Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Just days before the Supreme Court is to consider getting involved in the deepening controversy over the legal fate of nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who have grown up in this country, a second federal judge has ordered the Trump Administration not to end next month their protection against deportation.   In a 55-page ruling Tuesday, U.S. District… Read More

Pennsylvania Governor Thomas W. Wolf told the state’s Supreme Court on Tuesday that a new Republican-drawn map of election districts for the 18-member Pennsylvania delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives does not satisfy the mandate of the state court to avoid partisan gerrymandering.  Like the 2011 map that the state’s highest court struck down… Read More

Continuing to work through a series of disputes on “partisan gerrymandering,” the Supreme Court refused on Tuesday to add a third case to its review of that issue in the current term.  Over two Justices’ dissents, the Court refused to put on a fast track a case testing the constitutionality of a North Carolina congressional… Read More

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling striking down a state legislature’s district-defining map for this year’s congressional elections in the state cleared a potential legal hurdle Monday when Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., refused to block that decision. Alito gave no reason for rejecting a postponement request by state GOP legislative leaders but his… Read More

The Constitution has had an Elections Clause since it first went into effect in 1789, but the Supreme Court has rarely given an interpretation of its meaning. But what the Supreme Court has said creates a dilemma for the Justices as they decide soon what to do about the claim that Pennsylvania’s state legislature engaged… Read More

With the controversy over young undocumented immigrants unfolding both in Congress and the federal courts, the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to put the case before it on a fast track.  That may indicate that the Justices could be prepared to rule during their current term – unless Congress comes up first with a new… Read More

In a ruling that potentially could be a political boon to Democrats running for Congress this year in Pennsylvania, a sharply divided state Supreme Court on Monday struck down 2011 maps for electing 18 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Those maps have been used in elections since 2011, with Republican candidates winning 13… Read More

With Congress mired in a deepening controversy over the future of the “DACA” program for younger undocumented immigrants, the Trump Administration stepped up its efforts to get the Supreme Court to set an unusually fast schedule to review the program’s legal fate. Government lawyers on Friday afternoon asked the Justices to examine at their next… Read More

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday afternoon to consider the state of Hawaii’s claim that President Trump imposed an unconstitutional “Muslim ban” when he ordered strict new limits on entry into the U.S. by foreign nationals from six nations with Muslim-majority populations. That constitutional question was added as the Justices also agreed to review whether… Read More

With time running out for the Supreme Court to take on new cases in the current term, the Trump Administration asked Thursday evening that one more case be taken up swiftly: the controversy over the planned shutdown of the “DACA” program that has spared nearly 700,000 undocumented young immigrants from being deported.  (DACA is short… Read More