Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

State officials in Wisconsin asked the Supreme Court on Monday to put on hold a federal court ruling that fashioned a new test for judging the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering – the drawing of election districts specifically to favor one party’s candidates over the other’s.   The case of Gill v. Whitford is one of the… Read More

State legislatures may not move more black voters into an election district to give them a majority if they already make alliances with white voters that allow them to get their preferred candidates elected, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday.  The federal Voting Acts does not require a “racial gerrymander” of that kind, and… Read More

Lawyers for the Trump Administration missed a court-ordered deadline for turning over a document that gave President Trump a way to justify his immigration restrictions without aiming them specifically at Muslims.  The document is said to be a paper prepared by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani at Donald Trump’s request. Friday was the… Read More

For the first time, a federal disability rights law has been interpreted to give legal protection to transgender people against discrimination.  A Pennsylvania judge did so by giving a narrow reading to a phrase in that law that says it does not apply to individuals with “gender identity disorders.” U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Leeson,… Read More

A group of 15 states plus Washington, D.C., moved on Thursday to try to head off what they called a “death spiral” for the health insurance law still in operation from the Obama Administration.  They filed court papers to defend billions of dollars in subsidies that continue to be paid to health insurance companies to… Read More

In the second appeals court hearing in a week on President Trump’s order seeking to limit immigration from the Mideast, the search went on again among judges on Monday for a way to decide the controversy narrowly. Just as judges in Richmond, VA, a week ago seemed somewhat anxious about making a sweeping constitutional decision… Read More

With Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., cautioning lower courts and lawyers not to read much into it, the Supreme Court on Monday turned aside an attempt to revive one of the nation’s strictest sets of voting restrictions, including a photo ID requirement.  A federal appeals court had struck down the 2013 North Carolina state… Read More

Justice Department lawyers seeking to defend President Trump restrictions on immigration have created an awkward dilemma for themselves.  The difficulty of that position is now playing out in the Detroit federal courtroom of District Judge Victoria A, Roberts, because it could force the government to hand over documents that help prove that the immigration policy… Read More

 Commentary A constitutional crisis in America happens with a deeply disturbing shift in the great tectonic plates of government, when the established order is shaken to its core.  It can happen in a flash with an attack on Pearl Harbor or on the World Trade Center.  Or it can come gradually, fully recognized only after… Read More

A government lawyer met considerable skepticism as he tried to persuade a federal appeals court on Monday to strictly separate what Candidate Trump and President Trump said about keeping Muslims out of the United States. At the same time, a lawyer for the challengers to Trump’s temporary ban on entrants from six Muslim-majority Mideast nations… Read More