of the gun that killed two men.