Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

If Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh takes a seat on the Supreme Court sometime in coming months, with Senate approval accomplished, the challenge of casting a solid fifth conservative vote will be tested across a wide array of deeply divisive questions – ranging from abortion to gay rights to healthcare to immigration to President Trump’s personal… Read More

A federal judge in Texas has given the Trump Administration a chance to apply its victory last week in the Supreme Court against foreigners’ entry into the U.S. as a new reason to end the DACA program. DACA stands for Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals. The Administration has been trying since last September to abolish… Read More

Ending an era, and almost certainly guaranteeing strong conservative control of the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, 81, retired on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the tribunal had finished a momentous term.  His retirement takes effect at the end of the month, giving President Truman and the Republican-controlled Senate more than enough time to find… Read More

The political and human rights controversy over the Trump Administration policy of family separation as a form of immigration control is also now moving into a quieter venue – into court, as a constitutional fight.  Two new lawsuits have just been filed, seeking court orders to promptly reunite thousands of children with their parents. The… Read More

In a sweeping endorsement of presidential power over who may enter the United States and a huge political victory for President Trump, a deeply divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld his order barring most foreign travelers from five Mideast nations with mostly Muslim populations. “The admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a fundamental sovereign… Read More

Choosing – for now – to go to the sidelines on two highly controversial constitutional issues, the Supreme Court on Monday turned aside cases that could have given lower courts some new guidance on the rights of married gay couples and on the validity of partisan gerrymandering. In brief orders, the Court sent the cases… Read More

The Trump Administration, frustrated that lower courts have blocked it from ending a six-year-old program protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation and that the Supreme Court has so far not come to its aid, has now laid out a new plan that could put the issue back before the Justices in a matter of weeks. … Read More

For the first time, the Trump Administration moved on Thursday to challenge the constitutionality of the key section of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) that required most Americans to buy health insurance or pay a financial penalty as part of their taxes.  The so-called individual insurance mandate is beyond Congress’s power, the new filing argued,… Read More

Three years after finding a constitutional right for gay and lesbian couples to get married, the Supreme Court chose on Monday to take a cautious path in spelling out how much protection their marital choice will get from government.  In a 7-2 ruling in a high-profile wedding cake case from Colorado, the Justices chose to… Read More

Overtaken by changing developments in lower courts, the Supreme Court acted narrowly on Monday o end one of the challenges to the Trump Administration policy of refusing to allow abortions for undocumented teenagers being held in official detention centers after entering the country illegally.  In a five-page, unsigned opinion, the Court said the initial test… Read More