Recent Supreme Court 9-0 Rulings and Why They Matter

Recent Supreme Court 9-0 rulings have addressed the wrongful deportation of a Maryland resident, the limits of warrantless police entry during welfare checks, double jeopardy protections in firearms cases, the standard for judging deadly force by police, and the First Amendment protection of donor lists. Each of these decisions was unanimous, meaning every justice on an ideologically divided bench reached the same result. That agreement carries a message the losing side cannot easily deflect: the position failed with justices appointed by presidents of both parties.

How Often the Court Rules Unanimously

Unanimous rulings are a steady share of the Court’s docket. During October Term 2024, roughly 33% of the Court’s full opinions were unanimous, with another 10% reaching a unanimous result through separate concurrences.¹ SCOTUSblog placed the unanimity rate at 42% when counting all merits decisions for that term.²

The 2021–2022 term saw only 29% of decisions come down unanimously, a sharp drop from a 43% average across the prior decade, and 6-3 outcomes briefly overtook 9-0 as the most common alignment.³ Recent terms have moved back toward the historical norm.

Unanimity does not mean the case was easy. As Justice Antonin Scalia once observed, there is “no relationship between the difficulty of a case and its importance.”⁴ Cases that produce 9-0 results still involve extensive briefing, argument, and private deliberation before every justice signs on.

Noem v. Abrego Garcia: Wrongful Deportation to El Salvador

On April 10, 2025, the Court issued a brief two-page order in which all nine justices agreed that the federal government had to facilitate the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from a Salvadoran prison and handle his case as though the deportation had never happened.⁵

Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national living in Maryland, had been granted “withholding of removal” by a Baltimore immigration judge in 2019 after a finding that he faced a clear probability of persecution in El Salvador. Despite that order, the Trump administration deported him on March 15, 2025, and placed him in CECOT, El Salvador’s high-security terrorism prison. The government later acknowledged the removal was an “administrative error” while also alleging, without providing a legal basis, that he was a member of MS-13, which he denied.⁶

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered the government to “facilitate and effectuate” his return by April 7. The Supreme Court vacated the specific deadline, which had already passed during an administrative stay, and sent the case back for the district court to clarify what “effectuate” meant, noting that the term could encroach on executive authority over foreign affairs. The core of the order stood: the government had to facilitate his release and restore the legal status he held before the illegal removal.⁷

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, wrote separately to say she would have denied the government’s application outright. She rejected the government’s claim that courts lose jurisdiction over a deportee who has crossed the border, calling it “plainly wrong,” and wrote that “Courts should continue to ensure that the Government lives up to its obligations to follow the law.”⁵

Case v. Montana: Warrantless Entry for Emergency Aid

On January 14, 2026, the Court unanimously upheld the conviction of William Case, a Montana man charged with assaulting a police officer after pointing a gun-like object at officers who entered his home during a welfare check. Writing for the Court, Justice Kagan held that the “emergency aid” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement does not require probable cause. Officers need only an “objectively reasonable basis for believing” that someone inside is seriously injured or in imminent danger, the standard set by the 2006 decision in Brigham City v. Stuart.⁸

Case’s ex-girlfriend had called 911 reporting he threatened suicide. Officers heard what sounded like a gunshot over the phone, followed by silence. When they arrived, they saw an empty holster and what appeared to be a suicide note through a window. The Court found this more than enough to justify entry.⁹

Justice Kagan wrote that probable cause is a standard built for criminal investigations and “would fit awkwardly, if at all” in non-criminal welfare checks. She cautioned that the exception does not create an “open-ended license” for warrantless entries. Justice Sotomayor concurred but stressed the risks of police responding to mental-health crises and urged de-escalation. Justice Gorsuch wrote separately to trace the exception’s roots in common-law traditions.¹⁰

Barrett v. United States: Double Jeopardy in Firearms Cases

Also on January 14, 2026, the Court ruled unanimously that the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits simultaneous convictions under two overlapping federal firearms statutes for a single act. Justice Jackson wrote the opinion, holding that 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i), which criminalizes possessing a firearm in connection with a violent crime, and 18 U.S.C. § 924(j), which adds penalties when such a violation causes death, define the “same offense” under the Blockburger test. Because every person convicted under § 924(j) has necessarily also violated § 924(c), a defendant can face only one conviction, not two, for a single act.¹¹

The case involved Dwayne Barrett, who had been convicted of multiple counts including Hobbs Act robbery and firearms offenses. The Second Circuit had allowed separate convictions and sentences under both provisions. The Supreme Court reversed and rejected the argument that § 924(c)’s consecutive-sentence mandate independently authorized dual convictions. That mandate governs how to arrange sentences if two convictions are valid, the Court explained, but does not create the authorization for those convictions in the first place.¹²

Barnes v. Felix: The Standard for Police Deadly Force

In May 2025, the Court unanimously vacated and remanded Barnes v. Felix, a Fourth Amendment excessive-force case arising from a fatal police shooting during a Texas traffic stop. Justice Kagan wrote that courts evaluating deadly force claims must consider the “totality of the circumstances,” not just the split-second moment when an officer perceives a threat.¹³

In April 2016, Officer Roberto Felix Jr. stopped Ashtian Barnes for toll violations. After Barnes failed to produce a license and Felix smelled marijuana, Felix ordered Barnes out of the car. Barnes opened the door but turned the ignition back on. As the car moved forward, Felix jumped onto the doorsill and, within roughly two to three seconds, fired two shots into the vehicle. Barnes died at the scene.¹⁴

