From the right to own semiautomatic rifles to the rules governing voter registration, the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court term will see the justices tackle a broad swath of constitutional and access to justice issues.
Since the mid-1980s, DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of wrongfully convicted people and reshaped the criminal justice system. Rodney Reed's decadeslong unsuccessful effort to test the belt prosecutors say he used to kill a woman, however, shows how difficult access to post-conviction DNA testing can be, even for prisoners with credible innocence claims.
The U.S. Supreme Court has considered dozens of emergency petitions involving executive policies since President Donald Trump's return to office. While justices often defend their emergency rulings as stop-gap measures, people at the center of those cases — who've lost their legal status, jobs, or federal funding — say that even interim decisions have had lasting effects on their lives.
The U.S. Supreme Court's short opinion last year finding that an Oklahoma woman's capital trial was potentially marred by sexist and prejudicial evidence has been cited over 100 times since, and not just in cases involving gender bias. Litigants have invoked the ruling to challenge their convictions over a wide range of issues involving prosecutorial prejudice, bias and trial fairness — but courts so far have been reluctant to grant relief.
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From the right to own semiautomatic rifles to the rules governing voter registration, the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court term will see the justices tackle a broad swath of constitutional and access to justice issues.
Since the mid-1980s, DNA testing has exonerated hundreds of wrongfully convicted people and reshaped the criminal justice system. Rodney Reed's decadeslong unsuccessful effort to test the belt prosecutors say he used to kill a woman, however, shows how difficult access to post-conviction DNA testing can be, even for prisoners with credible innocence claims.
The U.S. Supreme Court has considered dozens of emergency petitions involving executive policies since President Donald Trump's return to office. While justices often defend their emergency rulings as stop-gap measures, people at the center of those cases — who've lost their legal status, jobs, or federal funding — say that even interim decisions have had lasting effects on their lives.
The U.S. Supreme Court's short opinion last year finding that an Oklahoma woman's capital trial was potentially marred by sexist and prejudicial evidence has been cited over 100 times since, and not just in cases involving gender bias. Litigants have invoked the ruling to challenge their convictions over a wide range of issues involving prosecutorial prejudice, bias and trial fairness — but courts so far have been reluctant to grant relief.
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September 25, 2026
The Eleventh Circuit ruled that police spotting a gun protruding from a defendant’s pocket wasn’t enough to trigger reasonable suspicion in Florida, a state where concealed carry is treated as presumptively legal, and the Fifth Circuit rejected a “weird” argument from a person convicted of being a felon in possession. Here, Law360 highlights access to justice stories arising from litigation, verdicts and judgments you may have missed.
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September 25, 2026
A recent California Supreme Court ruling could help low-income litigants overcome a court reporter shortage that has left millions of hearings without an official record, undermining their chances of successfully appealing court decisions. For domestic violence survivors, advocates say, that record can mean the difference between challenging a potentially dangerous court order and having no viable path to appeal.
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September 25, 2026
An exonerated man can continue pursuing civil rights claims against three Detroit police officers accused of withholding evidence about an alleged jailhouse informant program that he says contributed to his wrongful conviction in a 1994 triple homicide, a Michigan federal judge has ruled.
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September 25, 2026
A Pennsylvania federal judge on Friday awarded the attorneys representing a man in a wrongful conviction case less than half their desired amount for work done in pursuit of those fees, ruling that $135,795 was reasonable compensation.
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September 24, 2026
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has denied a contractor's protest over the terms of a solicitation for legal services for unaccompanied migrant children, saying the Office of Refugee Resettlement adequately explained how the challenged requirements were related to its needs.
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September 22, 2026
The Trump administration implored the U.S. Supreme Court to cure a circuit split over noncitizens filing habeas petitions to challenge their detention during pending removal proceedings, warning of "intolerable disuniformity" in how the Immigration and Nationality Act is administered.
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September 21, 2026
The Ninth Circuit held in a published opinion Monday that a certified class of asylum-seekers apprehended well within the U.S. border can challenge their detentions, rejecting the government's contention that the U.S. Supreme Court limited their due process rights.
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September 18, 2026
The Ninth Circuit has reversed class certification for a group of transgender incarcerated people, finding that they had not shown that the Oregon Department of Corrections has systemically targeted trans women by housing them in male-only facilities.
