As of August 4, 2025, the Supreme Court has resolved every single cert petition filed during the 2024–2025 Term—except one. Our case. Kory v. Bonta is the last remaining cert petition pending. Every other petition has been denied, granted, vacated and remanded, or reversed without full briefing. That includes every petition from the June 18 conference, when Kory was distributed, and every petition from all earlier and later conferences. They’ve all been disposed of—except Kory.

That doesn’t seem routine to me.

Let’s start with the numbers

The Court received 6,273 cert petitions this term. Of those, 2,488 were paid filings. The rest—3,785—were in forma pauperis petitions, the vast majority of which were summarily denied. Among the paid petitions, about 65 were granted full review, and another 50 or so received summary dispositions. The rest were denied.

Except Kory.

It’s now been seven weeks since the June 18 conference. The Court has issued multiple order lists since then—including three in just the last two weeks: July 24, July 30, and August 4. Kory hasn’t appeared on any of them. No denial. No grant. No relist. Nothing.

My view is that if the Court were going to deny cert, it certainly would have done so already, possibly with a dissent, if any Justice wanted to go on record. A grant would have appeared weeks ago as well. The continued silence strongly suggests that opinions are being written and circulated internally. What form they take remains to be seen, but this is no longer about whether the Court is paying attention to Kory. It most certainly is.

The case raises obvious constitutional questions. Kory challenges California’s authority to discipline physicians for what the state calls “COVID misinformation.” The Ninth Circuit upheld the regime in an unpublished memorandum, relying on reasoning that runs directly counter to NIFLA v. Becerra, which rejected the idea that professional speech receives diminished First Amendment protection. The panel’s decision also sits uneasily with United States v. Alvarez, which held that even false speech is protected unless it falls into a historically unprotected category like fraud or incitement.

We’re watching this one closely because we’re litigating the next case in line. In Stockton v. Ferguson, we’ve challenged Washington State’s even more outrageous policy of sanctioning physicians for their public speech. (Kory is about speech to patients), but the enforcement structure is the same. In both states, medical boards are using the language of misinformation to suppress dissenting views under the cover of professional discipline.

And the real-world consequences are not theoretical. One of our plaintiffs in Stockton is scheduled to go before the Washington Medical Commission in October. He faces disciplinary proceedings for public statements made during the pandemic. That’s not a maybe. That’s happening. We’re hoping that by then, the Court will have broken its silence—not just to resolve Kory, but to strongly state that physicians’ public speech is at least protected, if not more so. But maybe I’m asking for too much.

Kory is no longer just one of 6273 cert petitions. It stands alone unresolved.

And the longer it stays that way, the louder the silence becomes. And when it speaks, hopefully it will speak loud and clear.

Rick Jaffe, Esq.