In February on his Legalytics Substack, Empirical SCOTUS creator Dr. Adam Feldman published a study entitled “The Power Players Behind Supreme Court Petitions: Who’s Filing Amicus Briefs—and Who’s Winning.” The study examines amicus briefs filed in support of petitions for certiorari during the current October Term 2024 and the previous term, October Term 2023. We’re quite proud that in the category of “Most Cert Stage Amicus Briefs Associated With Grants,” WLF tops the list with six supported grants.

What Dr. Feldman’s study does not note is that all six of the supported grants were for cases the Court has considered or is considering during the current October 2024 Term. For the current Term, WLF filed 13 briefs in support of certiorari petitions, meaning that our grant-supported rate was 46%. That’s over 10 times above the 2024 cert-grant rate of 4%. 

In one case, Laboratory Corporation of American Holdings v. Davis, WLF filed the only supporting brief. In two cases, Wisconsin Bell, Inc. v. U.S. ex rel. Heath and E.M.D. Sales, Inc. v. Carrera, WLF was one of only two supporting amici and in both we were the only public-interest group to file. In two other cases, both of which involved the standards for resource-draining private securities fraud class action lawsuits, WLF was one of three (Facebook v. Amalgamated Bank) and four (NVIDIA Corp. v. E. Ohman J:or Fonder AB) amici, respectively. The sixth successful instance of amicus support was in Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.