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September 18, 2026
A South Dakota federal judge on Friday denied as moot a League of Women Voters bid to force state election officials to correct inaccurate notices sent to new registrants limited to voting in federal elections, finding that the secretary of state adopted every change the challengers requested and is unlikely to reverse course before the November election.
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September 18, 2026
Jeffery Lee, a 49-year-old Alabama prisoner on death row who had elected to be executed via nitrogen gas — a method a federal judge found earlier this year would violate his constitutional rights — was executed by lethal injection Thursday evening, after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his bid for an emergency stay.
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September 17, 2026
The Michigan Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it is launching a pilot project, based on recent reforms in Utah and Arizona, that will allow trained nonlawyers to provide in-court support to people who cannot afford a lawyer in civil cases.
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September 16, 2026
A Third Circuit panel on Wednesday ruled that police cannot conduct warrantless strip searches outside of jails or prisons absent consent or an emergency, but found that Pennsylvania officers who unconstitutionally searched a man enjoy qualified immunity from his civil rights claims because the limitation was not clearly established at the time.
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September 15, 2026
The D.C. Circuit tore into the Trump administration Tuesday morning after a government attorney refused to answer how long an Office of Refugee Resettlement approval of a sponsor for an "unaccompanied" child lasts, even when the court whittled the time down to a matter of hours.
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September 21, 2026
Tens of millions of Americans live in towns and counties across the nation with limited or no access to legal services. By one estimate, at least a third of the nation's counties qualify as a "legal desert," having only one or no attorney per 1,000 residents. Roughly 24 million Americans reside in these counties.
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September 14, 2026
The Sixth Circuit revived a lawsuit brought by a Michigan prisoner challenging prison officials for confiscating a book written by his sister, reversing a trial court decision that had granted summary judgment to the defendant after finding the prisoner failed to exhaust his administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
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September 14, 2026
Divorce is often hard, but it is harder still when there’s just one lawyer in town. The story of one divorcing couple in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula illustrates the financial costs and emotional pain of living in a legal desert, and it helps explain why lawyer shortages are spreading throughout rural America. This story introduces Law360 Pulse’s special series on legal deserts.
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September 10, 2026
A Florida appeals court ordered a new trial for a man convicted of fatally shooting a bystander during a heated argument with a group of boys, saying the trial court erred in withholding evidence from jurors that the group had previously fired shots into his home.
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September 10, 2026
A Florida state appeals court has reversed a teenager's manslaughter conviction and sentence, finding the teen's attorney let him enter an open plea without telling him that his statements to police potentially could have been suppressed for Miranda rule violations.
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September 10, 2026
The Fourth Circuit on Thursday became the ninth appellate court to declare illegal the Trump administration's detention of immigrants without bond, calling the mass detention a "stain" on the nation and comparing it to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
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September 10, 2026
The Eleventh Circuit has vacated a felon's gun-possession conviction, saying police lacked reasonable suspicion to search him after noticing a gun protruding from his hoodie pocket because Florida law treats concealed carry as presumptively legal.
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September 10, 2026
The Sixth Circuit has ruled that qualified immunity applied to four Detroit police officers sued by a man who had spent 22 years in prison before his convictions for sexual assault and breaking and entering were thrown out, finding probable cause supported his prosecution even though dog-tracking evidence in the case was eventually discredited.
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September 08, 2026
A Maryland federal judge awarded a class of asylum-seekers roughly $161,000 in attorney fees on Tuesday, finding that the Trump administration lacked substantial justification for deporting a Venezuelan to El Salvador despite a class settlement governing his asylum claim.
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September 08, 2026
The Second Circuit has partially revived a civil lawsuit from a New York City man wrongly convicted of a 1989 murder, giving the man another shot to hold the city accountable for violating his civil rights, and ruling that the cold case investigation of the killing fabricated evidence that affected the outcome of his trial.
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September 08, 2026
The American Bar Association council responsible for law school accreditation voted Tuesday to eliminate its diversity and inclusion standard, the final step in a process that the council hopes will ensure it remains an accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
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September 04, 2026
The Ninth Circuit has ordered a new trial for a man convicted of robbing a store in Washington, finding that he was not testifying in his own defense when he showed jurors that he had tattoos on his hand, unlike the hand of the man seen committing the robbery in security camera footage.