Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

UPDATED: Saturday 7:14 a.m.  Acting promptly on the Ninth Circuit Court’s implied suggestion for the next move, Hawaii’s lawyers early Saturday asked the judge in Honolulu to issue a new order narrowing what the Trump Administration may do to exclude foreign nationals and refugees from the U.S.  They asked the judge to rule swiftly, without… Read More

Lawyers for the state of Hawaii, arguing that the Trump Administration is “imposing a new Muslim ban wholly divorced from any national security rationale,” urged a federal appeals court on Friday to take steps to ensure that more foreign nationals and refugees get to enter the United States in coming weeks and months. In a… Read More

UPDATED Friday 6:38 a.m.  Lawyers for Hawaii opted to take their plea next to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, following the regular route of appeal from a district court ruling rather than attempting to go directly to the Supreme Court.  It will now be up to the appeals court to decide… Read More

Interpreting the Supreme Court’s two-year-old decision in favor of same-sex marriage as settling only one thing — a basic right to marry, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Justices left open a wide array of questions about what public benefits go with such marriages. The state court, Texas’s highest court for civil… Read More

Ten of the states that had succeeded in a sweeping challenge to President Obama’s 2014 order that would have delayed deportation of more than 4 million undocumented immigrants acted on Thursday to force an end to a similar 2012 Obama order to protect about 1 million younger immigrants.   If that is not done by September… Read More

(UPDATED Thursday 4:06 pm: The Native Americans who challenged  the trademarks, in a letter Thursday to the Fourth Circuit Court, joined in the proposal that the case be ended with a ruling for the Washington team’s owner. ———————- Conceding what had seemed to have become inevitable, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court on… Read More

Private schools operated by religious organizations gained new hope from the Supreme Court on Tuesday that they could be able to gain access to some forms of government financial support. Among a series of orders that the Justices issued at the close of its current term, the court returned four cases to state courts to… Read More

Amid a sharp disagreement among the Justices about whether it was setting a broad new precedent giving churches access to government money, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that religious organizations cannot be denied equal access to neutral public benefits. While the main opinion insisted that the outcome was “unremarkable in light of our prior… Read More

The Supreme Court handed President Trump a broad, though temporary, victory on Monday for his controversial move to limit immigration of foreign nationals, including refugees. His Administration can begin immediately to enforce those restrictions, with what appear to be only a few exceptions. The President’s March 6 executive order had flatly excluded the entry, for… Read More

With the prospect of a headline-making finish, the Supreme Court will close its current term with two days of drama on Monday and Tuesday.  The most significant issue before it is the fate of President Trump’s controversial executive order putting limits on immigration of foreign nationals, including refugees. But the end-of-term business may also produce… Read More