Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

The Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to restore officials’ power to block any abortion for pregnant teenagers now in government custody after entering the U.S. illegally.  It attempted to use that power last month to try to persuade an undocumented 17-year-old not to end her pregnancy, but that failed. In a high-profile… Read More

A Marine Corps general, being held prisoner in his own apartment at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay after being convicted of contempt of a military court, asked a civilian federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to order his immediate release. Brigadier General John D. Baker, who heads the team of military defense lawyers… Read More

The war crimes tribunal system at Guantanamo Bay, often troubled throughout its 15 years in operation, became embroiled Wednesday in a high-stakes confrontation between a colonel and a general, with the general getting punished for contempt of the colonel’s court. The jousting between the two military officers has gone on for days as Air Force… Read More

Ruling that transgender people probably have a constitutional right to be treated equally by the government, a federal judge in the nation’s capital temporarily blocked the Trump Administration on Monday from barring them from serving in the military. In a 76-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave transgender individuals now in the military a… Read More

Tentatively accepting the Trump Administration’s view that Congress has not put up any money to cover federal subsidies for health insurance companies, a federal judge in California on Wednesday refused – at least for now – to order a resumption of those payments. This year, those subsidies were running at about $600 million a month before… Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ended its review of President Trump’s power to curb entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals and refugees, dismissing the remaining test case on its docket raising that question.  At least two new cases, however, are making their way to the Justices, renewing that basic controversy, perhaps in the current… Read More

In dueling documents filed in a federal court in San Francisco, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives took opposing positions on future financing of subsidies that have been a key part of the seven-year-old federal health insurance program. Separately, the two groups of leaders asked a federal trial judge to… Read More

Beginning its defense in a federal appeals court of the third version of President Trump’s attempt to block entry of foreign nationals from six Mideast nations, the Administration argued that the new restrictions have nothing to do with religion and are focused only on national security fears. In asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the… Read More

Splitting 2-to-1, a federal appeals court on Friday temporarily barred a Central American teenaged girl, in the country illegally, from getting an abortion in a Texas clinic.  It imposed an 11-day delay in her case, to give government officials time to try to line up a sponsor who could then arrange for her to end… Read More

Arguing that the courts have no power to order the federal government to pay subsidies to sellers of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the Trump Administration urged a federal judge in California on Friday not to attempt such a step. At the same time, however, government lawyers suggested that states and the insurance… Read More