In the Courts

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected bids to temporarily block a rule on federal funding for abortion clinics Thursday. The appeals court allowed a June 20 decision to stand by a 7-4 vote, allowing the Trump administration to strip federal funding of clinics that fails to comply with its Title X regulations, according to Reuters. All seven of the ...

A federal judge in Manhattan denied the Trump administration’s request to change its legal team in the census citizenship question case Tuesday, adding further complications to the tumultuous litigation. Court rules require government lawyers to give persuasive reasons for the substitutions in sworn affidavits and show the transition will not delay proceedings, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman said. The decision ...

A federal judge put a last-minute block on the Trump administration’s rule forcing drug companies to include prices in television ads Monday night. “To be sure, the costs imposed by the …  Rule amount to a rounding error for the pharmaceutical industry,” Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his ruling according to Stat News. “But that argument misses the point. It ...

A coalition of red states led by Texas requested Monday that they receive 20 extra days to file a supplemental brief and a delay of opening arguments in a case they hope will overturn Obamacare in front of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “As of today, it appears unlikely that any such response will be completed by the ...

A federal judge in California barred the Trump administration Friday night from reallocating $2.5 billion to construct border barriers. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, an Obama appointee, expanded an earlier order and forbade the government from moving forward with specific border wall projects in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. He also turned the previous order into a permanent injunction. ...

The Supreme Court will decide whether President Donald Trump can rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program during its next term, the justices announced Friday. DACA is an Obama-era amnesty initiative that extends temporary legal status to 700,000 foreign nationals who came to the U.S. as children. The Department of Homeland Security first took steps to terminate DACA ...

The Supreme Court ordered further proceedings in the dispute over a citizenship question on the 2020 census form Thursday, saying the Trump administration apparently concealed its true reason for adding the query. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the Court’s opinion, portions of which were unanimous. “It is rare to review a record as extensive as the one before us when ...

In a decision with far-reaching implications for national politics, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that federal courts do not have power to review partisan gerrymandering claims. The decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority. Justice Elena Kagan led the liberal bloc in dissent. Gerrymandering divides the Court into the usual ideological coalitions. While the ...

The Supreme Court’s liberal bloc scored a pair of victories Wednesday, securing conservative votes to side with a criminal defendant in a mandatory minimum dispute and preserve precedents protecting agency power. The vote in the first case was 5-4, with Justice Neil Gorsuch delivering the decisive fifth vote with the liberal bloc for the fourth time this term. The second ...

The Trump administration filed an extraordinary last-minute request at the Supreme Court in the census citizenship question case Tuesday, asking the justices to resolve a late-breaking controversy just hours before handing down their decision. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals provoked the government’s petition after a Tuesday afternoon ruling, in which it authorized a federal judge in Maryland to ...

Justice Neil Gorsuch joined with the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc to deal victory for criminal defendants Monday, striking down a federal law that punishes gun crimes as unconstitutionally vague. The law at issue authorizes heightened penalties for individuals who use firearms to a commit a “crime of violence.” “Only the people’s elected representatives in Congress have the power to write ...

An ideologically divided Supreme Court delivered a victory for property owners Friday, over a vigorous dissent from Justice Elena Kagan that accused the conservative majority of smashing “hundred-plus years of legal rulings to smithereens.” The dissent noted Friday’s case was the second time this term that the conservative justices have overturned a controlling precedent, prompting Kagan to ask, forebodingly, which ...

Curtis Flowers of Mississippi has stood trial six times in connection with a grisly quadruple homicide in a small town called Winona. The Supreme Court threw out the latest of those convictions Friday, saying prosecutors rigged the jury along racial lines.  The justices said prosecutor Doug Evans, who tried all six cases, repeatedly demonstrated discriminatory intent.  The Supreme Court tossed ...

An appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can ban taxpayer-funded abortion clinics from performing abortions or making abortion referrals. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administration can bar clinics from performing abortions or making abortion referrals, according to Politico. For the first time in history, the new Title X regulations will allow federal ...

The Supreme Court turned back a constitutional challenge to a cross-shaped war memorial in Maryland Thursday, finding that the monument does not violate the First Amendment. Justice Samuel Alito delivered the opinion for a seven-justice majority. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Peace Cross impermissibly endorses Christianity. The so-called “reasonable observer” test ...