Two Supreme Courts in Eight Years

What “getting to the Supreme Court” really means, how rare it is to be heard, and why so many petitions disappear without a word.

READ US SUPREME COURT PETITION HERE

The Only American Sent to Federal Prison for Section 280E of the US Tax Code.

Eight years apart, I found myself standing at the doorstep of two different Supreme Courts — Michigan’s and the United States’ — and I learned the same lesson twice: the highest court isn’t where most people get justice. It’s where most people get silence.

My two stops at the “court of last resort”

Michigan Supreme Court — People of Michigan v. Ryan Richmond (filed June 9, 2017).
U.S. Supreme Court — Ryan Daniel Richmond v. United States (Emergency Application No. 24A1217, docketed June 10, 2025; linked to merits case 25-5412, docketed Aug. 20, 2025; from the Sixth Circuit, No. 24-1525).

Michigan Supreme Court: how often do they actually take a case?

In Michigan, the Supreme Court largely chooses what it wants to review. The Court itself explains the scale of that funnel: it receives “nearly two thousand applications each year” and “grants” only “about a hundred.”

Put in plain math, that’s roughly ~5% (about 100 out of ~2,000) getting through the door — and that’s before you ever get to the merits.

U.S. Supreme Court: the tightest gate in the country

Most people picture the U.S. Supreme Court as a courtroom where arguments happen. In reality, the main event is what you don’t see: a pile of petitions the Court refuses to hear.

A widely cited baseline is that the Court sees roughly 7,000–8,000 cert petitions each Term and grants review in only about ~80 for full briefing and oral argument — around ~1% give or take.
(It takes four Justices to grant — the “rule of four.”)

What the Court’s own statistics show (a recent example)

In October Term 2024, Harvard Law Review’s compilation of the Court’s official Journal data shows the Court disposed of 4,021 appeals or petitions for review — and 3,890 were resolved by denial, dismissal, or withdrawal. That’s about 96.7% ending without the Court taking the case.

In the same dataset, the Court shows 65 cases disposed of “on review” (after plenary review was granted) and 66 “summarily decided” (without full briefing/argument). Either way, those numbers are tiny compared to the denial pile.

And once a case actually reaches a merits decision on cert, the outcomes skew heavily toward some kind of reversal / vacatur: the tables list 132 cert cases decided on the merits, with 31 reversed, 86 vacated, and 15 affirmed.

Why the Supreme Courts say “no” without explaining

The part that shocks most people is the lack of explanation. A denial usually doesn’t mean the court agrees with the lower court. It often means the court doesn’t want to spend its limited time on that issue, that vehicle, that moment — even if the stakes are enormous to the person filing.

In other words: you can have a real constitutional question (like I did) and still be turned away because the Court is looking for the “right” case to carry the flag. If you aren’t the right vehicle, you don’t get a ride.

“Getting to the Supreme Court” sounds like the finish line. Statistically, it’s more like a lottery ticket: lots of applicants, very few winners, and almost no one gets told exactly why.Eight years apart, I learned that in two different systems — and I learned it the hard, expensive way.