Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises · Title III Helms-Burton · 8-1 · May 21 ⚖ Crowther v. Board of Regents · Title IX employee suits · cert. granted May 18 ⚖ Turtle Mountain Band v. Howe · North Dakota maps · vacate & remand after Callais ⚖ State Bd. of Election Comm’rs v. MS NAACP · legislative maps · remand May 18 ⚖ Medicare drug-price negotiation challenges · cert. denied May 18 ⚖ FTC · Shutterstock · $35M subscription settlement · May 13 ⚖ FTC · Cox Media “Active Listening” · $930K · May 21 ⚖ Lairy v. United States · cert. denied · Justice Sotomayor statement ⚖ Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises · Title III Helms-Burton · 8-1 · May 21 ⚖ Crowther v. Board of Regents · Title IX employee suits · cert. granted May 18 ⚖ Turtle Mountain Band v. Howe · North Dakota maps · vacate & remand after Callais ⚖ State Bd. of Election Comm’rs v. MS NAACP · legislative maps · remand May 18 ⚖ Medicare drug-price negotiation challenges · cert. denied May 18 ⚖ FTC · Shutterstock · $35M subscription settlement · May 13 ⚖ FTC · Cox Media “Active Listening” · $930K · May 21 ⚖ Lairy v. United States · cert. denied · Justice Sotomayor statement ⚖

May 18–24, 2026 · October Term 2025 · maritime trafficking meets voting-rights remands

Confiscated Docks, Cruise Ships, and an 8–1 Court

8–1Justice Thomas wrote for eight justices that cruise lines’ use of Havana’s port infrastructure can satisfy Title III’s “property which was confiscated” text, vacating the Eleventh Circuit and teeing up damages litigation over sailings between 2016 and 2019.

The same week, the Court granted Crowther to weigh whether Title IX reaches employee sex-discrimination claims, remanded North Dakota and Mississippi redistricting disputes after Louisiana v. Callais, and left Medicare price-negotiation constitutional challenges in the courts of appeals while federal enforcers settled major subscription and “AI listening” advertising cases.

Helms-Burton Title III Education civil rights VRA pipeline

Lone dissent · May 21, 2026

Justice Kagan: liability should track the concession Cuba actually took

Justice Elena Kagan argued the majority stretched trafficking liability across years when petitioner’s dock concession would already have expired, warning that tying damages to dock use detached from the usufructuary interest Cuba expropriated misreads the statute’s confiscation hook. Practitioners now watch remand fights over how much of the nine-figure district awards survive that framing fight.

Sources: SCOTUSblog — Amy Howe, May 21, 2026 · Legal Information Institute — Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., No. 24-983

Eight votes to one on the judgment

Majority coalition · Justice Kagan noted her dissent publicly

Sources: SCOTUSblog case file — vote breakdown · LII — opinion metadata

Crowther v. Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Docket No. 25-183 · October Term 2026 (argument calendar TBA)

The Court agreed to decide whether Title IX’s implied private right of action covers employees—not only students—who allege sex discrimination at federally funded schools. The Eleventh Circuit held the text’s “no person … shall … be subjected to discrimination” language stops at students; eight other circuits had recognized parallel employee suits, so the grant tees up a clean circuit conflict.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices the lower court was correct on the merits but urged review anyway because of the split—an unusual posture that still persuaded the Court to take the case.
The dispute pairs an art professor and a women’s basketball coach whose lawsuits were dismissed after Georgia’s Board of Regents invoked circuit precedent blocking Title IX employment claims.

Sources: SCOTUSblog — Amy Howe, May 18, 2026 · Supreme Court — question presented (No. 25-183)

North Dakota map fight returns below

Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe

On Monday, May 18, the Court granted review, immediately vacated the Eighth Circuit’s judgment, and remanded for reconsideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais. Tribal plaintiffs challenged North Dakota’s 2021 legislative map, arguing it diluted Native voting strength. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the summary disposition, writing that Callais did not speak to the separate question whether private plaintiffs may enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act at all.

Sources: SCOTUSblog case file — No. 25-253 · Supreme Court docket — 25-253

State Board of Election Commissioners v. Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP

The same orders list granted a petition before judgment, wiped out the three-judge district court’s remedial orders on Mississippi’s legislative maps, and sent the dispute back to the Southern District to reassess the record under Callais. Justice Jackson again dissented, arguing the Court should have reached the private-enforcement question directly instead of routing everything through April’s vote-dilution framework.

Sources: SCOTUSblog case file — No. 25-234 · Magnolia Tribune — May 18, 2026

Medicare negotiation suits stay in the circuits

Manufacturers challenging the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug-price negotiation program asked the justices to review statutory and due process theories the government defended below. The May 18 list denied review without noted dissents, leaving published D.C. and Sixth Circuit rejections in place while CMS continues implementation.

