The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday declined to revive a Florida law signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis banning the performance of "lewd" drag shows in the presence of children. The justices denied a request by Florida officials to narrow a judge's pause on the law to just a single plaintiff - an Orlando restaurant called Hamburger Mary's - rather than maintain his temporary statewide halt of the measure. Three of the court's six conservative justices - Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch - indicated they sided with Florida officials and would have granted their request.
The U.S. Supreme Court's three liberal justices on Monday sharply objected to the court's refusal to hear an appeal by a former Illinois inmate who was kept in solitary confinement in a state prison and virtually deprived of any exercise for about three years. None of the six conservative justices joined with the liberal justices to provide the fourth vote needed to hear former inmate Michael Johnson's appeal of a lower court's ruling rejecting his 2016 civil rights lawsuit accusing prison officials of violating the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in an eight-page dissent joined by fellow liberals Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said the lower court applied the wrong legal test to determine whether Johnson's treatment violated the Eighth Amendment.
Senate Democrats are set on Thursday to vote on authorizing subpoenas to a pair of influential conservatives with ties to the U.S. Supreme Court as part of an ethics inquiry spurred by reports of undisclosed largesse directed to some conservative justices. The Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing to consider subpoenas for billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, a benefactor of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, who was instrumental in compiling Republican former President Donald Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees.