The Daily Brief — June 23, 2026
SCOTUS on green card returnees, human rights violations, and religious liberty in prison; judge throws out DOJ subpoenas
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SCOTUS on Green Card Holders
The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that federal border officers do not need “clear and convincing evidence” that a green card holder committed a crime before stripping them of their status when they try to reenter the country after traveling overseas.
The case, Blanche v. Lau, involves Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen and lawful permanent resident. In 2012, New Jersey charged him with trademark counterfeiting. While those charges were pending, Lau traveled to China and attempted to reenter the US through a New York airport. Rather than admitting him as a returning green card holder, border officials treated him as an applicant for admission and placed him on “parole” — an immigration status that allows a person to enter the country temporarily without being formally admitted. Green card holders usually don’t have to reapply for admission to the US after overseas travel because they are considered “already admitted.”
But after Lau pleaded guilty to counterfeiting charges a year later, the government sought to remove him from the US, deeming him inadmissible because of the conviction. The Second Circuit blocked the effort, ruling that border officers needed clear and convincing evidence — not merely pending criminal charges — that Lau had committed a crime before stripping him of permanent resident status.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed. He said the government does not have to provide clear and convincing evidence at the border, where agents need to make “quick judgments on the spot.” There, the government was free to treat Lau as “seeking admission” rather than already admitted.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. She argued that both the government and the majority got the sequencing wrong by allowing officials to strip lawful permanent residents of their protected status first and justify the decision later. According to Jackson, the ruling effectively gives the government “a massive blank check” to strip a returning permanent resident of his status and dig up evidence later.
SCOTUS Shuts Door on Human Rights Suits
The Supreme Court has limited the ability of foreign nationals to use US courts to sue over serious violations of human rights that happened in other countries. The 6–3 decision ends a lawsuit that practitioners of Falun Gong, a religious movement that began in China in the 1990s, filed against the California-based tech company Cisco.
The plaintiffs in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe — Chinese nationals and one US citizen — said China’s government tortured, detained, and in some cases killed Falun Gong members over their religious beliefs. They allege Cisco designed and built the “Golden Shield,” the surveillance system that the Chinese government used to identify and track them. The plaintiffs sued under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a 1789 law giving federal courts jurisdiction over serious wrongs (“torts”) that violate international law. One plaintiff also sued under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA).
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the ATS gives jurisdiction to sue but does not say who may sue for what. Allowing a new kind of lawsuit under it, she wrote, is lawmaking, which belongs to Congress. The case also can’t move forward under the TVPA, as it applies to someone who “subjects” another to torture but does not apply to aiders and abettors, which is what the plaintiffs allege Cisco and its executives were.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Court still lets three founding-era offenses be sued over: denying safe passage to foreigners, denying the rights of ambassadors, and piracy. She argued there is no reason lawsuits over those three survive but lawsuits over an equally well-established wrong like torture are not allowed. She also argued that aiding and abetting torture is universally prohibited in international law.
SCOTUS on Religious Liberty in Prison
The Supreme Court ruled today that prisoners cannot sue individual state officials for monetary damages under a federal law protecting inmates’ religious exercise. The decision was 6–3 along ideological lines.
The plaintiff in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, Damon Landor, is a Rastafarian — an adherent of Rastafari, a religious movement — who did not cut his hair in nearly 20 years as an expression of his beliefs. In 2020, he was transferred to a new prison to serve three weeks of a five-month sentence for illegal drug possession. In two previous prisons, he had been allowed to keep his hair long or under a rastacap. To protect himself, he said, he handed officers in the new prison a copy of a ruling that found that shaving the head of a Rastafarian is a violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a law that protects the religious rights of people in government institutions.
The officers responded by throwing the case in the trash, handcuffing Landor to a chair, and forcibly shaving his head. Landor sued the corrections department and individual officers for damages.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that individual correctional officers could not be sued because they did not personally accept the federal funds that came with the requirements to protect religious liberty under RLUIPA –– only the prison system did.
The dissenters said that Congress wanted people to be able to sue both individuals and the institution they work for, and that prison officers were acting as agents of the state in this instance. The justices in dissent claim that without being able to hold individual officers accountable, people like Landor will be left with no remedy for the ways in which they were harmed.
Newsbreak
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Judge Quashes Subpoenas Against MN Officials
A federal judge yesterday quashed six Justice Department grand jury subpoenas issued to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other Democratic officials, ruling they were meant to retaliate against the state for refusing to help the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The Justice Department said the subpoenas were tied to an investigation into whether the officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement during Operation Metro Surge, a December 2025 immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities that drew mass protests and the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal agents. But the subpoenas, served in January, came days after Minnesota’s attorney general and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul sued to block the operation — a timing that Chief US District Judge Patrick Schiltz cited as evidence the subpoenas were retaliatory.
The subpoenas, he wrote, were “not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.”
The subpoenas sought records from Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, and Hennepin and Ramsey county officials.
Pentagon Seeks $80 Billion More
The Pentagon has told senators it needs an additional $80 billion to cover the costs of the US war against Iran and other unexpected expenses.
According to senators briefed on the request, Defense Department officials warned that the military could run short of funding for operations later this summer unless Congress approves a supplemental wartime spending bill. Without additional money, the Pentagon may have to cut training exercises and other priorities because of the costs of the Iran conflict and troop deployments along the US southern border.
The White House Office of Management and Budget, which needs to approve any such supplemental funding request, has not yet made a formal request to Congress. The Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2026 is about $1 trillion.
Senate Passes Housing Bill
The Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill yesterday aimed at lowering housing costs by limiting large corporate investors’ ability to buy up single-family homes. The measure passed 85–5 and now heads to the House.
The bill would prohibit institutional investors from owning more than 350 single-family homes. According to government figures for six metropolitan cities across the country, institutional ownership of single-family homes has increased and accounts for between 1% and 3% of the housing stock.
The bill would also expand federal grant programs to help cities build more housing and provide new funding for communities to convert abandoned buildings and infrastructure into homes.
The legislation is the result of nearly a year of bipartisan negotiations to address the nation’s housing shortage and improve affordability. Realtor.com estimates the housing shortage has grown to more than 4 million homes nationwide after years of underbuilding. The shortage has pushed prices higher, with the income needed to buy a typical starter home now estimated at about $86,000 a year.
Iran Nuclear Inspections
President Trump said today that Iran had “fully and completely” agreed to allow international inspectors to resume monitoring its nuclear program, but Tehran denied the claim.
Last week, the United States and Iran signed a framework peace agreement ending the war and establishing a 60-day period to negotiate broader disputes, including the future of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Iran said there were “no plans” for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to return to uranium enrichment sites. Those facilities were bombed during the opening days of the joint US–Israeli military campaign that began on February 28.
This SCOTUS is something else. 🤨