**Case 23-489: The Phantom Footnote**

Case #23-489: The Phantom Footnote

In a bizarre development that has constitutional scholars rubbing their eyes, a footnote in yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United II appears to have spontaneously deleted itself—only to be found in the dissenting opinion.

Justice Thomas, reading from the bench, paused mid-sentence. “Mr. Chief Justice, I believe the matrix has a bug. My footnote 17 now reads: ‘See Appendix A—which does not exist.’”

Moments later, the official PDF timestamp on the Court’s website changed—before the opinion had been posted. An internal server log shows the file was “modified 1 minute into the future.”

The glitch? The footnote contained a cryptic hyperlink to a PDF titled “TheOriginalConstitution_FINAL(noerrataneeded).pdf.” When clicked, it downloads an empty file with a metadata creation date of July 4, 1776.

The Court has issued a statement: “We are investigating a possible anomaly in our document management system. In the meantime, the majority opinion stands—though, technically, so does a footnote that isn’t there.”

One Justice, speaking off the record, simply said: “This is either the most elaborate prank in judicial history, or we’re all living in a draft.”

The case has been informally dubbed “Error 404: Original Intent.”