Forgoing, for now, a request to the Supreme Court to bar transgender individuals from enlisting in the military, the Trump Administration announced on Friday night that it would open the ranks to them beginning on Monday. In the meantime, the Justice Department said, it will continue in federal trial courts to “defend the President’s and… Read More

Refusing to let the Trump Administration rely on its temporary Supreme Court victory over one judge’s demand to see internal records about why the government ended the “DACA” program for immigrant youths, a federal appeals court in New York cleared the way on Wednesday for a different judge to insist on disclosure of some of… Read More

President Trump’s power was at its weakest point, constitutionally, when he imposed the latest version of a ban on immigration from Muslim-majority nations, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.  The Supreme Court, where the controversy is headed again, has never reached a final decision on the issue – but it has allowed his latest… Read More

Moving  the issue of transgender individuals’ right to join the military closer to the Supreme Court, two federal appeals courts this week rejected the Trump Administration’s effort to delay enlistments beyond January 1. Because there are only nine days remaining before lower court rulings require the military to begin accepting recruits who are transgender, the… Read More

A federal judge, the first in history to rule on the meaning of the Constitution’s ban on gifts and other compensation for the President (other than salary), used that interpretation on Thursday to dismiss a lawsuit against President Trump and his businesses. While the judge ruled that the case could not proceed because the challengers could… Read More

The Supreme Court plans to take up at its first private conference in the new year the intense, ongoing fight over an unsettled constitutional question – do undocumented immigrant teenagers who are pregnant have a right to an abortion? That question remains open even though three of those young women have had abortions or are… Read More

In a rare and perhaps unprecedented ruling, the Supreme Court on Wednesday took control of a federal trial court’s management of the flow of documents in the pre-trial stage of a pending case.  It did so in a high-profile case challenging the legality of the Trump Administration’s decision to end the program that has protected… Read More

The Trump Administration on Tuesday night voluntarily withdrew its plea to a federal appeals court to prevent a young immigrant woman from being released from detention to have an abortion. It did so after the government released her from custody, thus apparently giving her freedom to go ahead with an abortion if she still wishes… Read More

The Trump Administration, in simultaneous filings on Monday, asked both the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court to block an undocumented immigrant teenager, now being held in a federal detention center, from having an abortion. The plea to the Supreme Court was both a request for immediate postponement of such an abortion, and a… Read More

Finding that the Trump Administration had no legal authority to create sweeping exemptions to the birth-control mandate under the Affordable Care Act, and ruling that the new rules potentially could cause “enormous and irreversible harm” to women across the nation, a federal trial judge on Friday temporarily barred the enforcement of the rules anywhere in… Read More