"Over the past 21 terms, the closest any member of the court got to Justice Jackson’s loquaciousness was Justice Stephen G. Breyer..."

"... who was famous for unspooling elaborate hypothetical questions featuring flights of fancy like marshmallow guns (in a case about attempted robbery) and tomato children (in a case about a federal drug law). Still, Justice Breyer... uttered an average of 818 words, or roughly two thirds as many as Justice Jackson [who averages 1263 words]. The runner-up to Justice Jackson in the four years since she joined the court... is Justice Sonia Sotomayor, at 791 words. His colleagues treated Justice Breyer’s professorial digressions with bemused tolerance. Justice Jackson’s extended questioning, by contrast, has been a source of annoyance to some of the other justices, The New York Times reported last October...."

Writes Adam Liptak, in "How a Covid-Era Scramble Transformed Supreme Court Arguments/Live audio, a new format and new voices have transformed and unsettled the court’s signature public ceremony" (NYT gift link).

Liptak offers 3 reasons why Justice Jackson seizes the opportunity to speak far more than anyone else and in defiance of clearly expressed annoyance: 1. She developed her style as a trial judge, the only judge in the courtroom, 2. Her side of the Court is outnumbered, 3. As the junior member of the Court, she's forced to go last when the Justices speak in order of seniority.

Jackson's outsized role at oral argument is so extreme, and so much attention has been paid to it. Clearly, she's choosing it, in spite of the criticism and even disdain and ridicule. She must believe she's doing exactly the right thing. Perhaps she views her contribution as proportionate if you measure not by the number of Justices but by the weight and power of the ideas they represent.

"A transgender woman penalized for being perceived as aggressive has experienced discrimination 'on the basis of sex' just as much as a cis-gender woman has, no matter that the transgender woman’s behavior matches expectations of her sex assigned at birth."

"Either way, the institution has imposed its gender-based expectations upon her. And either way, the institution may have violated Title IX. In short, the majority is wrong to suggest that the term 'sex' in Title IX ' cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.' Title IX makes room for individuals to live in the gender they choose; it cares not just about sex assigned at birth but also about individuals’ ability to match (or not) their gender presentation to their gender identity."

Writes Justice Jackson, in West Virginia v. B.P.J.

But what is "gender identity" if it stands apart from gender stereotypes? What is being identified with?

"What is clear is that the majority today forecloses future reliance on Sosa and shuts the courthouse doors to almost any claimed violation of international law under the [Alien Tort Statute]."

"That includes torture. See, e.g., Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F. 2d 876, 878 (CA2 1980) (ATS suit brought by plaintiff alleging that his son had been kidnapped and tortured to death in retaliation for the plaintiff’s political beliefs). It includes forced labor. See, e.g., Licea v. Curacao Drydock Co., 584 F. Supp. 2d 1355, 1359 (SD Fla. 2008) (ATS suit alleging that the defendant trafficked Cubans to Curacao, held them in captivity, and forced them to work repairing ships and oil platforms). It also includes perhaps the most universally condemned crime in the modern era: genocide. See, e.g., Kadic v. Karadzic, 70 F. 3d 232, 236–237 (CA2 1995) (ATS suit alleging 'brutal acts of rape, forced prostitution, forced impregnation, torture, and summary execution, carried out by Bosnian-Serb military forces as part of a genocidal campaign'). 'Like the pirates of the 18th century,' whose conduct so concerned Blackstone and the First Congress, 'today’s torturers, slave traders, and perpetrators of genocide are "hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind."' Nestlé, 593 U. S., at 647 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). As to each of these offenses, as to each of these enemies of mankind, the majority decides that there is simply no way that a suit could possibly proceed without offending Congress. Noticeably absent from the majority’s analysis is any evidence that Congress would be offended by these suits. Of course, there may be reasons why allowing an individual ATS suit to proceed would be unwise. That possibility, however, should be addressed on a case-by-case basis...."

Writes Justice Ketanji-Brown Jackson, dissenting in Cisco Systems v. Doe, announced this morning.

"Justices Reject Colorado Law Banning ‘Conversion Therapy’ for L.G.B.T.Q. Minors."

"Colorado and more than 20 other states restrict therapists from trying to change the gender identity or sexual orientation of L.G.B.T.Q. clients under the age of 18."

The NYT reports.

“Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for himself and seven other justices from across the ideological spectrum. “But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.” 

Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, reading a lengthy summary of her opposition from the bench.

Here's the opinion: Chiles v. Salazar. 

The Times headline needs to be sharpened up. The Court didn't "reject" the whole "law." The opinion says that the therapist, Chiles, "stresses that she provides only talk therapy, employing no physical techniques or medications." And the case returns to the lower court to apply the correct standard — strict scrutiny.

Jackson's idea:

"Of all the genres of unsatisfying nonfiction, books by Supreme Court Justices may be at the top of the heap."

"One subset is the memoir that focusses on the Justice’s early life, ending before confirmation. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s 'My Beloved World,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s 'Lovely One,' and Justice Clarence Thomas’s 'My Grandfather’s Son' are examples. These can be gripping narratives and helpful to understanding a Justice’s formative years, but by definition they omit what readers most want to know: what the Justice did on the Court and why she did it. Another category is the learned disquisition on the law, as in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 'A Republic, If You Can Keep It' and Justice Stephen Breyer’s 'Reading the Constitution.' These, too, fall short of readers’ hopes, for the simple reason that the authors resist any temptation to rule and tell. They write about their understanding of the law and the judicial process, but when it comes to their dealings with colleagues they remain resolutely circumspect. Barrett’s book is a mashup of the two forms: memoir and personal reflection are interlaced with explanations of legal doctrine. (Her grandmother’s unwritten recipe for shrimp remoulade provides a jumping-off point for discussing the benefits of a written constitution: 'Unwritten constitutions, like unwritten recipes, can be hard to pin down.')"

Writes Ruth Marcus, in "How the Supreme Court Defines Liberty/Recent memoirs by the Justices reveal how a new vision of restraint has led to radical outcomes" (The New Yorker).

This definitely gets my "unread books" tag (though I did read, a blog about, "My Grandfather's Son"). 

Marcus gives the Justices credit for writing "about their understanding of the law," but do they? How could they really?

Here's my old post "What I really think about the Clarence Thomas book" (from October 2007). I sort of "live-blogged" my reading of that book, and along the way, I was "accused both of fawning over him and of obsessively hating him," but, I said:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson empowers Trump to continue withholding food money.

The NYT reports: "Supreme Court Temporarily Allows Trump to Curtail Food Stamp Funding/The temporary ruling by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, blocking a lower court order to fully fund the aid, added to the uncertainty around the nation’s largest anti-hunger program."

See? It's not all about empathy.

Justice Jackson, a member of the court’s three-justice liberal bloc who has spoken forcefully against many of the Trump administration’s policies, issued a decision on the stay because she is responsible for emergency applications from that region of the country. She said in the order that she expected the appeals court to evaluate the matter and issue a more complete ruling swiftly.

Still, many Democrats around the country erupted in anger on Friday night, with some accusing President Trump of trying to turn nutrition assistance — a program on which one in eight Americans rely — into a bargaining chip while the government remains closed.

“Trump fought for this,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, said in a post on social media. “He doesn’t care if millions of Americans go hungry.”

Did Hochul say that before or after Jackson showed she "doesn't care"?

"As for the Government’s suggestion that the President is harmed by not being able to impose a uniform definition of sex across various regulatory schemes..."

"... that assertion is just another species of the far-fetched contention that the President must be injured whenever he is prevented from doing as he wishes.... The Government also fails to explain why it needs a uniform definition of sex, much less why such a uniform definition needs to be imposed now such that it cannot await the outcome of this litigation...."

Writes Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — joined by Justices Kagan and Sotomayor — dissenting in Trump v. Orr, which granted a stay of a district court’s preliminary injunction against a new Executive Branch policy that required all new passports to show the individual's "biological sex" (AKA "sex assigned at birth").

"I didn’t realize how formal the court really is. I kind of thought when justices go into conference they let their hair down a little bit — no."

Said Ketanji Brown Jackson, quoted in "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says she fears for U.S. democracy/The justice has emerged as one of the court’s sharpest critics, issuing more dissents than any colleague during the Supreme Court term that ended last month."

"The Trump administration can move forward with plans to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday...."

"The case represents a key test of the extent of President Trump’s power to reorganize the government without input from Congress. The justices’ order is technically only temporary.... But in practice, it means he is free to pursue his restructuring plans, even if judges later determine that they exceed presidential power. In a two-paragraph order, the justices wrote that they had concluded that “the government is likely to succeed on its argument” that President Trump’s executive order announcing plans to downsize the government was legal...."

