Supreme Court Takes Up Home-Distilling Ban and Maryland Magnet School Case, Turns Away 9/11 Plea-Deal Appeals

The Supreme Court on Monday added two cases to its docket and turned away appeals from three men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the Court's order list for Oct. 19, 2026. The orders came from the justices' Oct. 16 conference; the grants and denials were issued without explanation.

Home distilling: Department of Justice v. McNutt (No. 26-204). The Court granted the federal government's petition to review a Fifth Circuit ruling that struck down the federal ban on distilling spirits at home. The government's question is whether the prohibition on stills "in any dwelling house" or "in any shed, yard, or inclosure connected with any dwelling house" is "necessary and proper for carrying into execution Congress's enumerated power to lay and collect taxes."

• The ruling under review. In April, a Fifth Circuit panel held in an opinion by Judge Edith Jones that the law, "while venerable," violates the Constitution's Taxation and Necessary and Proper clauses. "On the contrary, the statutes reduce revenue by preventing individuals from making distilled spirits," the court wrote. It added that under the government's logic, "Congress may criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity. Home-based businesses may be forbidden. Remote work may be deemed a crime."
• The other circuit. Eleven days later, the Sixth Circuit upheld the same ban in a case brought by John Ream, who opened a brewery and taproom in Ohio with his wife. Writing for the majority, Judge Raymond Kethledge held "that the ban is a necessary and proper means of collecting the federal excise tax on distilled spirits," and said its rationale "is almost self-evident: stills are more easily hidden in homes than in bonded premises dedicated to distilling spirits." Judge Andre Mathis dissented. Ream's own petition (No. 26-93) was not acted on in Monday's list, according to its docket; the Buckeye Institute, which represents both Ream and the McNutt challengers, says on its case page that the Court is holding Ream pending its decision in McNutt.
• The law. The restriction dates to 1868. Violations carry a fine of up to $10,000, up to five years in prison, or both, according to the government's petition. The challengers are the Texas-based Hobby Distillers Association and four of its members.

Magnet school admissions: Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Board of Education (No. 26-12). The Court agreed to hear a challenge by a group of Asian American parents to the admissions process for Montgomery County, Maryland's four magnet middle-school programs, but it rewrote the question. The order list grants review "limited to the following question: Whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool."

• What the parents asked. The petition, filed by Pacific Legal Foundation, posed a broader question: whether a plaintiff alleging that a school district adopted facially neutral criteria "for a racially discriminatory purpose must show that the criteria produced a disparate impact on the targeted racial group before a court may consider evidence of discriminatory intent."
• The policy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the district replaced its earlier test-based process with a lottery open to students who met academic criteria; the district calls it the Pandemic Plan. The parents say eligibility relied on test percentiles that were "locally normed," making it harder for Asian American students "clustered in high-performing, low-poverty elementary schools to access the lottery," according to the petition. The district says in its brief in opposition that the lottery was "race-neutral, race-blind" and adopted because the pandemic made the in-person aptitude exam impossible to give.
• The rulings below. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis dismissed the amended complaint, writing that she could not "see how the Pandemic Plan visited a disproportionate burden on Asian American students when the percentage of admitted Asian American students so substantially outpaces the percentage representation among all applicants," according to the opinion reprinted in the petition's appendix. In a short unpublished opinion on Feb. 3, 2026, the Fourth Circuit affirmed. It said its 2023 decision in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, which compares a group's share of offers with its share of the applicant pool, "binds this panel," and that under that precedent the parents' claim "lacks an 'essential element.'"
• The split. The petition says the Second and Third Circuits "have now rejected the First and Fourth Circuits' approach." The Court denied review in similar challenges involving Virginia's Thomas Jefferson High School and Boston's exam schools in 2024.

The 9/11 plea deals: Mohammad v. United States (No. 26-13) and bin 'Atash v. United States (No. 25-1335). The Court denied both petitions, leaving in place a July 2025 D.C. Circuit decision that gave effect to the Secretary of Defense's withdrawal from the defendants' plea agreements. Those agreements would have taken the death penalty off the table in exchange for guilty pleas. The order list notes that "Justice Kavanaugh took no part in the consideration or decision" of the Mohammad petition; it gives no reason. No justice wrote a statement or dissent on either denial. (The only statement on Monday's list, by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, concerned an unrelated Chicago vehicle-impoundment case.)

• Background. In July 2024, the Convening Authority for the military commission, retired Army Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier, signed pretrial agreements with Mohammad, Mustafa al Hawsawi and Walid bin 'Atash. On Aug. 2, 2024, then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III withdrew from them, saying a decision of such "significance" should rest with him, according to the government's brief in opposition. A military judge and the Court of Military Commission Review held that the withdrawal came too late because the defendants had begun performing.
• The D.C. Circuit ruling. Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao granted the government's petition for writs of mandamus and prohibition, calling it "a rare case in which that exacting standard has been met." They wrote that "a commitment not to question witnesses appears nowhere in the agreements' text" and that "the judgment about whether Respondents should face the death penalty is a grave one that requires political accountability." Judge Robert Wilkins dissented in part, writing that the defendants "clearly and indisputably began performance of at least three of the many promises they made."
• What the defendants argued. Mohammad and al Hawsawi's petition asked whether an appeals court may use mandamus to review an interlocutory order in a criminal case when the government has no statutory right to appeal it. Bin 'Atash's separate petition argued that he began performance when he signed the agreement and a detailed stipulation of fact.
• What happens now. The D.C. Circuit's writs remain in effect, so the cases return to the military commission at Guantanamo Bay with the death penalty still possible.