State Case Database
Search State Court Report's database of significant state supreme court decisions and pending cases. Download decisions and briefs for cases that develop state constitutional law. This is a selected database and does not include every state supreme court case. See methodology and "How to Use the State Case Database" for more information.
This database is updated monthly, although individual cases may be updated more frequently. Last updated comprehensively with cases decided through February 2025.
Featured Cases
LeMieux v. Evers
The Wisconsin Supreme Court held, in a divided decision, that the governor did not exceed his partial veto authority under the state constitution when he altered digits, words, and punctuation in a budget bill to extend a school funding increase from 2 to 402 years.
Griffin v. State Board of Elections
A candidate for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, who lost by over 700 votes, claims that the state board of elections followed an incorrect process for registering voters and seeks in invalidate more than 60,000 votes.
People v. Taylor; People v. Czarnecki
Michigan Supreme Court held that mandatory life-without-parole sentences violate the state constitution’s protection against “cruel or unusual” punishment for anyone under age 21 at the time of the offense. The decision extends the court’s 2022 ruling in People v. Parks that such sentences are unconstitutional for those 18 or under.
In re Tom Malinowski
Appellants claim that state's ban on fusion voting violates rights to vote, to free speech and political association, to equal protection, and to assemble
Mitchell v. University of North Carolina Board of Governors
Will consider whether public university's termination of a tenured professor based, in part, on a letter he wrote to a department chair using offensive language violates the First Amendment, and whether lower courts' deference to the interpretation put forth by the university -- a state agency -- of its faculty employment regulations violates separation of powers.
Layla H v. Virginia
Plaintiffs claim that state’s practice of approving permits for fossil-fuel infrastructure violates substantive due process and public trust rights to natural resources, protected by the state constitution. They claim such practice infringes these rights by contributing to greenhouse-gas pollution and climate change. A trial court dismissed plaintiffs’ complaint, and the intermediate appellate court affirmed on the basis that the plaintiffs lack standing. Finding that there was no reversible error, the Virginia Supreme Court declined to grant review of the appellate court decision.
Blackmon v. State
Plaintiffs who allege they were denied, or received delayed, medically necessary abortion care due to doctors' confusion regarding the scope of the medical necessity exception in the state's abortion ban challenge that exception as violating their state constitutional rights to life and equal protection and as unconstitutionally vague. A Tennessee trial court held the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits as to each challenge, at least with respect to certain maternal medical conditions the parties agreed fall within the exception, and granted temporary relief declaring the exception to include those conditions.
Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. John Doe, Board of Education of Harford County v. Doe, The Key School, Inc., et al. v. Valerie Bunker
Held that a law repealing a prior time bar for child sex abuse claims — which had prevented victims from suing once they turned 38 — did not violate a defendant's vested right to be free from liability because the prior time bar was an ordinary statute of limitations, not a statute of repose. The court concluded that the expiration of a statute of limitations does not create a vested right, while the running of a statute of repose does. Even absent a vested right, however, the court ruled that a law retroactively resurrecting a remedy previously precluded by a statute of limitations must bear "a real and substantial relation to the problem it addressed," but found that standard met in the context of child sex abuse claims.
McKinney v. Goins
Ruled that the retroactive amendment of the statute of limitations for tort claims by victims of child sexual abuse effected by SAFE Child Act did not disturb or destroy a “vested right” and thus did not violate state constitution's Law of the Land Clause, and the General Assembly may enact retroactive legislation that does not fall into the two explicitly prohibited categories of retroactive laws enumerated in state constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause
Murray v. Dalton (In re Doe)
Held that Idaho’s statutes governing powers and duties of guardianship and governing resignation, removal, modification, or termination proceedings for guardians of minors, were rationally related to legitimate government interest in the minor’s safety and best interests and, thus, were not unconstitutionally broad or vague in violation of due process
In re S.M.
Held that an indigent parent or custodial respondent in an abuse and neglect case has a right to appointed counsel at all stages of the proceedings, but they may elect to continue self-represented upon a knowing and intelligent waiver of the right to counsel
SisterSong v. Georgia
Plaintiffs claim that abortion ban violates the state constitution’s right to liberty and privacy and guarantee of equal protection
Nevada Policy Research Institute v. Miller
Held that respondents' dual service as legislators and employees of state or local government did not violate the doctrine of separation of powers
