Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Taking the suggestion of the Supreme Court, the Trump Administration has moved in two lower federal courts in a new attempt to stop the trial of a major lawsuit claiming that the government has wrongly followed policies that have worsened the nation’s climate. That trial, temporarily on hold while the trial judge and the lawyers… Read More

Blocked by three lower-court orders from shutting down the six-year-old “DACA” program that protects young, undocumented immigrants from being deported, the Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to end the program and to do so in the Court’s current term. The “DACA” program – formally, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – was created… Read More

The Supreme Court late Friday afternoon sent the Trump Administration two quite clear signals that the government has been depending too much on the Supreme Court to thwart challenges to the government’s policies in the lower federal courts. In two separate orders, each coming in a high-profile, heavily-contested case now unfolding in a lower federal… Read More

Arguing that one of President Trump’s Cabinet secretaries should not have to answer lawyers’ questions about why he plans to ask everyone in America about their citizenship as part of the 2020 census, the Administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to delay a trial on that issue, now set to start next Monday. Commerce… Read More

Escalating its rhetoric in a final plea to the Supreme Court to shut down an imminent trial on the federal government’s role in global warming, the Trump Administration argued on Wednesday that the case may stretch on for years. “It could well be years into the future,” a new Administration filing argued, “before the government… Read More

Moving swiftly to try to keep alive a wide-ranging constitutional challenge to government climate policies, lawyers for 21 children and teenagers told the Supreme Court on Monday that the trial they are seeking will in no way interfere with the federal government’s operations and will not put any high official on the stand to testify. … Read More

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., on Friday evening ordered at least a temporary halt in a children’s lawsuit seeking to hold the federal government legally to blame for climate change in the form of global warming, severe storms and worsening wildfires.  The proceedings in a federal trial court are thus on hold at least for the… Read More

The Trump Administration, out of patience with lower courts’ handling of a sweeping, three-year-old lawsuit demanding that the government act to create a safer environment, asked the Supreme Court on Thursday morning to end that case altogether and, in the meantime, to halt any move toward a trial at the end of this month. In… Read More

Lawyers for the Trump Administration, applying pressure for prompt resolution in court of the future of the “DACA” program for young undocumented immigrants, vowed on Wednesday to go directly to the Supreme Court unless a federal appeals court issues a decision by the end of October. DACA is the six-year-old program of Deferred Action for… Read More

Lawyers for the Trump Administration plan to ask the Supreme Court on Wednesday to halt a trial set to begin in two weeks of a massive lawsuit against government environmental policy stretching back decades. The case, Juliana v. U.S., seeks to establish a constitutional right to “a climate system capable of sustaining human life.”  The… Read More