Fifty years ago, in Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, the Supreme Court ruled that a private individual could sue an FBI agent for violating his Fourth Amendment rights, even when there was not a specific law authorizing a claim for damages. In the nine years after Bivens, the court recognized Bivens claims for… Read More

The internecine battle between David Wilson, one of nine trustees on the board of the Houston Community College System, and the rest of the board has all the makings of a long-running Netflix series – Dallas meets Community, perhaps. There are allegations of greed and corruption, culminating in one trustee’s conviction on federal bribery charges…. Read More

After adding two new cases to their merits docket on Friday, the justices issued more orders from their Oct. 29 conference on Monday morning. As expected, they did not add any additional cases to their docket, but they did clear away several of the high-profile petitions that they have repeatedly considered since returning from their… Read More

From the time he was elected to the board of trustees of the Houston Community College System in 2013, David Wilson contends, he was unwilling to go along to get along. Wilson’s repeated criticism of what he describes as the board’s “pay to play” culture led the board to censure him in 2018. On Tuesday,… Read More

In a term already defined by abortion and guns, the justices on Friday agreed to hear two more politically divisive disputes, involving the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and the ability of states to defend a Trump-era immigration rule that the Biden administration has declined to defend. Climate change regulation The litigation… Read More

Two months ago, Texas put in place the most restrictive abortion law since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973. The law, which prohibits almost all abortions in the state, has dramatically reduced access to the procedure. On Monday, the court will hear arguments in two challenges to the law — and though… Read More

Lawyers for the state of Texas urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on abortions in place. “Neither the federal government nor abortion providers are entitled to demand Texas write its laws to permit them to be challenged” in federal court before they are enforced, the… Read More

The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to do what the justices declined to do last month when asked by a group of Texas abortion providers: block the enforcement of a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on abortions performed after the sixth week of pregnancy. In an emergency request by Acting… Read More

The Biden administration told the Supreme Court on Friday that a Palestinian man who has been in U.S. custody for nearly 20 years could provide testimony for use in a Polish criminal investigation into the man’s torture at a CIA “black site” in that country. However, Acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher added, any testimony by… Read More

The Supreme Court issued orders on Tuesday morning from the justices’ private conference last week. The list of orders was largely uneventful, as the court did not add any new cases to its merits docket for the term. The justices also did not act on several high-profile cases that they considered at Friday’s conference, instead… Read More