A federal judge in Hawaii late Thursday afternoon ordered the Trump Administration to relax its new controls on immigrants, to allow the entry of more foreign relatives of U.S. residents and more refugees from around the world.  The judge refused to put his new ruling on hold, even if the Administration now moved to appeal… Read More

Lawyers for the state of Hawaii and other challengers to the way the Trump Administration is limiting immigration of foreign nationals and refugees leveled new charges of illegal government action in a filing with a federal judge Wednesday night. After Wednesday, the document said, the Administration will stop allowing entry even of refugees who already have… Read More

Disagreeing with a federal appeals court, Trump Administration lawyers argued on Tuesday night that a federal judge had no authority to expand the categories of foreign nationals and refugees who may enter the U.S. under a presidential executive order. In a new filing in a federal trial court in Honolulu, the Trump team argued that… Read More

One of the most significant civil rights questions developing over more than a quarter-century –how far did Congress intend to go to outlaw sex discrimination – is headed to the Supreme Court for a likely showdown.  That issue is at the intersection of three phases in the modern civil rights revolution: on women’s rights, gay… Read More

UPDATED: Saturday 7:14 a.m.  Acting promptly on the Ninth Circuit Court’s implied suggestion for the next move, Hawaii’s lawyers early Saturday asked the judge in Honolulu to issue a new order narrowing what the Trump Administration may do to exclude foreign nationals and refugees from the U.S.  They asked the judge to rule swiftly, without… Read More

Lawyers for the state of Hawaii, arguing that the Trump Administration is “imposing a new Muslim ban wholly divorced from any national security rationale,” urged a federal appeals court on Friday to take steps to ensure that more foreign nationals and refugees get to enter the United States in coming weeks and months. In a… Read More

UPDATED Friday 6:38 a.m.  Lawyers for Hawaii opted to take their plea next to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, following the regular route of appeal from a district court ruling rather than attempting to go directly to the Supreme Court.  It will now be up to the appeals court to decide… Read More

Interpreting the Supreme Court’s two-year-old decision in favor of same-sex marriage as settling only one thing — a basic right to marry, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Justices left open a wide array of questions about what public benefits go with such marriages. The state court, Texas’s highest court for civil… Read More

Ten of the states that had succeeded in a sweeping challenge to President Obama’s 2014 order that would have delayed deportation of more than 4 million undocumented immigrants acted on Thursday to force an end to a similar 2012 Obama order to protect about 1 million younger immigrants.   If that is not done by September… Read More

(UPDATED Thursday 4:06 pm: The Native Americans who challenged  the trademarks, in a letter Thursday to the Fourth Circuit Court, joined in the proposal that the case be ended with a ruling for the Washington team’s owner. ———————- Conceding what had seemed to have become inevitable, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court on… Read More