The NYT reports.

Only Kentanji Brown Jackson dissented. Justice Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion. She says:

"Her opinions, sometimes joined by no other justice, have been the subject of scornful criticism from the right and have raised questions about her relationships with her fellow justices, including the other two members of its liberal wing."

Writes Adam Liptak, in The New York Times, about Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion [in Trump v. CASA] signed by all five of the other Republican appointees.

“The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain,” Justice Barrett went on, referring to Justice Sotomayor’s opinion. “Justice Jackson, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever.”...

I think Liptak is trying to build Jackson's reputation. He writes things like: "Justice Jackson has appeared comfortable expressing herself from the start." He compares her to Justice Breyer and Justice Brandeis:

“I was frightened to death for the first three years,” Justice Breyer said in a 2006 interview. Even Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a giant of the law who sat on the court from 1916 to 1939, needed time to find his footing. “So extraordinary an intellect as Brandeis said it took him four or five years to feel that he understood the jurisprudential problems of the court,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote of his friend and mentor. 

That does not work as a compliment to Jackson.

ADDED: The Washington Post just published a similar article, "One of the Supreme Court’s sharpest critics sits on it/Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emerges as a strong voice on an unusually fractious U.S. Supreme Court."

Moments away — we'll be getting the last cases of this Supreme Court term.

The cases will be posted on the Court's website, here. And here's the live-blogging at SCOTUSblog.

Here's Grok's summary of the remaining cases — birthright citizenship, racial gerrymandering, the nondelegation doctrine, Obamacare, access to on-line porn, and parents opting their kids out of woke school lessons.

UPDATE 1: "Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue" — Trump v. CASA. This is the "birthright citizenship" case, but it did not address the issue "whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act. Instead, the issue the Court decides is whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have equitable authority to issue universal injunctions." Decided 6-3 (in the usual 6-3 breakdown).

From Justice Barrett's opinion: "The universal injunction was conspicuously nonexistent for most of our Nation’s history. Its absence from 18th- and 19th-century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority. That the absence continued into the 20th century renders any claim of historical pedigree still more implausible. Even during the “deluge of constitutional litigation that occurred in the wake of Ex parte Young, throughout the Lochner Era, and at the dawn of the New Deal,” universal injunctions were nowhere to be found....Had federal courts believed themselves to possess the tool, surely they would not have let it lay idle."

Addressing Justice Jackson's dissent, Barrett writes: "JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary. No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so. See, e.g., Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803) (concluding that James Madison had violated the law but holding that the Court lacked jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus ordering him to follow it). But see post, at 15 (JACKSON, J., dissenting) ('If courts do not have the authority to require the Executive to adhere to law universally, . . . compliance with law some-times becomes a matter of Executive prerogative'). Observing the limits on judicial authority—including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789—is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law. JUSTICE JACKSON skips over that part. Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring 'legalese,' post, at 3, she seeks to answer 'a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?' Ibid. In other words, it is unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: '[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.' Ibid. That goes for judges too."

UPDATE 2: Kennedy v. Braidwood rejects the Appointments Clause challenge to the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force. The members of the task force are deemed "inferior officers," thus not needing appointment by the President and Senate confirmation. This one is 6-3 in an unusual way. Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson join the majority opinion written by Kavanaugh (and also joined by Roberts and Barrett). The dissenters are Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch.

UPDATE 3: FCC v. Consumers' Research — "The universal-service contribution scheme does not violate the nondelegation doctrine." Another 6-3 the unusual way — with a dissent from Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch.

UPDATE 4: Mahmoud v. Taylor, 6-3, the usual way. "Parents challenging the Board’s introduction of the 'LGBTQ+-inclusive' storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt outs, are entitled to a preliminary injunction." Justice Alito writes for the majority:

The Board of Education of Montgomery County, Maryland (Board), has introduced a variety of “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks into the elementary school curriculum. These books—and associated educational instructions provided to teachers—are designed to “disrupt” children’s thinking about sexuality and gender. The Board has told parents that it will not give them notice when the books are going to be used and that their children’s attendance during those periods is mandatory. A group of parents from diverse religious backgrounds sued to enjoin those policies. They assert that the new curriculum, combined with the Board’s decision to deny opt outs, impermissibly burdens their religious exercise. 

