Last Thursday, nine weeks after hearing argument, the court dismissed the case as “improvidently granted,” meaning that the court, upon reflection, should not have accepted the case for review.
The litigation in the lower federal courts involved a dispute over Idaho’s defiance of that federal law.
The case now returns to the lower courts, where it stood before the Supreme Court intervened on the state’s behalf.
Dismissal of a case, which happens maybe once or twice a term, has no formal meaning as a precedent and usually not much meaning at all.
But it seems to me that the fate of this particular case, Moyle v. United States, has much to tell us about the Supreme Court at a supremely fraught moment.
Persons:
“ improvidently, Donald Trump, Moyle
Locations:
Idaho, United States