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2 days ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Alicia Bannon |Mary Ziegler |Julia R. Livingston |Diana Kasdan
This month marks the third anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,in which the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and held that there was no federal constitutional right to abortion. The Court said it was returning decisions about abortion regulation “to the people and their elected representatives.” Strikingly, the decision didn’t mention state courts.
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1 week ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Aaron Saiger |Alicia Bannon |Erin Smith
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court divided 4–4 over whether denying a charter school application from a religious school would violate the Constitution’s prohibition on establishing or favoring a religion. The decision upheld the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s holding that chartering a school that would “evangelize” a particular faith violated state legislation and the Oklahoma and federal constitutions.
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1 week ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Mary Ziegler |Alicia Bannon |Julia R. Livingston |Diana Kasdan
An intermediate appellate court in Florida teed up a major constitutional clash that could reshape abortion access and state law on parental and fetal rights. The case, Doe v. Uthmeier, began as a run-of-the-mill judicial bypass case — when a minor petitions a court for approval to do something that would usually require parental consent. In the 1970s, in the aftermath of Roe v.
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2 weeks ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Alicia Bannon |Bridget Lavender |Geeta Tewari |Ochuwa Garuba
Last week, Massachusetts’s highest court unanimously ruled that the commonwealth’s Department of Children and Families violated the Massachusetts Constitution when it vaccinated a child temporarily in its custody despite the religious objections of her parents. It was a significant religious freedom ruling at a time when declining public trust in vaccines is likely to make such conflicts more common.
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4 weeks ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Sarah Kessler |Erin Smith
Iowa Supreme Court held that the plaintiff organization did not have standing to seek to dissolve an injunction entered in a separate case that barred the secretary of state from providing voter registration forms in languages other than English, by claiming such materials fall within an exception to the state law underlying the injunction.
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1 month ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Justin Lam |Erin Smith |Alicia Bannon
The court approved a law to strip the governor’s election board powers, risking creating a precedent for partisan power-grabbing. Last week, the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the legislature’s power grab over the State Boards of Elections, the agency charged with administering elections, campaign finance disclosures, and all 100 county election boards.
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1 month ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Erin Smith |Justin Lam |Alicia Bannon
Judge Jefferson Griffin (R), who had attempted to have more than 60,000 votes thrown out in his race for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, has conceded to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D). His action ends a dispute that extended six months after the 2024 election and played out in both state and federal courts. Griffin’s concession came just two days after a federal district court judge ordered the election be certified.
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1 month ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Mary Ziegler |Julia R. Livingston
The Wyoming Supreme Court heard oral arguments this month in an abortion case that could affect litigation in states across the country— touching on whether abortion is health care, when life begins, and more.
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1 month ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Mary Adkins |Paul A. Diller |Joseph Richie |Meryl Chertoff
Citizen support for constitutional amendments has been undermined by the legislature’s interpretation of those initiatives. This essay is part of a 50-state series about the nation’s constitutions. We’ve asked an expert from each state to dive into their constitution, narrate its history, identify its quirks, and summarize its most essential components for our readers. Florida’s constitution, like those of many states, has some peculiar features.
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1 month ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot |Gene Downing |David Brown |Rex Bossert
The court has perhaps never been friendlier to criminal justice reform. This month, the Michigan Supreme Court announced that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for people under the age of 21 violate the state constitution’s ban on cruel or unusual punishment. The court also held, based on a separate recent decision, that this rule applies retroactively. These decisions are the latest from a court that’s been steadily carving out a path against excessive sentencing.