Today, we hold that the parents have shown that they are entitled to a preliminary injunction. A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses “a very real threat of undermining” the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 218 (1972). And a government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction. Based on these principles, we conclude that the parents are likely to succeed in their challenge to the Board’s policies....

I added the boldface. The school was so out front in its desire to reprogram children. They must have been pious believers... or at least people who felt called to pose as pious believers. 

UPDATE 5: Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 6-3, the usual way, upholding the Texas law that restricts access to on-line porn. How do you exclude minors without burdening access for everyone? Here, the state required age verification. "But adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification. Any burden on adults is therefore incidental to regulating activity not protected by the First Amendment. This makes intermediate scrutiny the appropriate standard under the Court’s precedents." And the law "advances important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech and does not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests." 

Kagan writes in dissent: "[I]f a scheme other than H. B. 1181 can just as well accomplish that objective and better protect adults’ First Amendment freedoms, then Texas should have to adopt it (or at least demonstrate some good reason not to). A State may not care much about safeguarding adults’ access to sexually explicit speech; a State may even prefer to curtail those materials for everyone. Many reasonable people, after all, view the speech at issue here as ugly and harmful for any audience. But the First Amendment protects those sexually explicit materials, for every adult. So a State cannot target that expression, as Texas has here, any more than is necessary to prevent it from reaching children."

UPDATE 6: The racial gerrymandering case — Louisiana v. Callais — will be reargued. Justice Thomas, alone, dissents: "These cases also warrant immediate resolution because, due to our Janus-like election-law jurisprudence, States do not know how to draw maps that 'survive both constitutional and VRA review.'"

"The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of a straight woman who twice lost positions to gay workers..."

"... saying an appeals court had been wrong to require her to meet a heightened burden in seeking to prove workplace discrimination because she was a member of a majority group."

The NYT reports.

The standards for proving workplace discrimination under a federal civil rights law, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court, “does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.”...

The text of the law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, does not draw distinctions based on whether the person claiming discrimination is a member of a majority group. But some courts have required plaintiffs from majority groups to prove an additional element if they lack direct evidence of discrimination: “background circumstances that support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”

It's not that unusual!

"Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration, for Now, to End Biden-Era Migrant Program."

The NYT reports.

Subheadline: "The Trump administration had asked the court to allow it to end deportation protections for more than 500,000 people facing dire humanitarian crises in their home countries."

The court’s order was unsigned and provided no reasoning, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, saying the majority had not given enough consideration to “the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”... 

In an emergency application to the Supreme Court on May 8, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that... the lower court had “needlessly” upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry” and had undone “democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election,” Mr. Sauer argued.

ADDED: "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented..." Not only didn't the Chief Justice join the dissenters, Justice Kagan went with the majority. The middle has spoken. I'm picturing many Trump victories to come in these "injunctivitis" cases.

AND: Here's Jackson's opinion. Excerpt:

"[Jack Smith] may be right about obtaining a conviction before a D.C. jury and a highly motivated judge against Trump. However..."

"... he would not have been able to sustain any conviction — and this [new] report makes that abundantly clear. Smith repeats the same conclusory evidence, such as citing how Trump said 'fight' ten times in his January 6th speech. He minimized the immunity decision by removing some evidence but kept largely the original indictment. However, the treatment of the obstruction claims was the most telling and indicative of Smith, who has repeatedly lost cases due to overextending constitutional and statutory authority. The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States rejecting the use of obstruction of legal proceedings against January 6th defendants will potentially impact hundreds of cases.... One of those cases that will be impacted is the pending prosecution of former president Donald Trump who is facing four charges, including two obstruction counts. It was not clear if Special Counsel Jack Smith would yield to the decision or possibly take the dubious path laid out by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her concurrence...."

Writes Jonathan Turley, in "Jacksonian Obstruction: Smith Explains How He Was Planning to Circumvent the Decision in Fischer."

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appears — one night only — in a performance of the Broadway show "& Juliet."

Nicely done!

"[Ketanji Brown] Jackson is not alone among Justices in telling her life story."

