By Emma Donahue, FTC law clerk

On April 20, I attended oral arguments in 25-197, T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System Corporation, which concerns a procedural question about the limitations surrounding when lower federal courts can review state court judgments (also known as the Rooker-Feldman doctrine).

Earlier this year, another FTC clerk had the opportunity to attend a SCOTUS argument via the ticket lottery system, and his corresponding article explains the lottery process in more detail. I similarly found the online system easy to navigate, and I received two tickets out of the 10 entries I made for late February through April arguments. Not bad odds!

T.M. was the second argument of the day and scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m., so I arrived at 10:15 a.m. This was my first time attending oral arguments and my second time at the Court. While the entire point of the lottery system is to bypass the public line, I unfortunately did not have this experience. 

Two separate officers directed me to a line adjacent to the Court on the north side of the building. Because the public line typically queues along East Capitol Street (the south side), myself and other attendees were not originally aware that we were mistakenly in the public line. 

However, after nearly 40 minutes of waiting in line (in the rain, no less), myself and some ticket-holding attendees abandoned our spots in line to investigate at the front entrance, which was gated off. After hearing that we had tickets, the officer there let us past the gates and directed us up the stairs to the Court’s side entrance, where another officer was waiting. This officer tried to redirect us back to the same public line, only to be corrected by a third officer who told him to let us inside. 

At 11:05 a.m., we finally went through the primary security screening where we presented our IDs and received wristbands. This guard was holding a list of lottery ticket holders and crossing our names off as we moved through. Then, we were given a brief spiel about security policies and warning against protesting, shown to the locker area to leave behind our bags and electronic devices (including my Oura ring), and directed up the stairs to a secondary security screening. 

At this point, I only had my pen, notepad, and locker key. The guard rifled through my notebook to make sure all of the pages were blank as I went through the metal detector. 

After making it past the second screening, we waited in the holding area outside of the courtroom for 10 more minutes before being ushered to our seats at 11:20 a.m. The courtroom was packed, and my group was seated in individual chairs set up behind the last row of pews. Due to the entry debacle, we missed the first few minutes of Elizabeth Prelogar’s argument for the petitioner. A highlight of her nearly 45-minute argument was when Justice Gorsuch asked her to “sing a couple bars” for him with her best shot at why the Court should overturn Rooker-Feldman. 

Lisa Blatt took to the podium for the respondent at noon, and she only spoke for 15 minutes. The courtroom — and several justices — erupted into laughter when towards the end of her argument, Blatt boldly told the Court “No, you’re not gonna overrule Rooker. I mean, sorry, I don’t think you’re gonna do that. Not in an April case” (p. 68 of the transcript).

If you’re attending the 11:00 a.m. argument, I suggest being more assertive than I was in communicating to ensure that you’re in the correct line as a lottery ticket holder. 

Ideally, the Court will improve the entry system with some clearer signage or direction regarding the lottery winner versus public line. If I had asked the right questions earlier, I would have likely saved myself from 40 minutes in the rain.