Lyle Denniston

Oct 13 2017

States seek to compel health care subsidies

Eighteen states and the local government in Washington, D.C., asked a federal trial judge on Friday to order the Trump Administration to continue paying billions of dollars in subsidies to health insurance companies to offset some of their costs of providing coverage for lower-income people under the Affordable Care Act. The plea was filed in… Read More

Oct 12 2017

Trump team opens defense of new immigration limits

Opening its defense in court of the third version of the Trump Administration’s curbs on immigration, government lawyers on Thursday argued that a wide-ranging new study of the issue severs any link to prior anti-Muslim statements by the President or his aides. Thus, they argued in a new brief filed in a federal court in Maryland,… Read More

Oct 10 2017

Supreme Court ends one of two Trump immigration cases

Declaring that it was taking no position on the legality of President Trump’s now-replaced order curbing entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals from six Mideast nations, the Supreme Court on Tuesday evening dismissed an Administration appeal on that question.   It did so, it said, because that order had expired on September 24, when a… Read More

Oct 10 2017

Court bypasses big Guantanamo case

Nine years after its last major ruling on the rights of detainees at the Guantanamo military prison, the Supreme Court refused on Monday to return to that abiding constitutional controversy.  Without comment, the Justices turned aside a significant challenge to the use of military commissions to try foreign nationals for crimes that could be prosecuted… Read More

Oct 6 2017

New constitutional tests on birth control begin

Almost 17 months after the Supreme Court sent platoons of lawyers off on what turned out to be a failed mission to work out the nationwide controversy over women’s access to birth control, the newly deepened controversy returned to the federal courts on Friday. The first of a series of lawsuits landed in a federal… Read More

Oct 6 2017

A major gun control case comes to an end

Fearing that an appeal to the Supreme Court could bring a nationwide ruling against gun control, officials of the local government in the nation’s capital have abandoned the defense of a strict law limiting the right to carry a concealed handgun outside the home. Their decision will thus keep out of the reach of the… Read More

Oct 5 2017

Difficult new question on Trump and immigration

The opposing sides in the historic controversy over President Trump’s limits on foreign travelers’ entry into the U.S. handed the Supreme Court on Thursday a difficult new question: will the defeats the Administration already suffered in this fight in lower courts remain, or be wiped off the books? That is a question the Justices probably… Read More

Oct 3 2017

Kennedy hints at key answer to partisan gerrymanders

With the Supreme Court taking a new look on Tuesday at a constitutional puzzle it could not solve 13 years ago, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy gave a fairly strong hint that he may now have the answer. The puzzle has been easier to describe than to solve: when is partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional?  Or, in other… Read More

Sep 29 2017

Challenge to new Trump immigration policy

Two legal advocacy groups asked a federal judge on Friday to  allow them to begin a new challenge to President Trump’s latest attempt to restrict entry into the U.S. by foreign nationals.  The groups will seek a court order to block enforcement of the new  approach, which is scheduled to go into effect on October 18…. Read More

Sep 14 2017

The meaning of a simple Supreme Court order

Very often, the Supreme Court will speak through a very simple order, without explanation.  But it frequently will be true that such an order has deeper meaning, maybe even major consequences.  That is very likely what could follow a one-sentence order issued on Wednesday in a case with an obscure title, Benisek v. Lamone. That… Read More

Lyle Denniston continues to write about the U.S. Supreme Court, although he “retired” at the end of 2019 following more than six decades on that news beat. He was there for three revolutions – civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights – and the start of a fourth, on transgender rights. His career of following the law began at the Otoe County Courthouse in his hometown, Nebraska City, Nebraska, in the fall of 1948. His online, eight-week, college-level course – “The Supreme Court and American Politics” – is available from the University of Baltimore Law School, and it is free.

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