Robustly applying its newly created constitutional tool for nullifying sweeping new federal programs, a divided Supreme Court on Friday ordered an end to President Biden’s plan to cancel more than $430 billion of college student loan debt. In doing so, the Court applied that mechanism for the first time to stop a program designed to… Read More

Striding boldly into the midst of America’s fierce modern debate over racial equality, a divided Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the use of race as a factor in deciding government benefits and privately-run programs that use federal funds. The 6-to-3 decision, applying explicitly to policies for deciding which students get admitted to colleges and… Read More

In a historic ruling with major impact on future elections to the U.S. House of Representatives and to the Presidency, the Supreme Court on Tuesday firmly rejected a sweeping and deeply controversial theory that would have given state legislatures unchecked power to displace voters’ choices for those offices. The 6-to-3 decision may also bolster the… Read More

A labor union for U.S. government employees moved on Tuesday to renew its constitutional challenge to the law putting a ceiling on federal debt, even though the threat of a default on the debt has now been averted – until at least late next year. The union, the National Association of Government Employees, filed a… Read More

Breaking – at least temporarily – from years of narrowing the protection for voting rights of America’s racial minorities, the Supreme Court appeared Thursday to have opened a real chance that blacks in Alabama may get a second seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Justices saved a key part of the most… Read More

Accusing a Senate committee of attempting to “embarrass and harass” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a private lawyer told the panel Tuesday that it has no power to investigate the jurist and no power to impose an ethics code on the Court or the Justices. In a seven-page, highly detailed “confidential” letter that became public,… Read More

President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified a federal judge in Boston Monday that, at least for now, they will resist an attempt to get the courts to provide a temporary way out of the looming economic catastrophe if the nation hits the government’s debt limit. A federal employee labor union recently asked U.S…. Read More

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…”  Who wrote that?  A Google search tells us that it was Oscar Wilde.  But can we be sure?  Isn’t all creative expression – music, art, poetry, literature – borrowed or copied from someone else? That, strangely, is a fundamental cultural question that the Supreme Court tried to answer… Read More

If President Biden and the Republican House do not find a way in the next few weeks to avoid a global economic collapse over the national government’s debt, the courts might have a solution. In a new lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Boston, a group of private lawyers have put forth a… Read More

A series of new filings today in a historic Supreme Court case on voting rights put a hard question before the Justices: how eager are they to settle now, before the 2024 elections, a core constitutional issue about federal elections? Lawyers on all sides of the North Carolina congressional elections case, Moore v. Harper, on Thursday… Read More