Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., on Friday evening ordered at least a temporary halt in a children’s lawsuit seeking to hold the federal government legally to blame for climate change in the form of global warming, severe storms and worsening wildfires.  The proceedings in a federal trial court are thus on hold at least for the… Read More

The Trump Administration, out of patience with lower courts’ handling of a sweeping, three-year-old lawsuit demanding that the government act to create a safer environment, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday morning to end that case altogether and, in the meantime, to halt any move toward a trial at the end of this month. In… Read More

Lawyers for the Trump Administration, applying pressure for prompt resolution in court of the future of the “DACA” program for young undocumented immigrants, vowed on Wednesday to go directly to the Supreme Court unless a federal appeals court issues a decision by the end of October. DACA is the six-year-old program of Deferred Action for… Read More

Lawyers for the Trump Administration plan to ask the Supreme Court on Wednesday to halt a trial set to begin in two weeks of a massive lawsuit against government environmental policy stretching back decades. The case, Juliana v. U.S., seeks to establish a constitutional right to “a climate system capable of sustaining human life.”  The… Read More

The North Carolina Republicans’ 10 to 3 dominance of the state’s delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives appears likely to continue with the existing election districts unchanged for the November 6 election.   In a brief order Tuesday, a federal three-judge trial court that had ruled those districts unconstitutional — as a partisan gerrymander —… Read More

Finding that Texas and other states waited too long to challenge a program to spare hundreds of thousands of young, undocumented immigrants from deportation, a Texas federal judge on Friday added a new layer of judicial protection for the policy that has been in effect for more than six years but has been under challenge… Read More

Efforts by the Democratic Party to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the November election appear to have been set back on Friday by new developments in a high-profile partisan gerrymandering case in North Carolina.  The chances diminished that new district election maps, very likely to favor Democratic candidates, would be put… Read More

With no noted dissent, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down — for now — the Trump Administration’s request to delay or block a group of teenagers’ sweeping lawsuit that seeks to force the federal government to protect the climate they will live in as they grow up.  At the same time, however, the Court… Read More

Tuesday, by his choice, is the last day of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s 30-year career on the Supreme Court.  If retirement means having time to relish the successes of a working life, Kennedy will have much to remember. The Justice leaves the bench after years of holding the single most influential vote, at least when… Read More

Just days before retiring, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is facing a question that has been quite familiar in his 30-year career on the Supreme Court: is it time to recognize a new and fundamental constitutional right?  That is the ultimate issue as he ponders an Oregon case that is all about America’s environmental future. The… Read More