In an entertaining talk at Harvard Law School last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan “pulled back the curtain a little on the nation’s highest court,” Harvard Law Today reports. Among the secrets she revealed is that it is her job, as the most junior justice, to answer the conference room door when clerks drop off items for another justice. “They will knock on the outer door, and then I have to hop up and open the inner door,” Kagan said. “If I don’t do it, nobody will.” Kagan also delved into topics that ranged from her most difficult court decision, to which justice gets the most laughs during oral arguments, to how she prepares for a case. She credits her previous job as solicitor general as a great training ground for the court and says she tries to remember what it was like on the firing line and “to at least be polite” when asking questions.

U.S. Supreme Court justices are increasingly citing in their opinions facts contained within friend-of-the-court briefs — a perilous trend, law professor Allison Orr Larson from the College of William and Mary says in a recent New York Times article. Some amicus briefs are careful and valuable, citing peer-reviewed studies and noting contrary evidence, while others cite more questionable materials. Some “studies” presented in amicus briefs were paid for or conducted by the group that submitted the brief and published only on the Internet. Others seem to have been created for the purpose of influencing the court. Over the five terms from 2008 to 2013, the court’s opinions cited factual assertions from amicus briefs 124 times, Larsen found. The trend is at odds with the ordinary role of appellate courts, which are not supposed to be in the business of determining facts. That is the job of the trial court, where evidence is submitted, sifted and subjected to the adversary process, the article notes.

The U.S. Supreme Court is delaying the start of same-sex marriage in Virginia, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports from the Associated Press. The court today granted a request from a county clerk in northern Virginia to block same-sex marriages across the state while the issue is being appealed to the Supreme Court. The court provided no explanation for its order. Without court intervention, same-sex couples would have been allowed to wed as of Thursday.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in an interview with The Associated Press yesterday that the Supreme Court won't duck the issue of same-sex marriage the next time a case comes to the court. She said she expects a case to be heard and decided by June 2016, and possibly a year earlier. Ginsburg also predicted that the justices would not delay ruling as they did on interracial marriage bans, which were not formally struck down until 1967. WRCB has the story.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who gave a blistering 35-page dissent in the Hobby Lobby birth control case last month, said that the male justices have a “blind spot” when it comes to women. When asked by Katie Couric in an interview if she believed the male justices truly understood the ramifications of their decision, Ginsburg said no but believes they can change. "I am ever hopeful that if the court has a blind spot today, its eyes will be open tomorrow," she said. The Chicago Sun Times has the story.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an order Thursday allowing Wheaton College in Illinois to bypass regulations governing how religious objections to contraceptive coverage are to be made. Under the law, religiously affiliated organizations are allowed an exemption from the mandate so long as they fill out a government form for their insurers and third-party administrators. The court’s order allows the school to skip the form if it notifies the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in writing that it is a nonprofit religious group and has religious objections to providing the coverage. The school had argued that filling out the form made it complicit in the provision of the services. Dissenting justices argued that the decision departs from language in the Hobby Lobby case, causing confusion and undermining confidence in the court. The ABA Journal has links to coverage of the issue.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued several order today before recessing for the end of its current term. The actions today included confirming that its decision in the Hobby Lobby case applies broadly to the contraception coverage requirement in the health care law, not just the handful of methods considered in the case; and ordering two appeals courts to reconsider cases decided by the National Labor Relations Board in light of its recent decision on recess appointments to that board. The court also announced eight cases it will consider in the fall term. These include whether a local Arizona law violates the First Amendment by restricting where a church can advertise its Sunday services; whether a group of energy companies can be sued under California antitrust laws for manipulating natural gas prices; discrimination claims by a pregnant employee; and whether a whistleblower can sue a defense contractor over claims it falsely billed the government for work in Iraq. WRCB-TV has AP stories on these, while SCOTUSblog has a summary of all new grants.

The court wrapped up the public portion of its current term today turning aside a number of cases but granting review of five cases for the fall. Among the actions taken today, the court declined to intervene in the Mt. Soledad cross dispute in San Diego; declined to take up a challenge to a California law that bars gay conversion therapy; and declined to hear Google's appeal of a ruling that it violated the federal wiretap law when it took photos for its Street View service. Looking ahead to the fall term, the court granted cert in five cases. Learn more about those from SCOTUSblog.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that home health-care workers who are partly public employees cannot be forced to pay "fair share" dues for union work affecting the terms and conditions of their jobs. The majority found that compulsory union dues violated the employees' free speech rights. "Except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support," Justice Samuel Alito wrote. The decision stopped short of overturning a 1997 decision that found public employees may be required to pay mandatory union dues as long as the money is not used for political purposes. The ABA Journal has more.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court today ruled the contraceptive mandate in the federal health care law violates the religious freedom rights of corporate owners who object to providing coverage in employee insurance plans. Justice Samuel Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said “closely held” for-profit corporations cannot be required to provide the coverage under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires the government to use the “least restrictive” option when placing a burden on the exercise of religion. Opponents of the decision warned it would be used by companies to avoid a host of regulations. Law.com has more.