Remember when you were told that a Supreme Court with six Republican-appointed Justices would consistently favor conservative outcomes? Well, this week the Justices sided with California against Texas and 19 other mostly red states in declining to hear a challenge to progressive cultural imperialism.

In 2017 a California law went into effect instructing the Attorney General to blacklist states with less progressive policies on gay rights, transgender policy or religious liberty. Texas was identified because it does not compel religious child-welfare organizations to place children with same-sex parents if that violates their conscience.

The California law bars the use of public funds for travel to any of the 12 states on the list. Texas explained in its petition last year that at least two academic conferences in Houston were disrupted as students and scholars from California’s public universities couldn’t get funding. Politicians have had to use campaign funds rather than state dollars to travel to cities like Nashville in boycotted Tennessee.

Texas said such travel restrictions violate the Commerce Clause, which limits the ability of states to discriminate economically against their peers. It asked the Justices to invoke their original jurisdiction to block California’s economic coercion.

The Justices on Monday turned Texas down, but Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that the Court should  settle more such disputes.

“Breakfast Club” radio host DJ Envy is facing down a backlash after comments he made in support of the police officer who shot and killed Ma’Khia Bryant last week.

By a 6-3 vote, the court sided with Agusto Niz-Chavez, a Guatemalan immigrant who has been in the United States since 2005.

WASHINGTON — An unusual coalition of Supreme Court justices joined Thursday to rule in favor of an immigrant fighting deportation in a case that the court said turned on the meaning of the shortest word, “a.”

By a 6-3 vote, the court sided with Agusto Niz-Chavez, a Guatemalan immigrant who has been in the United States since 2005. Eight years later, he received a notice to appear at a deportation hearing but this notice did not include a date or time. Two months after that, a second notice instructed him when and where to show up.

By sending notice of a deportation hearing, the government can stop the clock on immigrants hoping to show they have been in the United States for at least 10 straight years. The 10-year mark makes it easier under federal law to ask to be allowed to remain in the country.

The court was deciding whether immigration officials had to include all the relevant information in a single notice.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his majority opinion that they do, criticizing the government’s “notice by installment.”

Two other conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, signed on, as did the court’s three liberal members, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The case was argued in November during the Trump administration.

“Anyone who has applied for a passport, filed for Social Security benefits, or sought a license understands the government’s affinity for forms. Make a mistake or skip a page? Go back and try again, sometimes with a penalty for the trouble. But it turns out the federal government finds some of its forms frustrating too,” Gorsuch wrote.

A 1996 immigration law specifies “a notice to appear” for people the government wants to deport, Gorsuch said.

“At first blush, a notice to appear might seem to be just that — a single document containing all the information an individual needs to know about his removal hearing. But, the government says, supplying so much information in a single form is too taxing. It needs more flexibility, allowing its officials to provide information in separate mailings (as many as they wish) over time (as long as they find convenient),” he wrote.