The Supreme Court handed a partial but significant victory to cities today, holding that the Fair Housing Act allows the city of Miami to bring a lawsuit alleging that two banks, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, violated the law when they issued riskier but more costly mortgages to minority customers than they had offered… Read More

Without any recorded dissents, the Supreme Court last night declined to block the execution of Kenneth Williams. Williams was the fourth inmate executed in Arkansas in a week; the state had sought to execute eight inmates over a span of 11 days so that it could carry out the executions before one of the drugs… Read More

At oral argument today in the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices were not especially sympathetic to the plight of Divna Maslenjak. The 53-year-old came to the United States as a refugee in 2000, fleeing ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia. Maslenjak became a U.S. citizen seven years later, but last fall she was deported to… Read More

The Supreme Court seemed ready to hand a victory to railroad company BNSF in a lawsuit brought by two of the company’s injured workers. A solid majority of the justices appeared unconvinced that the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, a federal law that allows railroad workers to sue their employers for injuries that occur on the… Read More

Three decades ago, James McWilliams was convicted of the robbery, rape and murder of convenience store clerk Patricia Reynolds. An Alabama judge sentenced McWilliams to death, rejecting both his pleas to consult with an independent psychiatrist about psychiatric records that his attorney had recently received and his argument that he suffered from serious mental health… Read More

For the second week in a row, the Supreme Court did not add any new cases to its merits docket for next term. The dearth of new grants is likely attributable to the fact that Justice Neil Gorsuch – who did not participate at all in last week’s conference – only participated in a handful… Read More

Three years ago, in Daimler AG v. Bauman, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution’s due process clause barred a lawsuit in California against the German car company for the actions of its Argentinian subsidiary, which allegedly worked with security forces in Argentina during the country’s “Dirty War” to kidnap, torture and kill some of… Read More

Until recently, 53-year-old Divna Maslenjak lived in Akron, Ohio, with her husband, Ratko. Ethnic Serbs who were raised in what is now Bosnia, the couple came to the United States with their children as refugees, fleeing ethnic strife in the former Yugoslavia. Divna became a U.S. citizen seven years later, but in October of last… Read More

When the Supreme Court heard oral argument this morning in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, a Missouri church’s challenge to its exclusion from a state program that provides grants to nonprofits to allow them to resurface their playgrounds with recycled tires, all eyes were on the court’s newest justice, Neil Gorsuch. After all,… Read More

Thirty-one years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that a defendant who can show that his mental health is likely to play an important role at trial is entitled to help from a psychiatrist if he cannot afford it. Next week the justices will consider exactly what that holding meant – and in particular, whether it… Read More