A first-in-the-nation move to set up a religious school as a public school paid for with taxpayer funds failed in the Supreme Court Thursday on a 4-to-4 vote.  The tie resulted from Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s personal but unexplained choice to take no part in the case. The case grew out of a bold attempt… Read More

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon continued to spell out new legal protection for potentially thousands of migrants against being swiftly deported by the Trump Administration with no legal safeguards.  It did so without waiting for lower courts to decide those rights first. In a 7-to-2 decision, the Court ruled that some 176 Venezuelans that… Read More

The Supreme Court may opt to take action quickly, after exploring the constitutional right of citizenship at birth at a historic hearing Thursday.  The Justices were keenly interested and seemed eager to act swiftly during a public session lasting more than twice as long as scheduled. Although various ideas and approaches were floated by the… Read More

When a baby is born, anywhere in the United States, the nation almost always gains a new citizen.  That status makes a child a permanent member of American society.  Tomorrow morning, that guarantee under the U.S. Constitution will be at the center of a special hearing at the Supreme Court. Normally, by this time in… Read More

In a historic first, a federal judge on Thursday barred President Trump and his Administration from using an 18th Century law to deport a group of Venezuelan men now being held in a government detention center in a small town in Texas. The 36-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr.., of Brownsville, Texas,… Read More

Behind the scenes at the Supreme Court, the Justices and their law clerks are pondering how to deal with the constitutional controversy over the citizenship of children born in the U.S. to foreign parents – a historic dispute that is now set for a special hearing three weeks from now. At the center of that… Read More

The government official that President Trump seems most eager to fire – the Federal Reserve Board’s chairman – might be the one that the Supreme Court will keep on the job. Trump and Fed chair Jerome Powell have feuded for years – lately as well as in Trump’s first term in the White House –… Read More

A constitutional controversy that has agitated the nation from time to time for well over a century will be examined anew by the Supreme Court in a review that, in the end, might sweep broadly or it might leave much still undecided. In an order Thursday afternoon, the Court set a special hearing for next… Read More

President Trump, in an overnight post on his Truth Social online site, appears to be ready to defy the Supreme Court on a highly significant constitutional controversy, but maybe in a way that the Court will allow. Trump’s Administration is under an order from the Supreme Court, issued last Thursday, to “facilitate” the release of… Read More

In a rare act of unanimity, the Supreme Court on Thursday night ruled that government officials must take some unspecified steps to try to bring back to the U.S. a Maryland man sent illegally to a brutal prison in his home country, El Salvador. The order, quite unusual for an often-split Court, set no deadlines… Read More