A group of Hawaiians seeking to create a new tribal nation inside the state moved on Monday to head off a contempt order in the Supreme Court. They have done nothing to violate a Supreme Court order a month ago that blocked an election to select delegates to a convention to write a constitution, the group… Read More
Dec 14 2015
Smartphone design feud reaches the Court
After years of battling in lower courts between the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 makers of smartphones, that billion-dollar-plus feud over patent rights reached the Supreme Court on Monday — maybe only the first of several potential appeals. This thoroughly modern case is actually an attempt to get the Court to take up an… Read More
Dec 1 2015
States get a bit more time for immigration reply
This post also appears on scotusblog.com The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted twenty-six states an extra eight days to file their response to the Obama administration’s appeal in defense of its broad new immigration policy. That extension — considerably less than the added thirty days the states had sought — makes it more likely that… Read More
Nov 23 2015
States seek delay of immigration case
This post also appears on scotusblog.com. Lawyers for the twenty-six states that challenged President Barack Obama’s broad policy to delay the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants asked the Supreme Court on Monday to give them more time to answer the government’s appeal. Delay has the potential to slow down a case that U.S. officials very much want decided… Read More
Nov 20 2015
Finally, a constitutional ruling on NSA phone taps
After more than nine years of the National Security Agency’s massive telephone tapping program, and a series of court challenges to it, the program finally got a federal appeals court judge’s constitutional blessing on Friday. U.S. Circuit Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh pronounced the data sweeps program to be “entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.”
Aug 14 2015
Immigration policy withstands new appeal
President Obama’s sweeping change in immigration policy, designed to allow more than four million non-citizens who entered the U.S. illegally to remain in the country, on Friday withstood a new challenge before a federal appeals court — but only for a technical reason. Two opinions issued in the new case, however, contained starkly differing reactions to… Read More
Aug 7 2015
Individual insurance mandate survives again
A new challenge to the federal mandate that most Americans must obtain health insurance or pay a penalty stirred up a major constitutional debate in a federal appeals court on Friday. However, in the end, all eleven judges — relying on sharply conflicting views — rejected the challenge.
Aug 6 2015
Texas voter ID law ruled invalid — in part
Acting one day before the fiftieth anniversary of the nation’s most important voting rights law, a federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Texas will be barred from enforcing at least part of its four-year-old law that requires a photo ID before a voter can go to the polls. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals… Read More
Jul 7 2015
Ban on contractors’ political donations upheld
Finding that the problem of corruption in government contracting is still a major civic scandal, a unanimous federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected a new constitutional challenge to the seventy-five-year-old ban on political contributions by individuals who are hired under contract to do work for federal agencies — an increasing way that federal agency tasks… Read More
Jun 23 2015
Pressing the ACA birth-control issue
This post also appears on scotusblog.com The federal government’s top Supreme Court advocate moved again on Tuesday to make sure that the Justices are keeping up with the government’s success in heading off a round of new challenges to the birth-control mandate in the Affordable Care Act. In the second letter of its kind, Solicitor General… Read More
