Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Continuing to allow President Trump to take sweeping steps to shutter federal government functions, the Supreme Court on Monday permitted the firing of half of the staff of the U.S. Department of Education and other moves toward its total shutdown – without permission from Congress. Though the Court acted only temporarily, the completely unexplained order… Read More

Making a new test of courts’ power to block President Trump’s actions, a federal trial judge in New Hampshire on Thursday issued a sweeping order to protect the constitutional right of newborn babies to U.S. citizenship. U.S. District Judge Joseph N. LaPlante of Concord issued the order while reaching a new decision that Trump’s attempted… Read More

One of the Constitution’s most direct commands to the President is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”  And that simply means, two law professors once wrote, that a President’s “defiance [of a law] cannot be considered faithful execution.” But a law that Congress passed last year by large majorities, that has been… Read More

The Supreme Court today gave itself a historic and difficult assignment: to decide whether the Constitution’s guarantee of equality provides any protection for transgender people.  It ordered review of that issue in the emotionally-charged controversy over banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports. Separately, the Court agreed to decide whether a 1972 civil rights… Read More

On Monday, July 28, the maternity wards in hospitals across the country may face a dilemma: if a woman who is not a citizen has a baby there that day or later, will the hospital consider the child to be a citizen, or not?  How will the staff fill out the birth certificate? The 30-day… Read More

Enhancing in a major way the federal government’s power to enforce controversial new policies even though a lower court has declared them illegal, the Supreme Court on Friday erased almost all of the power of lower courts to issue nationwide orders. The 6-to-3 decision was a huge legal victory for the Trump Administration – and,… Read More

In another loss for American women from the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to turn their reproductive health care rights over to state control, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that they have no right under federal law to choose their own doctor. By a now-familiar 6-to-3 vote in major cases, the Court ruled that federal… Read More

America’s latest civil rights movement – seeking legal protection for transgender people – suffered a historic and sweeping defeat in the Supreme Court Wednesday, leaving hundreds of thousands of individuals newly exposed to discrimination.  The six-Justice majority allowed such individuals only the most minimal legal means to fight for rights. Transgender people, the Court declared… Read More

Maryland’s ban of the gun most often used in mass shootings across the nation withstood a new constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court on Monday.  However, there may be another test when the Justices meet in their next term. The legislature in Annapolis outlawed any form of “assault weapon” or semi-automatic rifle, such as the… Read More

A special federal court on Wednesday blocked the Trump Administration from enforcing any of the sweeping, globe-wide tariffs that the President imposed on imported goods – price controls that have upset the entire U.S. economy and sent U.S. and foreign financial markets into wild up-and-down swings. Because President Trump has such a strong personal devotion… Read More