SCOTUS AM

January 20, 2026 — Morning Report (SCOTUS Oral Arguments)

Jan 20, 2026

0120 AM SCOTUS TT·0120 AM SCOTUS YT

Wolford v. Lopez · 24-1046

Hawaii made it a crime to carry a concealed weapon onto private property without the owner's express permission — and the Supreme Court didn't sound convinced it could do that.

Hawaii passed a law criminalizing the carrying of concealed firearms onto private property without the explicit permission of the property owner. The Ninth Circuit upheld the law; the Second Circuit had struck down an identical law. The Supreme Court took the case to resolve the split. The argument turned on the Bruen test (2022): for a firearms restriction to be constitutional, the arm must be in "general use" and the restriction must be "rooted in the historic legal traditions" of the country. The Ninth Circuit relied on laws from the late 1800s to establish that tradition; four other circuits (Third, Fifth, Eighth, Eleventh) have held that's too late and the historical window must open earlier. Bryan covered the case reluctantly given Second Amendment content moderation risks, and Bryan's framing throughout was strict law-only — explicitly declining to address whether the policy was sound.

Constitutional question: Second Amendment right to bear arms in public for self-defense (established in Bruen); whether the historic-traditions test requires an exact analog or a close functional match (Thomas vs. majority in Rahimi); whether private property creates a different constitutional space than public property.

M&K Employee Solutions v. Trustees of the IAM Pension Fund · 23-1209

The law said to calculate the pension shortfall using December 31 numbers — but the actuary did the math in January, when she knew more. Was she supposed to pretend she didn't?

Under ERISA's multi-employer pension withdrawal liability rules, when an employer exits a shared pension fund, it must pay the actuarially determined shortfall its withdrawal causes, calculated as of December 31 of the prior year. M&K Employee Solutions withdrew from the IAM multi-employer pension fund during 2019. The plan's actuary performed the calculation in January 2019 and, as required by law, used the December 31, 2018 data — but also incorporated information that had become available in January (about interest rates, lifespans, or other actuarial factors) that she could not have known on December 31. This produced a higher withdrawal liability figure than a pure December 31 snapshot would have. The question: must an actuary perform the "best estimate" calculation using only information available as of the snapshot date, or using the best available information as of the date the calculation is actually performed?

Constitutional question: None directly — statutory interpretation of ERISA. The broader stakes: whether Congress's goal was to ensure fully funded pensions or primarily to create a disincentive to withdrawal; the answer shapes which information standard is correct.

← January 19, 2026 — MLK Day (Congressional Accountability Commentary) January 21, 2026 — Morning Report →