WASHINGTON — The dramatic dueling rulings by two federal district judges on Friday about access to a widely used abortion pill set up a lower court conflict that legal experts say will almost certainly send the dispute to the Supreme Court. “It really turbocharges the imperative for the Supreme Court to step in and to…
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday in a First Amendment challenge to an unusual federal law that makes it a crime to “encourage” unauthorized immigrants to come to or stay in the United States. Read literally, several justices suggested, the law would chill constitutionally protected speech. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked about a…
In a decision that jangled the nerves of some elected officials, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last week reaffirmed a basic liberty established by the founding fathers: the right to be rude at public meetings. The ruling sent waves of consternation across the state, where many local select board and school committee members have emerged…
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed poised on Monday to limit the scope of a federal law that adds two years of prison time to sentences for a variety of felonies if the defendant engaged in identity theft in the process. The case concerned David Dubin, who was convicted of health care fraud. Mr. Dubin,…
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a case that could hobble the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and advance a key project of the conservative legal movement: to limit the power of independent agencies. A ruling against the bureau, created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act after the financial crisis, could…
MILWAUKEE — The general election for the swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, a momentous contest that will determine whether Republicans maintain or lose their iron grip on the state’s politics, will feature a liberal Milwaukee County judge against a conservative former justice of the state’s high court. Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal from the Milwaukee…
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that an internal investigation had failed to identify who leaked a draft of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had established a constitutional right to abortion. In a 20-page report, the court’s marshal, Gail A. Curley, who oversaw the inquiry, said that investigators…
The Supreme Court has rejected the theory in past rulings, as recently as 2019. Chief Justice John Roberts implicitly ruled out support for the theory in a landmark 2019 decision, Rucho v. Common Cause, which stated that partisan gerrymanders were political matters outside the purview of federal courts. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions…
The theory’s broadest reading would deny all other state government entities — courts, election administrators, governors, independent redistricting commissions — any say in rules on elections or districts. Understand the U.S. Supreme Court’s New Term Card 1 of 6 Affirmative action. The marquee cases of the new term are challenges to the race-conscious admissions programs at…
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday over whether a graphic designer in Colorado has a First Amendment right to refuse to create websites celebrating same-sex weddings based on her Christian faith despite a state law that forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation. The case, a sequel to one from 2018 involving…