Tag: U.S. Supreme Court

Abortion rights face most difficult test yet at Supreme Court

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Abortion rights groups are issuing dire warnings that abortion access is likely to be sharply curtailed across the country if the Supreme Court uses a Mississippi case to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision.

The admonishments come after Mississippi on Thursday explicitly urged the justices to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling when the court reviews Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

“It cannot be overstated how dire the implications would be if Roe v. Wade were overturned,” said Vangela Wade, president of the Mississippi Center for Justice, which is co-counsel on the case. “Women across Mississippi and this nation would lose their fundamental right to chart their own future. Instead, that power would be in the hands of the government.” Continue reading.

We Now Know What the FBI Did With the 4,500 Kavanaugh Tips It Collected in 2018

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has spent nearly three years attempting to understand the nature of the FBI’s “supplemental investigation” of claims that emerged against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in the summer of 2018. The senator’s attempts to get answers from either the Trump White House or the FBI were largely unsuccessful while Trump was still in office. But Whitehouse kept trying—almost as soon as Merrick Garland was sworn in as attorney general, Whitehouse asked him to help facilitate “proper oversight” by the Senate into questions about how serious the FBI supplemental investigation really was.

Whitehouse asked Garland to explain why there was no mechanism for witnesses to report their accounts to the FBI, and why, after the FBI decided to create a “tip line,” nobody was ever told how the tips were evaluated. In his March letter to Garland, Whitehouse described that tip line as “more like a garbage chute, with everything that came down the chute consigned without review to the figurative dumpster.” Whitehouse asked Garland to explain “how, why, and at whose behest” the FBI conducted a “fake” investigation that violated standard procedures. Whitehouse also asked Garland to probe into the tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt that mysteriously vanished from Kavanaugh’s life in 2016.

And it seems he has finally gotten at least some answers. On Wednesday morning, Whitehouse’s office released a June 30 letter from FBI Assistant Director Jill C. Tyson. The letter is a response to an even older request sent by Whitehouse (and Sen. Chris Coons) asking similar questions about the supplemental background investigation—this one, sent to the FBI in August 2019. Among other revelations, Tyson’s letter indicates that the FBI’s supplemental investigation happened at the direction of the White House, that the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips the agency received were referred back to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, and that in the days of the follow-up investigation, 10 people were interviewed (it doesn’t say this, but other reporting has confirmed that neither Christine Blasey Ford nor Kavanaugh were among these 10 people). The letter clarifies that this was a supplemental background check, not a criminal investigation because that is what was sought by the White House counsel’s office. Continue reading.

Mississippi’s attorney general asks Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade

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Mississippi’s attorney general urged the Supreme Court in a Thursday brief to overrule Roe v. Wade next term when the justices review Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Calling the court’s precedent on abortion “egregiously wrong,” Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) explicitly set the dispute over Mississippi’s restrictive law on a collision course with the landmark 1973 decision in Roe that first articulated the constitutional right to abortion.

“This Court should overrule Roe and Casey,” Fitch wrote, referring also to the court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong. They have proven hopelessly unworkable. … And nothing but a full break from those cases can stem the harms they have caused.” Continue reading.

‘They’re playing the long game’: Legal experts warn post-Trump Supreme Court ‘laying foundations’ for right-wing turn

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The U.S. Supreme Court that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell rigged in their favor did not veer quite as far to the right in this past term as some feared, but legal experts cautioned that they’re “laying foundations” for a more conservative future.

The twice-impeached one-term president managed to ram through a third justice weeks before losing the Nov. 3 election, but analysts were somewhat surprised by the number of unanimous rulings and the decisions on the Affordable Care Act and a few other cases, reported The Guardian.

“I think we at the ACLU can to some degree breathe a sigh of relief,” said David Cole, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s nowhere near as bad as people thought.” Continue reading.

Should the Supreme Court have term limits?

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Pressure on Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to step downwill likely grow now that the court’s session has ended. 

Breyer, 82, joined the court in 1994. His retirement would allow President Joe Biden to nominate his successor and give Democrats another liberal justice, if confirmed.

Supreme Court justices in the U.S. enjoy life tenure. Under Article 3 of the Constitution, justices cannot be forced out of office against their will, barring impeachment. This provision, which followed the precedent of Great Britain, is meant to ensure judicial independence, allowing judges to render decisions based on their best understandings of the law – free from political, social and electoral influences. Continue reading.

Supreme Court decision amps up voting rights battle in Congress

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A controversial 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court on Thursday upholding Republican-backed voting restrictions in Arizona has upped the ante for this year’s voting rights debate in Congress.

It also means that calls to reform the Senate’s rules will only continue to grow, despite recent declarations from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) that they will not support eliminating or curtailing the filibuster.

Democratic strategists warn the high court’s decision in Brnovich v. DNC, which liberals believe has seriously undermined Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opens the door for Republican-controlled state legislatures to get more aggressive in passing restrictions that they believe will have a disproportionate impact on minority voter turnout. Continue reading.

Supreme Court leaves CDC eviction moratorium intact

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday left intact a nationwide pause on evictions put in place amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The 5-4 vote rejected an emergency request from a group of landlords asking the court to effectively end the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium, which is set to run through July.

The landlord group had asked the justices to lift the stay on a ruling by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that the moratorium amounted to an unlawful government overreach. Continue reading.

Supreme Court strikes down disclosure rules for political donors

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The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a California law that required nonprofits to hand over a list of their biggest donors.

Why it matters: Some campaign-finance advocates have feared the court will begin chipping away at disclosure rules more broadly, making it harder and harder to figure out who’s funding major political causes.

The big picture: In a 6-3 ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said California had subjected donors to the threat of public harassment and intimidation, undermining their First Amendment right to free association. Continue reading.

Supreme Court upholds GOP voting restrictions in Arizona

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The Supreme Court today upheld a pair of voting restrictions in Arizona, likely paving the way for new limitations across the country.

Why it matters: It’s the court’s biggest voting rights decision in several years. Conservatives’ victory in the 6-3 ruling, authored by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, is a sign of what’s to come. 

Details: The case concerned two voting restrictions in Arizona. The state invalidates ballots that are cast in the wrong precinct, and it also bans the practice known as “ballot harvesting,” in which third parties collect and return other people’s ballots.

Supreme Court won’t hear school’s appeal in transgender bathroom access fight

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The Supreme Court on Monday declined an appeal from a Virginia school board in a long-running battle over bathroom access, effectively handing a victory to transgender student Gavin Grimm.

The move came in an unsigned order, with two of the court’s more conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, indicating they would have taken up the appeal.

The development leaves in place a federal appeals court ruling in favor of Grimm, a transgender student who first sued his school district in Gloucester County, Va., in 2015 for access to the boys’ bathroom. Continue reading.