Nina Totenberg

The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't been this divided in decades. Disagreements over masking, social issues and the Constitution itself are playing out among the justices themselves.

Anybody who regularly watches Supreme Court arguments is used to seeing testy moments. But you don't have to be a keen observer these days to see that something out of the ordinary is happening.

But the court upheld a separate mandate for almost all employees at hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers that receive federal funds.

Justices seemed more open to the vaccine mandate for almost all workers at hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical providers receiving federal Medicare and Medicaid funds.

The two cases are in a preliminary posture, but how the court rules will very likely signal how these issues are ultimately resolved.

This case from New York was the second time the court has refused to block such a state vaccine mandate for health care workers.

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed abortion providers to challenge Texas' restrictive abortion law. NPR's Noel King speaks with Florida State law professor Mary Ziegler about the implications.

The justices allowed the abortion providers' challenges to go ahead against Texas' licensing officials – but not against anyone else. The court also blocked the Justice Department's challenge.

The handwriting on the wall came during a nearly two-hour argument involving a challenge brought by two Maine families to the state's unusual way of providing public education.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could expand state aid to religious schools. On one side is the school choice movement, and on the other is Maine, defending its public education.

At issue in the case is whether the state, which pays for some students to attend nonsectarian private schools, should also pay tuition for students to attend religious schools.

The panel, which will vote on the report Tuesday, steers clear of taking a position on many of the most controversial suggestions for changing the court.

Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in the United States is now very much in doubt after Wednesday's historic arguments before the Supreme Court.

The fate of abortion in the U.S. appears to be on shaky ground as a divided Supreme Court weighs a Mississippi law. A decision in the case is expected by summer.

At issue is whether to reverse the court's nearly half-century-old decision, Roe v. Wade, and subsequent decisions declaring that women have a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Abortion did not become illegal in most states until the mid to late 1800s. But by the 1960s, abortion, like childbirth, had become a safe procedure when performed by a doctor.

The subject has, at times, divided the court's conservative majority and it has also at times embarrassed the court, as minority religious advisers have sometimes been excluded from the chamber.

The argument will focus on whether this case can move forward at all because the government argues that for it to produce any of the evidence gathered 15 years ago would jeopardize national security.

It's the first major gun case at the court since 2008, when the court ruled that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms grants individuals the right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.

The time long awaited by gun-rights advocates has come, as the conservative court examines how far a state may go in regulating an individual's right to carry a gun outside the home.