Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says Democrats “are still focused on getting at least one more judge confirmed to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals — and hinted at more changes to Senate rules unless Republicans stop filibustering ‘literally everything,'” Roll Call reports.

Said Reid: “People don’t focus much on the D.C. Circuit. It is, some say, more important than even the Supreme Court.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia opened a speech with a reference to the Holocaust, which he said happened to occur in a society that was, at the time, “the most advanced country in the world,” the Aspen Times reports.

“One of the many mistakes that Germany made in the 1930s was that judges began to interpret the law in ways that reflected ‘the spirit of the age.; When judges accept this sort of moral authority, as Scalia claims they’re doing now in the U.S., they get themselves and society into trouble.”

Iowa Supreme Court justices found that a male dentist did not discriminate against a female employee “when he fired her out of fear that her good looks might prompt him into an extramarital affair,” the Des Moines Register reports.

Associated Press: “Coming to the same conclusion as it did in December, the all-male court found that bosses can fire employees they see as threats to their marriages, even if the subordinates have not engaged in flirtatious or other inappropriate behavior. The court said such firings do not count as illegal sex discrimination because they are motivated by feelings, not gender.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) attacked President Obama “for seeking to fill three judicial vacancies on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that those seats need not be filled before the court can function without them,” TPM reports.

Lee said he sees “no pressing need to fill those vacancies” and that Obama “appears to have targeted the D.C. Circuit in the hope that he can stack the deck to his advantage.”

In a Reuters interview, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “vowed to resist any pressure to retire that might come from liberals” who want to ensure that President Obama can pick her successor before the 2016 presidential election.

Brushing off political calculations, she said, “It really has to be, ‘Am I equipped to do the job?’ … I was so pleased that this year I couldn’t see that I was slipping in any respect.”

A new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds that just 33% of Americans approve of the Supreme Court’s ruling dismantling a key element of the Voting Rights Act, while 51% disapprove. Among blacks, disapproval of the ruling soars to 71%.

Wonk Wire has the key takeaways from the Supreme Court’s just-completed term.

The U.S. Supreme Court said in a broad ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. The vote was 5 to 4 with Justice Anthony Kennedy reading the majority opinion.

In a related case, the court did not make a ruling on California’s Proposition 8 meaning that same-sex marriage is once again legal in the nation’s most populous state. The ruling has no effect on other states, however.

Wonk Wire has a round up of analysis and opinion.

Rick Hasen explains how Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a conservative Supreme Court majority in Shelby County v. Holder, crippled Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

“In the Shelby decision, we see a somewhat more open version of a pattern that is characteristic of the Roberts court, in which the conservative justices tee up major constitutional issues for dramatic reversal. First the court wrecked campaign finance law in Citizens United. On Tuesday it took away a crown jewel of the civil rights movement. And as we saw in Monday’s Fisher case, affirmative action is next in line, even if the court wants to wait another year or two to pull the trigger. Imagine striking down affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act in the same week!”

“In fairness, I doubt that will ever happen. I just cannot imagine — I’m just being honest — Congress ever
coming to terms with what they could agree on.”

— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by the Huffington Post, about the likelihood of lawmakers coming together to restore the Voting Rights Act after today’s Supreme Court decision.

Dana Millbank: “The most remarkable thing about the Supreme Court’s opinions announced Monday was not what the justices wrote or said. It was what Samuel Alito did.”

“The associate justice, a George W. Bush appointee, read two opinions, both 5-4 decisions that split the court along its usual right-left divide. But Alito didn’t stop there. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, Alito visibly mocked his colleague.”

“Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, was making her argument about how the majority opinion made it easier for sexual harassment to occur in the workplace when Alito, seated immediately to Ginsburg’s left, shook his head from side to side in disagreement, rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling.”

The Supreme Court “has sent a Texas case on race-based college admissions back to a lower court for another look,” the AP reports.

“The court’s 7-1 decision Monday leaves unsettled many of the basic questions about the continued use of race as a factor in college admissions. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, says a federal appeals court needs to subject the University of Texas admission plan to the highest level of judicial scrutiny.”

Wonk Wire will round up reaction.

Decisions on marriage equality cases and the Voting Rights Act were not announced but could come tomorrow.

Lloyd Green: “With Monday the last day left on its calendar, the Supreme Court is expected to signal this coming week where it stands in the scrum over tradition versus modernity, civil rights, and the ’60s, as it is poised to rule on the constitutionality of the University of Texas’s affirmative action program, the Defense of Marriage Act, gay marriage in California, and the pre-clearance requirements of the Voting Rights Act. The status quo may take a big hit.”

SCOTUSblog: “At least one additional decision day is inevitable next week, and the
Court may issue additional orders as well.”

Rick Hasen: “This term too could end with surprises. One possibility is that a court majority will decide that it never should have taken California’s Proposition 8 same sex-marriage case to begin with (because those supporting the law did not have legal standing to defend it), and the case could be dismissed over the strenuous objections of other justices.”

“We just don’t know yet. There are 11 cases remaining for the court to decide, and it is likely that all 11 will be decided by the end of next week. But there are no guarantees. The court has gone into July to issue opinions when necessary.”

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled “that human genes extracted from the body can’t be patented, a victory for doctors and patients who argued that such patents interfere with scientific research and the practice of medicine,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The court was handing down one of its most significant rulings in the age of molecular medicine, deciding who may own the fundamental building blocks of life.”

Each Monday for the rest of the month, the Supreme Court will hand down rulings from this term on affirmative action, same-sex marriage, civil rights, and genetic patents. The Daily Beast looks at what’s at stake.

President Obama on will nominate a slate of judges today to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, “an aggressive move that is likely to spark swift resistance from Senate Republicans who say the court is underworked and does not need additional judges,” Roll Call reports.

The move “sends a strong message that he intends to push for the nominees in a way that he has not lobbied for his other lower-court choices. Obama has never appeared alongside a judicial nominee other than for the Supreme Court, according to advocates.”

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor “made a plea for preserving the impartiality and independence of the American judicial system,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

In particular, she said she opposes the election of judges.

Said O’Connor: “I think there are many who think of judges as politicians in robes. In many states, that’s what they are… They seem to think judges should be a reflex of the popular will.”