"There is a long tradition of memoirs, notably William O. Douglas’s 'Go East, Young Man,' which is famously colorful and perhaps factually dubious, and his 'The Court Years'; 'The Memoirs of Earl Warren,' published posthumously; Sandra Day O’Connor’s 'Lazy B,' written with her brother, about growing up on a ranch... and John Paul Stevens’s 'The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years'.... [Ketanji Brown Jackson's new memoir] belongs to a modern mini-genre of personal memoirs written much earlier, by sitting Justices. Clarence Thomas pioneered the form, with 'My Grandfather’s Son,' which appeared in 2007, sixteen years into his tenure... followed by Sonia Sotomayor, with 'My Beloved World,' in 2013, four years into hers. The pace has picked up. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have books in the works, too. It is almost as if, along with the judicial robes and clerks, newly confirmed Justices are issued book contracts. The advances alone may be the point. Thomas got a million and a half dollars. Sotomayor has built a franchise... that has earned her close to four million dollars. Barrett’s deal, worth a reported two million, was the subject of an open letter of protest.... Jackson’s contract is not public... The salary for an Associate Justice is about three hundred thousand dollars; there are caps on how much the Justices are allowed to earn for outside work, but book earnings are exempt."

Writes Amy Davidson Sorkin, in "What Can Memoirs by Supreme Court Justices Teach Us? We’re primed to read Justices’ accounts of their lives for clues to their jurisprudence. Should we?" (The New Yorker).

This seems to call for the old Samuel Johnson quote: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

And to answer the question in the article title: No. 

6 quotes from today's oral argument in Trump v. United States.

I listened live and took some handwritten notes, so I could find various things in the transcript. Here are the 6 quotes that made the cut for me. All but one are from the Justices.

1. Trump's lawyer, D. John Sauer, encourages the Court to see far beyond Trump to the true horror of criminally prosecuting ex-Presidents:

The implications of the Court's decision here extend far beyond the facts of this case. Could President George W. Bush have been sent to prison for... allegedly lying to Congress to induce war in Iraq? Could President Obama be charged with murder for killing U.S. citizens abroad by drone strike? Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies?

2. In a similar vein, from Justice Alito:

So what about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II? Couldn't that have been charged under 18 U.S.C. 241, conspiracy against civil rights?

3. Justice Gorsuch makes a brilliant suggestion. If Presidents didn't have immunity from prosecution, they could give themselves the equivalent by pardoning themselves on the way out. And note the reminder that Obama could be on the hook for those drone strike murders:

"I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be President of the United States."

"In other words, you know, this question of whether a former president is disqualified for insurrection to be president again is, you know, just say it, it sounds awfully national to me. So whatever means there are to enforce it would suggest that they have to be federal, national means. Why does -- you know, if you weren't from Colorado and you were from Wisconsin or you were from Michigan and it really -- you know, what the Michigan secretary of state did is going to make the difference between, you know, whether Candidate A is elected or Candidate B is elected, I mean, that seems quite extraordinary, doesn't it?... Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?"

Said Justice Elena Kagan in today's oral argument in Trump v. Anderson (transcript here).

Kagan's question was reinforced by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: "Can I just ask you about... the concern about uniformity and the lack thereof if states are permitted to enforce Section 3 in presidential elections.... I guess my question is why the Framers would have designed a system that would -- could result in interim disuniformity in this way where we have elections pending and different states suddenly saying you're eligible, you're not, on the basis of this kind of thing?"

"Asian Americans, the group whom the suit was supposedly about, have been oddly absent from the conversations that have followed the ruling...."

"During the five years I spent covering this case, the commentators defending affirmative action almost never disproved the central claim that discrimination was taking place against Asian Americans, even as they dismissed the plaintiffs as pawns who had been duped by a conservative legal activist. They almost always redirected the conversation to something else—often legacy admissions...."

Writes Jay Caspian Kang in "Why the Champions of Affirmative Action Had to Leave Asian Americans Behind/The original concept in pursuit of diversity was vital and righteous. The way it was practiced was hard to defend" (The New Yorker).

Watching the Supreme Court. [ADDED: Supreme Court makes a moderate, minimalist change to affirmative action doctrine.]

 At SCOTUSblog.

"We have the university cases."

"The court holds that Harvard and UNC's admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment."

The Chief Justice wrote the opinion. The question is how moderate/extreme is it. 

I'm just hanging on the SCOTUSblog feed.

Ah.. no... wait: Here's the opinion.

Excerpt from syllabus:

Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university. Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. Pp. 39–40.

The decision must be somewhat moderate, I'm inferring, because there are concurring opinions from Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. 

The Chief quotes Grutter — "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today" — and adds: