Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

A new lawsuit in defense of women’s right to an abortion landed in a state trial court in Des Moines, Iowa, this week, and everyone involved already has a good idea of how it will come out in Iowa’s courts. But that’s not the point. What counts more is what happens to the case if… Read More

Continuing its pattern of refusing to clarify the gun rights that are protected by the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court has turned aside a claim that gun merchants have their own constitutional right to sell firearms.  An appeal in a California case was the first to ask the Justices to expand the Amendment to protect… Read More

In a broad reaffirmation of the constitutional idea that Congress cannot order state governments to carry out federal policies, the Supreme Court on Monday went further than it has done in the past to shore up states’ sovereign powers. It did so as it struck down all parts of a 1992 federal law passed to… Read More

From the day 15 months ago when the first challenger sued President Trump over his plan to restrict entry to the U.S. of foreign nationals from Muslim-majority nations, a central question always has been: how will the judges react to the President’s many statements or tweets about why he wanted to do that?  That remains… Read More

Returning to the same south Texas courthouse where a Texas-led coalition won a sweeping victory against a key immigration policy of the Obama Administration more than three years ago, Texas and some of its former allies moved on Tuesday to scuttle the last remaining part of that policy – the so-called “DACA” program. The new… Read More

In a period of about 20 weeks, a total of 430 travelers have been allowed to enter the U.S. from the Muslim nations on the terrorist risk list that the Trump Administration created under his strict immigration policy.  And one nation was recently dropped off of that list.  The Supreme Court explored on Wednesday whether… Read More

Sometimes, the Supreme Court’s ultimate power to define what the Constitution means seems just too daunting for the Justices.  That was the sentiment that swept across the bench Tuesday, as the Court confronted – after years of refusing to do so – the question of whether to allow states broad new freedom to tax shopping… Read More

For the first time in any court, a federal judge in Seattle has ruled that transgender people are entitled to the fullest protection of the Constitution against discrimination.  U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman issued that ruling Friday in a case involving President Trump’s move to bar almost all transgender individuals from serving in the… Read More

The Supreme Court and a federal appeals court are now moving simultaneously to sort out a major constitutional controversy over a right to abortion for undocumented teenaged girls being held in federal immigration centers and who are now or will become pregnant. After more than five months of giving some thought – off and on… Read More

For more than three decades, some members of the Supreme Court have thought the courts should do something to rein in the centuries-old practice of partisan gerrymandering – that is, drawing election districts to give one party’s candidates a clear advantage.  But none of the Justices have thought they knew what to do about it…. Read More