Lawyers for the state of Hawaii appear likely to be the first to pursue a court challenge to President Trump’s new order limiting immigration from six Mideast nations.  That challenge is due to be filed in Honolulu on Wednesday.   Similar lawsuits are expected to be filed elsewhere. Under a schedule that Trump Administration lawyers… Read More

For well over two centuries in American and English law, once a jury in a criminal case reached its verdict, it could not be questioned about its deliberations.  The Supreme Court partly relaxed that quite rigid ruled on Monday, declaring that the Constitution requires a system in which jurors can be asked about claims that… Read More

Putting off for at least a year any final ruling on the rights of transgender students under federal civil rights law, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal appeals court to make a new review of a high-profile Virginia case, including an analysis of the change in policy by the Trump Admnistration. For the… Read More

On a day when the Virginia teenager pleading in the Supreme Court for rights as a transgender student attracted a wide array of support from religious, civil rights and other organizations, it became clear that the Justices will have to sort through a series of new timing issues potentially affecting the case. The first question… Read More

By Lyle Denniston Both sides in a major Supreme Court case on the legal rights of transgender students urged the Justices on Wednesday to move ahead with full review and a prompt final decision on the meaning of a key federal anti-discrimination law. However, the county school board involved in the case asked the court… Read More

With just three years to go before state legislatures begin to face a new task of redrafting election district maps after a new Census, the Supreme Court on Wednesday moved to further clarify when they may use the race of voters as a decisive factor. The new ruling, the latest in a series dealing with… Read More

A federal appeals court, apparently relying more on what White House officials have said than on what Justice Department lawyers had conveyed, refused on Monday those lawyers’ request for an indefinite delay of that court’s review of President Trump’s January 27 order strictly limiting immigration of people from Mideast nations. If, as expected, a new… Read More

The Trump Administration on Monday moved to abandon the effort, begun by the Obama administration and civil rights advocates more than three years ago, to prove that the nation’s strictest voter ID law is unconstitutional. The Texas law, though, will continue to face that challenge because the rights groups plan to continue it before a… Read More

The Supreme Court wants both sides in the significant case on transgender students’ rights to submit their views on the possible impact of the switch in policy on those rights by the Trump Administration.  The Court’s Clerk on Thursday afternoon asked for responses by letter, due by 2 p.m. next Wednesday. The Clerk, no doubt… Read More

Two federal agencies of the Trump Administration on Wednesday evening notified the Supreme Court and school officials across the nation that the federal government will no longer require that transgender students get access to bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identites.   A two-page policy statement thus formally overturned the approach followed for the… Read More