Show Notes
We're live at WashU Law's Admitted Students Day! After catching up on some shadow docket activity, we dig into Olivier v. City of Brandon, the Court's unanimous March 2026 decision by Justice Kagan. A Mississippi street preacher pleads no-contest to violating an amphitheater protest-zone ordinance, pays his $304 fine, then sues under §1983 to stop future enforcement — and the Fifth Circuit says the puzzling Heck v. Humphrey rule bars the whole thing. We work through why Heck is stranger than it first appears, what the Court got right in resolving the circuit split, and what the decision reveals about the ongoing mess at the intersection of §1983 and habeas.
More from Divided Argument
Two August per curiams find no one with standing to challenge the mail-ballot order or the White House ballroom—and a third drops while we're recording.
Cisco Systems v. Doe shuts the Alien Tort Statute door Sosa left open — pirates, ambassadors, and one Phoenix bar band excepted.
Hunter v. United States makes appeal waivers yield to "miscarriages of justice" — and nobody, including the Court, can quite say why.
We finally tackle the trans-sports cases and walk through the Court’s Equal Protection and Title IX analysis.
Rooker-Feldman, pronounced dead two decades ago, turns out to be alive — and the Court's formalists split right down the middle.