The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral argument in the case of a civil rights tester who searches the internet to find hotels whose websites do not provide information about the accessibility of their facilities, as required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The owner of a Maine hotel argued that because the tester, Deborah… Read More
Civil rights tester case heads to high court
Deborah Laufer is a self-appointed civil rights tester. From her home in Florida, Laufer – who has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair or a cane to move around – combs the internet to look for hotels whose websites do not provide information about the accessibility of the hotel’s facilities. Since 2018, Laufer has sued… Read More
Court divided over funding mechanism for consumer watchdog
The justices were divided at oral argument on Tuesday in a challenge to the constitutionality of Congress’s decision to provide funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau through the Federal Reserve, rather than the normal annual appropriations process. A federal appeals court in Texas ruled earlier this year that the CFPB’s funding structure violates Article… Read More
Justices deny appeals from anti-abortion activists, Eastman, and former New Jersey candidates
The Supreme Court on Monday morning declined to take an appeal by anti-abortion activists in a First Amendment dispute with Planned Parenthood, as well as a test of New Jersey’s “slogan statutes.” After adding 12 cases to their merits docket for the 2023-24 term on Friday, the justices on Monday denied review in nearly 900… Read More
Mandatory minimums, payday lending, and voting rights in the first session of the court’s new term
The Supreme Court will kick off its 2023-24 term on the traditional first Monday in October. The court’s October argument session will feature six arguments over five days, on topics ranging from federal sentencing laws to voting rights. And although the court did not make an official announcement, its website indicates that it plans to… Read More
Twelve cases added to Supreme Court calendar
The Supreme Court on Friday issued orders from its so-called “long conference” – the justices’ private conference in the last week of September, at which they met for the first time since the end of June to add new cases to their docket. This year the long conference yielded 12 new grants, on topics ranging… Read More
Justices take major Florida and Texas social media cases
The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to weigh in on the constitutionality of controversial laws in Texas and Florida that would regulate how large social media companies like Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter) control content posted on their sites. The laws were enacted in 2021 in response to legislators’ beliefs that the companies… Read More
Consumer watchdog funding fight goes before justices
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress consolidated the task of enforcing federal consumer finance laws into one agency. It created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect consumers in the marketplace and, in part, regulate predatory financial products, like the high-risk mortgages that had contributed to the crash. As part of its… Read More
Court denies Alabama’s request to use voting map with only one majority-Black district
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s request to allow it to use a congressional map in the 2024 elections that a lower court had concluded likely violates the Voting Rights Act. The brief unsigned order, from which there were no public dissents, came less than four months after a divided Supreme Court agreed that… Read More
Alabama voters tell justices to stay out of election map dispute
Lawyers for Alabama voters urged the justices to stay out of a dispute over the state’s congressional map. Eight days after the state asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block lower-court rulings holding that a map drawn earlier this year likely violates the Voting Rights Act, the voters told the justices that the state’s appeal… Read More