Covering the Supreme Court and the Judiciary in (mostly) Plain English

In March, the state of Wisconsin asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by a three-judge court striking down the redistricting map that the Republican-controlled legislature created after the 2010 census. The three-judge court concluded that the map was the result of partisan gerrymandering – that is, purposely drawing district lines to favor one… Read More

Two North Carolina congressional districts, District 1 and District 12, have – as Justice Elena Kagan observed today – “quite the history before” the Supreme Court. In the last 25 years, the districts have been at the heart of four earlier racial gerrymandering cases at the court. Last year, a three-judge district court invalidated both… Read More

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard oral argument yesterday in a challenge to the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on March 6. Colloquially known as the “travel ban,” the order temporarily suspended new visas for travelers from six Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,… Read More

Today’s opinion in Howell v. Howell exemplifies the bread and butter of the Supreme Court’s docket: It is a decision with significant real-world consequences that will nonetheless largely fly under the radar. The court unanimously handed a victory to Air Force veteran John Howell, who was divorced from his former wife, Sandra, over 25 years… Read More

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit heard oral argument today in a challenge to the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on March 6. Citing the need to “protect the Nation from terrorist activities,” the order temporarily suspended new visas for travelers from six Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,… Read More

After the government of Venezuela nationalized a General Motors factory in that country late last month, the Detroit-based car company vowed to “vigorously take all legal actions, within and outside of Venezuela, to defend its rights.” If those promised actions include a lawsuit in the United States, GM could face a tougher battle after a… Read More

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