Source: SCOTUSblog — same-day orders coverage, May 18, 2026

Lairy v. United States — sentence plus habeas timing

“As all agree, petitioner Michael Lairy’s prison sentence for unlawful handgun possession was five years longer than the applicable statutory maximum.”

Justice Sotomayor’s statement respecting denial of certiorari · May 18, 2026

She concurred in the denial because the Solicitor General conceded a limitations defense was raised in error, promised to waive it in similar cases, and the district court already vacated the sentence—making further Supreme Court review unnecessary even though the underlying issue drew a full bench statement.

Sources: Supreme Court docket — No. 25-821 · SCOTUSblog — May 18 orders roundup

$0M

FTC locks in a $35 million subscription settlement

The Commission’s May 13 complaint in the Southern District of New York alleged Shutterstock enrolled customers without clear renewal disclosures, charged cards without express informed consent, and made cancellation unreasonably difficult until 2024. The proposed stipulated order pairs monetary relief with ROSCA-style guardrails on negative-option billing.

Sources: Federal Trade Commission — press release, May 13, 2026 · SEC EDGAR — Shutterstock Form 8-K, May 14, 2026

What marketers claimed

“Active Listening” AI tied phones and smart speakers to hyper-local ad targeting.

Sales decks pitched Cox Media Group customers on conversational surveillance powering digital campaigns.

What the FTC says happened

No voice pipeline — purchased email lists behind the curtain.

Administrative complaints filed May 21, 2026, allege Cox, MindSift, and 1010 Digital Works violated the FTC Act (and, for the vendors, provided “means and instrumentalities” for deception). Proposed orders would pay $880,000 from Cox plus $25,000 each from the two marketing partners.

Source: Federal Trade Commission — press release, May 21, 2026

> Samesurf, Inc. v. Intuit Inc.

$ Federal Circuit affirms PTAB — all challenged claims of the synchronized browsing patent unpatentable for obviousness.

$ Panel (Stark, Dyk, Chen) rejects argument that broader construction made the invention inoperable.

$ Outcome: Intuit keeps TurboTax-facing IPR win; Samesurf loses leverage in co-browsing dispute.

Sources: IPWatchdog — Rose Esfandiari, May 21, 2026 · Law360 — Elliot Weld, May 21, 2026

Federal Circuit untangles patent standing doctrine

In a precedential May 19, 2026 opinion authored by Judge Raymond Chen, the court acknowledged past opinions sometimes blurred statutory Article III standing with the separate inquiry whether an exclusive patent licensee has statutory authority to sue in its own name.

The decision walks through how to separate constitutional injury from statutory entitlement, then reverses a dismissal that had conflated the two—sending the license dispute back for merits review.

Source: IPWatchdog — Eileen McDermott, May 19, 2026

Other high-profile denials on the May 18 list

  1. The Court declined to intervene in a suit seeking to hold X (formerly Twitter) liable under state child-exploitation reporting statutes for allegedly failing to remove unlawful material—leaving Ninth Circuit precedent in place.
  2. A California religious preschool’s challenge to state nondiscrimination requirements—arguing compelled promotion of other faiths—also failed to secure review, continuing lower-court analysis of public-accommodation law.

Source: SCOTUSblog — May 18, 2026 orders coverage

Alabama · May 19 primary · votes tabulated statewide · four U.S. House districts flagged for August 11 special primaries under revised maps · Secretary of State says Tuesday results “void” for party-nominee purposes in affected seats

State calendar meets federal redistricting law

After the Supreme Court’s recent orders in Allen v. Caster, Alabama proceeded with its scheduled May 19 nominating contests while officials prepared special elections for several congressional districts. Associated Press coverage through PBS NewsHour documented how statewide ballots still ran even as officials planned later primaries for districts caught in map litigation.

Source: PBS NewsHour — AP wire, updated May 20, 2026

The week ahead in federal law

Memorial Day compresses district-court filing windows while the Court’s late-May opinion sessions continue. Watch Tuesday morning order lists and keep North Dakota, Mississippi, and Havana Docks remand dockets on your conflicts checklist.

Tue., May 26, 2026 · 9:30 a.m. EDT

SCOTUSblog expects orders from the justices’ May 21 conference—calendar grants, summary dispositions, and miscellaneous relists that reset cert. strategy for June.

Mon., May 26, 2026

Memorial Day closes most federal trial courts; verify local rules for rolling deadlines tied to the holiday.

Late May / early June

Merits opinions typically issue on Monday and Thursday mornings—pair the Court’s hand-down calendar with circuit argument lists for clients tracking education, maritime, or voting-rights spillover.

Rolling

Eleventh Circuit remand proceedings in Havana Docks and Southern District of Mississippi rehearings after Callais should begin generating new scheduling orders within days of mandate issuance.

Summer 2026

Crowther is set for the October 2026 Term; watch for briefing deadlines this summer if you represent public university systems or faculty clients.

Calendar context: SCOTUSblog — live calendar & news feed

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