Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

The Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon ordered a new round of legal briefs in the controversy over President Trump’s executive order seeking to impose new immigration restrictions, giving itself the option of considering on June 22 what to do with the two cases before it.  If the court were to grant review after that private… Read More

UPDATED 5:27 p,m,   Hawaii’s lawyers urged the Supreme Court not to allow so many additional briefs, but did not resist having all further briefs submitted for the Justices’ consideration on June 22.  The letter is here. Trump Administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to arrange a schedule to have the Justices consider… Read More

Declaring that government policy on immigration “is not a one-person show,” a federal appeals court on Monday upheld all of the key parts of a federal judge’s order barring enforcement of President Trump’s new limits on immigration.  It said the president had exceeded the authority that Congress had given him to limit entry of foreign… Read More

Civil rights groups were stalled on Friday in their effort to force disclosure of a memo that President Trump has said helped him to change the approach on immigration restrictions so that his action could survive legal challenges.   A federal judge in Detroit, citing the fact that the constitutional dispute over Trump’s executive order… Read More

Both sides in a new Supreme Court test case on partisan gerrymandering – drawing new election districts to favor one party – on Tuesday answered the Justices’ questions about whether the case should stay alive, disagreeing sharply on that. But they also may have raised a broad new question about what voters challenging such partisan-driven… Read More

A right-to-work advocacy group, renewing a long-running fight over labor union support fees assessed from non-union workers, asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to strike down the charges as unconstitutional, when imposed on workers in government jobs. That is the issue that split the court 4-to-4 in March of last year, when there were only… Read More

 Lawyers, well aware that handling a complex legal case is not for amateurs, have long believed in an old saying (more colorful than this) that clients who represent themselves take real risks.  On Monday, President Trump dispensed some legal advice to the lawyers representing him, and they may now have to try to recover.  Their… Read More

Returning to the controversy over how the Constitution affects modern technology, the Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether police or federal agents must get a search warrant before they may collect data on where a cellphone has been used – data that can allow the officers to track a criminal suspect’s movements. The… Read More

Some of the nation’s largest operators of hospitals and other health care facilities are entitled to be exempt from the federal employee benefit plan law, if they have a link to a church or other religious organization, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. Their plans, the unanimous ruling said, qualify for the  “church plan” exemption even… Read More

Acting with unusual speed, the Supreme Court on Friday afternoon told lawyers for the challengers to President Trump’s immigration limits to answer the Administration’s appeal by a week from Monday.  That is a strong indication that the Justices will move swiftly, and a sign that they regard the controversy as one with real urgency. The… Read More