The Supreme Court will review how employers must accommodate their employees’ religious practices, how courts should decide whether threatening statements are protected by the First Amendment, and whether a local government violated the Constitution when it confiscated and sold a $40,000 home based on the owner’s failure to pay $15,000 in property taxes. Those issues… Read More
Court grants review in new batch of cases, including dispute on religious rights of employees
Court allows New York to enforce new gun-control law while legal challenge proceeds
Less than seven months after a landmark decision striking down a New York law that restricted handguns in public, the Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the state – at least for now – to keep enforcing the gun-control law that the state enacted in response to that ruling. In a brief unsigned order on the… Read More
Court declines to halt execution of Texas man who said state withheld information about key witness
The justices declined to block the execution of Robert Fratta, whose lethal injection in Texas was scheduled for Tuesday evening. Fratta was sentenced to die for the 1994 murder-for-hire of his estranged wife, Farah. He was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1997. A federal court threw out that conviction, but in 2009 he… Read More
Justices revive Texas man’s bid to throw out conviction that state prosecutors no longer defend
The Supreme Court on Monday revived efforts by a Texas inmate to throw out his conviction and death sentence in a case in which prosecutors agree that he should get a new trial. The ruling in favor of Areli Escobar came on a list of orders released from the justices’ private conference last week. The… Read More
After a year of turmoil for the court, Roberts lauds judicial-security measure
2022 was a turbulent year for the Supreme Court. In May, a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to the press, revealing that a majority of the court was poised to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion. Less than two months later, a divided court made that decision official, in Dobbs v…. Read More
Trump-era border policy will remain in place while justices hear argument on procedural question
The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a federal judge’s ruling that had ordered the government to end a Trump-era border policy that allows immigration officials to quickly turn away migrants seeking asylum. The justices agreed to hear argument in late February or early March on whether 19 states with Republican attorneys general can step in… Read More
States ask Supreme Court to keep Title 42 border policy in effect
Nineteen states came to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the justices to keep in place a Trump-era policy that allows immigration officials to quickly expel migrants seeking asylum at the U.S. border. The states, led by Arizona, warn the justices that if the court does not block a federal judge’s order that would end… Read More
Court schedules February arguments on student-loan relief, tech companies’ liability
The Supreme Court will hear back-to-back oral arguments on Feb. 28 in a pair of challenges to the Biden administration’s student-loan forgiveness program. The student-loan challenges are the highest-profile cases on the court’s February argument calendar, which was released on Monday morning. The February calendar also includes two cases involving the scope of a federal… Read More
Justices grant review in two criminal cases and a securities lawsuit against Slack
The Supreme Court on Tuesday morning added three new cases to its merits docket for the 2022-23 term. The justices considered all three cases – involving federal securities laws, the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, and the proper remedy when a defendant is tried in the wrong place – at their private conference last week. Although… Read More
Court will resume opinion announcements from the bench, but won’t provide live audio
The Supreme Court will resume its pre-pandemic practice of announcing opinions from the bench, the court’s Public Information Office said on Monday afternoon. But although the justices now provide live audio of oral arguments, the opinion announcements will not be livestreamed. Instead, consistent with the court’s pre-pandemic practice, the audio of opinion announcements will not… Read More