All articles tagged with #courts and law
President Trump said he will seek a rehearing at the Supreme Court to overturn its birthright citizenship ruling, a move unlikely to succeed since the Court rarely grants rehearings (last done in 1965).
The Supreme Court declined to grant an emergency stay, leaving in place a lower-court order that former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge must disclose a confidential source or face $800 per day in sanctions for refusing to identify the source in a federal privacy dispute involving Yanping Chen. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he would have granted the stay, but the unsigned order let the sanctions stand while the case proceeds. Press-freedom advocates warn the ruling jeopardizes journalistic confidentiality and the free flow of information, while Herridge and Fox News indicated they may pursue further legal options.
A Washington grand jury indicted former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, 67, on a felony destruction of property charge for allegedly trying to remove sealant from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during its June refurbishment; the incident is said to have occurred June 19, carrying a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison, though Hearn says he was wrongly arrested and that a detached pool liner prompted his actions.
After the Supreme Court’s rulings upholding state bans on transgender athletes and related decisions on transition care and parental notification, LGBTQ+ advocates are debating whether every case should go to the Court, warning that pressing high-profile cases on a conservative bench could yield sweeping precedents that undermine the movement even as transgender rights face a year of setbacks.
The latest Supreme Court term expanded presidential power over federal agencies and upheld several Trump policy moves, while weakening civil-rights protections—most notably by narrowing voting rights—along with rulings on birthright citizenship and LGBTQ rights, signaling a major shift with potential election and minority-protection implications.
The Supreme Court ruled to loosen campaign-finance limits, allowing parties to coordinate with candidates and spend unlimited sums on ads, a move viewed as benefiting Republicans and potentially reshaping midterm fundraising and advertising.
The Supreme Court ruled that a president can fire heads of independent federal agencies without cause, overturning Humphrey’s Executor and broadening presidential control over the bureaucracy, while stopping short of granting the same power over the Federal Reserve.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld Mississippi’s rule to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day even if they arrive after Election Day, preserving voting procedures in several states before the midterms and rejecting challenges from Republicans and Libertarians.
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a $5 million civil verdict against President Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case, preserving the 2023 jury finding that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and defamed her. Trump’s appeals were denied, leaving the judgment in place.
The Supreme Court handed Trump major victories on his immigration agenda in two ideologically split rulings, allowing the administration to deport millions of immigrants who are lawfully present and reviving a policy that blocks migrants at the border from seeking asylum.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down Hawaii’s public-carry restrictions, saying they violated the Second Amendment and signaling a Bruen-era expansion of gun rights. The decision adds to a string of rulings loosening firearm regulations and could influence carry rules in other states, continuing ongoing debates over gun policy.
A federal judge blocked key provisions of President Trump’s executive order aimed at restricting mail ballots, ruling the president lacks authority to limit who can receive them. The decision comes a month after another judge had allowed parts of the order to stand, and the case remains tied up in ongoing litigation, including actions in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Supreme Court limited a large wave of lawsuits alleging Monsanto’s Roundup caused cancer, narrowing duty-to-warn claims and sharply constraining one of the largest product-liability litigation waves in U.S. history.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Damon Landor, a Rastafarian inmate, cannot sue Louisiana prison officials in federal court for forcibly shaving his dreadlocks in violation of a court order; the decision, grounded in procedural legal techniques, marks a departure from recent expansions of religious freedoms and leaves Landor’s related state-law claims intact.
The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, reinstated Pedro Hernandez’s conviction for the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz, ruling the Second Circuit erred in overturning the verdict; Hernandez had confessed multiple times, though he later argued those statements were obtained improperly, a ruling that preserves a decades-long high-profile case.