"Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends."

 A statement from Sotomayor and Gorsuch, tweeted by the NYT reporter Adam Liptak.

Also tweeted by Liptak, a statement from Chief Justice Roberts: “I did not request Justice Gorsuch or any other Justice to wear a mask on the bench.”

Here's Liptak's article at the NYT, giving the background: 

The justices’ statements seemed to be primarily directed at a report by Nina Totenberg of NPR on Tuesday attributed to “court sources.” In it, Ms. Totenberg said that Justice Sotomayor “did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked.” “Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up,” the report said.

I blogged Totenberg's article (yesterday, here), but not the part about the masks, even though Gorsuch's mask is forefronted. The headline is "Gorsuch didn't mask despite Sotomayor's COVID worries, leading her to telework." There's no correction there, and Liptak says NPR said it stands behind Totenberg's reporting. Liptak doesn't — and can't — say Totenberg (or her sources) were wrong. Roberts, Sotomayor, and Gorsuch could all be lying or stretching the truth. 

And what counts as asking Gorsuch to wear a mask? Maybe Roberts/Sotomayor said something more general and respectful, such as expressing the opinion that it's a good idea to wear masks to protect others and that they'll be wearing a mask or just saying that they'll be wearing a mask because they believe it's best. That's not directly asking, but could be construed by the sources as a way of obliquely asking. 

Anyway, I love the statement "we are warm colleagues and friends." I hope they are, and at least they show that they know they should be, that the legal disputes are not personal. It's not just a matter of displaying civility. It's foundational to their legitimacy.

UPDATE: "NPR reporting on Supreme Court mask controversy merits clarification/An inaccurate verb choice made the reporting unclear" (NPR).

Totenberg and her editors should have chosen a word other than "asked." And she could have been clear about how she knew there was subtle pressure to wear masks (the nature or even exact number of her anonymous sources) and what she didn't know (exactly how Roberts was communicating)....

The way NPR's story was originally worded, news consumers must choose between believing the chief justice or believing Totenberg. A clarification improving on the verb choice that describes the inner workings of the court would solve that dilemma.

"A comprehensive new study from two law students at Yale shows that routinely granting argument time to the solicitor general is a recent and curious phenomenon."

"The study asks the provocative question of whether giving the solicitor general this preferred position makes any sense. 'What we’re asking for is really for the court just to apply the same standard to all amici, whether they’re from the solicitor general’s office or not,' said Darcy Covert, who conducted the study with A.J. Wang. 'In cases where the connection to the federal government is particularly tenuous and the motivation for the solicitor general entering the case may be ideological, in those cases he certainly shouldn’t be getting oral arguments.'... Starting in 1988, though, the office’s success rate started to rise, reaching almost 100 percent. From the beginning of the term that started in 2010 through the end of the one that began in 2017, the court granted just eight of 26 motions for argument time from amici other than the solicitor general, the study found. During that same time, the court granted 252 of 253 such motions from the solicitor general."

From "The Supreme Court Has a Special ‘Friend’: The Justice Department/A new study questions the court’s practice of automatically granting argument time to the solicitor general as a 'friend of the court'" by Adam Liptak (NYT).

ADDED: The occasion for paying attention to this topic seems to be the Solicitor General's argument in an abortion case last week. The NYT article begins with a statement about that case — there were 70 amici who submitted briefs in that case but only the Solicitor General got to make an oral argument to the Justices (who may delegate reading these non-party briefs to their law clerks). Later, the article notes that the federal interest in this case about the constitutionality of a state law is "not obvious." The SG only offered to provide "the federal perspective":

The motion noted that the solicitor general’s office had taken part in arguments at the last big abortion case, during the Obama administration in 2016, but it neglected to say that it had supported abortion rights in that case. In last week’s argument, Jeffrey B. Wall, a deputy solicitor general, argued in favor of a state law restricting abortions. If he was offering “the federal perspective,” that perspective had shifted with a change in administrations.

And, I suspect, the NYT perspective on routinely granting the SG oral argument time has also shifted.

It seems to me that it's much better to routinely grant the SG's request than to base the decision on which side the SG supports.