Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Over two Justices’ dissents, the Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily blocked a lower court order that would have required North Carolina’s legislature to quickly adopt new election maps for the state’s 13 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, to replace maps that strongly favored Republican candidates. The Justices’ order put on hold – probably… Read More

The Trump Administration urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to rule on the constitutionality of the President’s third version of an executive order strictly limiting entry to the U.S. by foreign nationals from countries with Muslim-majority populations.  If, as expected, the Court agrees to rule on other legal issues in the case, the question of… Read More

The Trump Administration will ask the Supreme Court this week to uphold its power to end the “DACA” program that protects younger immigrants from deportation, and it will ask that the Justices not wait for a ruling by a federal appeals court, the Justice Department said Tuesday. (The five-year-old program is titled “Deferred Action for… Read More

Years of declining consumer purchases at retail stores and malls, as shoppers increasingly chose to buy online, have cost state treasuries huge amounts of sales tax revenue, but the Supreme Court might be coming to their rescue.   On Friday afternoon, the Justices agreed to reconsider a half-century-old constitutional bar to state taxes on out-of-state retailers…. Read More

Moving with unusual speed, the Supreme Court indicated on Monday that it will take its first look just 11 days from now at the Trump Administration’s new appeal seeking to defend the President’s third immigration order.  That will no doubt force an earlier reply by the order’s challengers, and an earlier decision by the Justices… Read More

Returning to the Supreme Court with a new appeal on immigration, the Trump Administration on Friday asked the Justices  for unchecked power to bar entry to the United States of foreign nationals of six countries with Moslem-majority populations. This request, in a case from Hawaii, is the first of two that the government is expected… Read More

Forgoing, for now, a request to the Supreme Court to bar transgender individuals from enlisting in the military, the Trump Administration announced on Friday night that it would open the ranks to them beginning on Monday. In the meantime, the Justice Department said, it will continue in federal trial courts to “defend the President’s and… Read More

Refusing to let the Trump Administration rely on its temporary Supreme Court victory over one judge’s demand to see internal records about why the government ended the “DACA” program for immigrant youths, a federal appeals court in New York cleared the way on Wednesday for a different judge to insist on disclosure of some of… Read More

President Trump’s power was at its weakest point, constitutionally, when he imposed the latest version of a ban on immigration from Muslim-majority nations, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.  The Supreme Court, where the controversy is headed again, has never reached a final decision on the issue – but it has allowed his latest… Read More

Moving  the issue of transgender individuals’ right to join the military closer to the Supreme Court, two federal appeals courts this week rejected the Trump Administration’s effort to delay enlistments beyond January 1. Because there are only nine days remaining before lower court rulings require the military to begin accepting recruits who are transgender, the… Read More