Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

The Trump Administration, seeking to delay the enlistment of transgender individuals in the U.S. military when the new year opens, has told a federal trial judge it may go to higher courts in pursuit of a postponement. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington, D.C., who had ruled previously that President Trump’s ban on transgender… Read More

With the nation reaching record levels of mass shootings, the Supreme Court on Monday allowed the state of Maryland to continue to enforce one of the nation’s strictest bans on high-capacity rifles and ammunition clips. None of the nine Justices recorded a public dissent from the refusal to hear a Second Amendment challenge to the… Read More

Criticizing President Trump for making a major policy shift by a tweet, a federal trial judge in Maryland became the second one in recent weeks to block the government’s planned ban on transgender people from the nation’s military services. U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis of Baltimore not only cleared the way for transgender individuals… Read More

The Trump Administration returned to the Supreme Court on Monday night in the latest round in the long-running court fight over barring the entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals from nations with Muslim population majorities. Although a federal appeals court had allowed the Administration to begin enforcing part of the third version of immigration… Read More

The Trump Administration put off on Monday a move to draw the Supreme Court into the ongoing legal controversy over potential deportation of nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrant young people who have lived most of their lives in the U.S. President Trump’s lawyers are dissatisfied with the actions of a federal judge in California who is… Read More

UPDATED Monday 5:53 p.m.   The Trump legal team has temporarily put off their planned plea to the Supreme Court to block a judge’s order that it must disclose internal documents about how the Administration went about changing the DACA policy.   Lawyers on both sides were maneuvering throughout the day Monday to head off an immediate… Read More

A federal appeals court on Monday gave the Trump Administration temporary permission to partially enforce restrictions on entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals from six countries, and the Justice Department moved promptly to take advantage of the ruling. After two trial judges – one in Hawaii, the other in Maryland – temporarily barred enforcement… Read More

Taking on a deeply controversial question about the rights of abortion foes when they set up counseling and treatment centers for pregnant women, the Supreme Court agreed on Monday to review the constitutionality of a two-year-old California law setting rules on what those facilities tell patients. Specifically at issue is the centers’ claims that the… Read More

The Supreme Court Justices are working their way through potential drafts for a ruling on a major Wisconsin case testing the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders, but there is another big controversy over that question now moving along quite rapidly in lower courts. That other dispute, unfolding in state and federal courts, tests the 2011 maps… Read More

The Pentagon official who oversees war crimes trials at Guantanamo Bay on Friday afternoon ordered a Marine Corps general released from confinement at the base in Cuba, awaiting a ruling on the general’s conviction for contempt of a military court. Harvey Rishikof, who has the title of “Convening Authority” for the Guantanamo military commissions, acted… Read More