The Fifth Circuit had applied a “moment-of-threat” rule restricting its analysis to the seconds Felix stood on the doorsill. The Supreme Court called that approach “impermissibly narrow.” The reasons for the stop, the officer’s actions during the encounter, and the events leading up to the shooting are all relevant to whether force was reasonable. Justice Kavanaugh concurred, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, and Barrett, emphasizing the dangers officers face during traffic stops while agreeing the Fifth Circuit’s framework was too restrictive.¹³

First Choice v. Davenport: Donor Privacy Under the First Amendment

On April 29, 2026, the Court ruled unanimously that a faith-based pregnancy center had standing to challenge a New Jersey state subpoena demanding its donor information. Justice Gorsuch wrote that a government demand for an organization’s donor records inflicts an immediate injury to First Amendment associational rights. No enforcement action or court order compelling compliance is required first.¹⁵

The dispute began in 2022, when the New Jersey Attorney General established a “Reproductive Rights Strike Force” and issued a consumer alert accusing certain pro-life groups of providing misleading abortion information. A 2023 subpoena under the state Consumer Fraud Act demanded 28 categories of documents from First Choice, including the names, phone numbers, addresses, and employers of nearly all its donors. The subpoena twice warned that noncompliance could result in contempt of court.¹⁵

Lower courts had dismissed the challenge for lack of standing, reasoning that because the subpoena was “non-self-executing,” meaning it could not force compliance without a separate court order, First Choice had not yet suffered a real injury. The Supreme Court reversed, invoking the 1958 decision in NAACP v. Alabama and the 2021 ruling in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. Gorsuch wrote that the “value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs — not that it drops,” and that an objectively reasonable donor would fear disclosure, producing an immediate chilling effect.¹⁶

Other Recent 9-0 Decisions

Several additional unanimous rulings from the current and prior terms touch on criminal law and procedure:

In Ellingburg v. United States (January 2026), the Court held that restitution constitutes “criminal punishment” under the Ex Post Facto Clause and cannot be imposed for crimes committed before the relevant 1996 statute took effect.¹⁷
In Clark v. Sweeney (November 2025), the Court summarily reversed a grant of a new trial in a Maryland murder case, finding that the lower court had “departed dramatically from the principle of party presentation” by ruling on a ground neither side raised.¹⁷
In Pitts v. Mississippi (November 2025), the Court summarily reversed the Mississippi Supreme Court, holding that shielding a child abuse victim during testimony without a case-specific finding of necessity violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses.¹⁷
In Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges (May 2026), the Court reversed the Fourth Circuit in a per curiam opinion for violating the same principle of party presentation by deciding a case on grounds neither party had argued. The underlying dispute involved Trump-era restrictions on immigration judges’ public speech, but the ruling turned on procedural error rather than the speech restrictions.¹⁸

Why 9-0 Matters

A narrow 5-4 or 6-3 split invites the response that the outcome was ideological. Unanimity closes that argument off. It tells the losing party that not a single justice found the position persuasive, and in disputes over government power that message lands hard: the executive branch or a state government took a stance that no justice on the current Court, regardless of who appointed them, was willing to accept.

The Abrego Garcia case illustrates the point. The Trump administration argued that courts lacked authority to order the return of someone already deported. Every justice rejected that framing, even as they differed on how far the district court’s remedy should reach. The 9-0 result gave the ruling a legitimacy that a party-line split would not have carried, particularly in a case that had become a flashpoint in the national debate over immigration enforcement.

Roughly a third of the Court’s cases each term end unanimously, often on statutory interpretation, procedural fairness, or individual rights where the legal answer, though it requires careful analysis, points in one direction.¹⁹ Those are the cases where the 6-3 shorthand for the Court breaks down, and where the reasoning of the opinion, rather than the vote count, becomes the whole story.

1
Harvard Law Review. The Statistics
2
SCOTUSblog. By the Numbers
3
SCOTUSblog. As Unanimity Declines, Conservative Majority’s Power Runs Deeper Than the Blockbuster Cases
4
National Constitution Center. In the Supreme Court, Unanimous Decisions Aren’t Necessarily the Easy Cases
5
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Win Set Up Salvadoran’s Fight to Remain in U.S.
6
U.S. Supreme Court. Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949
7
Cornell Law Institute. Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949
8
U.S. Supreme Court. Case v. Montana, No. 24-624
9
SCOTUSblog. Court Finds Police Properly Entered Man’s Home Despite Absence of a Warrant
10
Cornell Law Institute. Case v. Montana, No. 24-624
11
SCOTUSblog. Court Unanimously Holds That Double Jeopardy Bars Convictions for Two Firearm Offenses
12
U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett v. United States, No. 24-5774
13
Harvard Law Review. Barnes v. Felix
14
U.S. Supreme Court. Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239
15
U.S. Supreme Court. First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport, No. 24-781
16
SCOTUSblog. Court Unanimously Sides With Faith-Based Pregnancy Centers in Litigation Dispute With New Jersey
17
SCOTUSblog. A Mid-Term Update on Criminal Law at the Supreme Court
18
U.S. Supreme Court. Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges, No. 25-767
19
Empirical SCOTUS. Charting the Justices’ Decisions Cutting Across Ideological Lines