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 March 2025.
Featured Cases
State of Washington v. Gator's Custom Guns
Washington Supreme Court reversed a lower court and upheld the state's ban on selling or manufacturing magazines that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. The majority held that large-capacity magazines are “not” arms within the scope of the state or federal constitutional right to bear arms, and the ability to purchase them is not "necessary to the realization of the core right to possess a firearm in self-defense."
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 to invalidate more than 60,000 votes.
Mass Land Acquisition, LLC v. The First Judicial District Court of the State
Held that the Nevada Constitution's provision prohibiting the use of eminent domain to transfer property “from one private party to another private party” did not preclude an investor-owned public utility from exercising its delegated power of eminent domain to take an easement across a property for an intrastate natural gas distribution pipeline
MacDonald v. Simon
Held that a lawyer with suspended license was not “learned in the law” as required by the Minnesota constitution, and thus was not eligible to run for election as a justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court
Elliott v. City of College Station
State supreme court will determine if courts can resolve whether the state constitution’s clause preserving a “republican form of government” protects citizens from being subject to city regulations when they cannot vote in city elections.
Adkins v. State
Idaho trial court denied motion to dismiss claim that the state's abortion bans — as applied to pregnant people that have "an emergent medical condition that poses a risk of death or risk to their health (including their fertility)" — violate the state constitution's "inalienable rights" clause, finding that the Idaho Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Planned Parenthood Great Northwest v. State that the bans were not facially invalid in all applications did not preclude this as-applied challenge.
Individual Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana v. Anonymous Plaintiff 1
Appellate court upheld a temporary injunction against Indiana's 2022 abortion ban based on religious freedom claims, but held the injunction was overly broad because it enjoined enforcement of the abortion law in ways that did not violate the state's religious freedom act. Remanded for entry of a narrower injunction. Indiana Supreme Court did not take up an appeal of the appellate court ruling, leaving it in place.
Ex parte Jackson Hospital & Clinic
Ruled that the Governor's emergency proclamation limiting healthcare providers' liability for negligence as to COVID-19 was neither unconstitutional under the separation-of-powers clause nor the provision that only the Legislature could suspend laws, nor did it violate the constitutional prohibition on curtailing a right to a remedy
Kansas v. Harper
Trial court upheld requirement that driver’s licenses be issued only with driver’s sex as assigned at birth because it applied equally to every single person applying for a driver’s license, rejecting equal protection claim that the rule discriminates against transgender people
Republican National Committee v. Eternal Vigilance Action, Inc; Georgia v. Eternal Vigilance Action
The Georgia Supreme Court left in place a lower court ruling that several controversial new election rules are “illegal, unconstitutional, and void.” The rules would have made election certification discretionary, required hand-counting the number of ballots, made drop boxes harder to use, and expanded the role of poll watchers. The appeal will proceed on a normal schedule, which means the state supreme court will fully consider the challenge against the rules over the next few months.
Jackson v. Florida
Will consider facial and as-applied challenges under the federal Sixth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments, as well as under Florida's "cruel and unusual" punishment and equal protection analogues in arguments raised by amicus groups, to a 2023 law that permits defendants to be sentenced to death with only the votes of 8 of 12 jurors.
Commonwealth v. Yard
Held that the evidentiary limitation that requires that "proof is evident or presumption great," which calls for a burden of proof between probable cause and beyond a reasonable doubt, does not apply to the life-offense exception to the right to bail under the state constitution
