Did the U.S. Supreme Court issue a 7-2 ruling that abolishes income tax under case number 24-1791? No, that's not true: A docket search on the website of the Supreme Court of the United States found no case under that number. All Supreme Court rulings, also known as opinions, are public records. While portions of a case record may be sealed, Supreme Court rulings themselves are not.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published by the @MedBedsTechnologyNews account on Telegram on May 7, 2026. It read:
🔻 THE SUPREME COURT JUST SEALED A RULING THAT ABOLISHES INCOME TAX. THE MONEY THEY TOOK FROM YOU FOR 113 YEARS WAS USED TO SUPPRESS EVERY CURE THAT COULD HAVE SAVED YOUR FAMILY.
Not reformed. Not reduced. Abolished. Case number 24-1791. Filed under seal. Decided 7-2. No dissent published. No media briefing. No public docket entry.
The only reason anyone knows it exists is because a clerk -- 26 years old, 3 months on the job -- accidentally uploaded the ruling to the public PACER system for 9 minutes before it was pulled.
9 minutes. 14,000 downloads before the file vanished. The clerk was placed on administrative leave. The file was scrubbed from every server. But 14,000 people have it. And the blockchain does not forget.
Another post (archived here) on X by the @PaulGoldEagle account on May 13, 2026, echoed the wording of the @MedBedsTechnologyNews account. It also included an image displaying the opening paragraph:
(Image source: post by @PaulGoldEagle on X.)
The Supreme Court's docket is a list of cases the Court is currently reviewing or has already decided. It includes cases that have been filed with the Court. The docket covers the status of all cases filed since the start of the 2001 term. When Lead Stories searched the docket (archived here) for case number 24-1791, the website returned these results:
No items found for:24-1791
This means the Court has no record of the case. A case number starting with 24 would have been filed in the Supreme Court's 2024 term, which started Oct. 7, 2024, and ran through Oct. 5, 2025.
Under the "Opinions written by the Supreme Court?" section (archived here) of the FAQ (frequently asked questions) page of the Supreme Court, it states its opinions are available to the public when they're announced:
The Court's opinions are published in the United States Reports and are available in libraries nationwide. The Opinions of the Court and U.S. Reports pages on the Court's website cover October Term 1991-present. The Library of Congress maintains an online digital collection through October Term 2012.
The "Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States" (archived here) also states this about its rulings:
Opinions of the Court will be released by the Clerk immediately upon their announcement from the bench, or as the Court otherwise directs.
Some materials filed in a case may be sealed -- for example, those involving national security, juveniles, or sensitive privacy matters -- but the opinions themselves are not sealed.
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo! News (archived here) and did not find any matching reports for these words: "Supreme Court, sealed ruling, and income tax." Major news outlets would have widely reported such a ruling by the Supreme Court had one been made.
While the social media posts claimed there were 14,000 downloads of the alleged Supreme Court ruling "before the file vanished" online, they provided no evidence to support the claim, including links to the documents, downloadable PDFs, or a website displaying the pages of the opinion.
