Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Sometimes, the Supreme Court’s ultimate power to define what the Constitution means seems just too daunting for the Justices.  That was the sentiment that swept across the bench Tuesday, as the Court confronted – after years of refusing to do so – the question of whether to allow states broad new freedom to tax shopping… Read More

For the first time in any court, a federal judge in Seattle has ruled that transgender people are entitled to the fullest protection of the Constitution against discrimination.  U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman issued that ruling Friday in a case involving President Trump’s move to bar almost all transgender individuals from serving in the… Read More

The Supreme Court and a federal appeals court are now moving simultaneously to sort out a major constitutional controversy over a right to abortion for undocumented teenaged girls being held in federal immigration centers and who are now or will become pregnant. After more than five months of giving some thought – off and on… Read More

For more than three decades, some members of the Supreme Court have thought the courts should do something to rein in the centuries-old practice of partisan gerrymandering – that is, drawing election districts to give one party’s candidates a clear advantage.  But none of the Justices have thought they knew what to do about it…. Read More

Acting in the face of the reality that the Supreme Court might soon take away her power to act, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday ordered the Trump Administration to stop interfering with the right of pregnant teenagers being held in immigration detention centers to make their own decisions whether to seek an… Read More

A successful and deliberate effort by Maryland’s Democratic leaders to take a congressional seat away from Republicans might be just the kind of “partisan gerrymander” that the Supreme Court could now be ready to rule unconstitutional.   But would that clarify anything about how much partisanship in drawing new election maps is too much? That is… Read More

Answering a constitutional question that the Supreme Court left open nearly 21 years ago in a case against President Bill Clinton, a state trial judge in New York ruled Tuesday that President Trump does not have immunity to being sued in state court on claims related to sexual misconduct that did not involve official acts…. Read More

In the space of about three hours on Monday, the intense, months-long battle over partisan gerrymandering in Pennsylvania elections this year for 18 members of the U.S. House of Representatives reached a pause, one that may well end it altogether. A brief ruling by the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., and a 24-page decision by… Read More

In a unanimous ruling Monday afternoon, a three-judge federal court in Harrisburg, PA, threw out a challenge by Pennsylvania Republican officials and members of Congress to the use this year of a new map for the election of the state’s 18 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. That ruling, offering no view on the… Read More

The political calendar for electing 18 members of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania will continue to unfold over the weekend, but no one in the state – not candidates, not voters signing candidate petitions, not state officials – know if they are doing it right.  The reason they don’t know is that the U.S…. Read More