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Supreme Court Rejects Limits on Life Terms for Youths

The court, which has for years been cutting back on harsh punishments for juvenile offenders, changed course in a 6-to-3 decision.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that judges need not determine that juvenile offenders are beyond hope of rehabilitation before sentencing them to die in prison. The decision, concerning a teenager who killed his grandfather, appeared to signal the end of a trend that had limited the availability of severe punishments for youths who commit crimes before they turn 18.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 ruling, said it was enough that the sentencing judge exercised discretion rather than automatically imposing a sentence of life without parole.

“In a case involving an individual who was under 18 when he or she committed a homicide,” he wrote, “a state’s discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.” Continue reading.

Trump and the GOP suffer another humiliating Supreme Court defeat

According to CNN, the Supreme Court has once again declined to take up a lawsuit asserting the 2020 presidential election was tainted by voter fraud.

On Monday, the high court declined to take up a case filed by Republicans that the voting in Pennsylvania was tainted by changes to voting rules.

Noting that the latest dismissal by the court is signal that the justices want no part in Donald Trump’s assertion that he was robbed of his second term, CNN reports, “Before Monday, the justices had already declined several requests to dive into one of the most litigious elections in history, denying petitions from then-President Donald Trump and other Republicans seeking to overturn election result in multiple states President Joe Biden won.” Continue reading.

How the Supreme Court found its faith and put ‘religious liberty’ on a winning streak

The Supreme Court’s current term is winding down, but there are still several cases to be decided – and, as with most terms, a controversy over church-state matters looms.

Fulton vs. City of Philadelphia is among the cases still to be decided. It centers on a requirement that private agencies that receive city funding – in this case an adoption agency – do not discriminate against any community they serve, including members of the LGBTQ community. This nondiscrimination requirement applies to both religious and nonreligious organizations. But the adoption service at the heart of the case – Catholic Social Services – refused to comply, asserting that not being allowed to discriminate against gay couples infringed upon its religious beliefs.

It would appear on first glance that the city’s position is strong – after all, it provides the money and has a legitimate interest in ensuring that funding does not perpetuate discrimination based on sexual orientation. Continue readi ng.

Biden announces commission to study expanding the Supreme Court

President Biden will sign an executive order Friday that creates a bipartisan commission to study a number of Supreme Court reforms, including expanding the number of seats on the court, the White House said.

Why it matters: The six-month commission, promised by Biden throughout the 2020 election, will provide an analysis of the principal arguments surrounding the divisive subject. Progressives are pushing for more seats after former President Trump appointed three justices to the court.

Context: Biden has not said definitively whether he supports adding seats to the court, though his congressional allies — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — have advocated for additional seats as a response to Republicans quickly filling former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat during an election year. Continue reading.

Trump-era grievances could get second life at Supreme Court

The Supreme Court’s most conservative justices are signaling an interest in issues closely associated with former President Trump, from rules on social media platforms to how elections are governed.

Justice Clarence Thomas this week opined on how Twitter might be more strictly regulated after it banned Trump from its platform and predicted the court would soon be called upon to address Big Tech’s “highly concentrated control” of speech.

He and fellow conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also recently made clear their hope to address whether state officials and courts have the power to make changes to election rules after a number of states relaxed voting restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading.

Clarence Thomas moves to erode First Amendment in retaliation against tech companies that punished Trump

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says that judges will soon have “no choice” but to regulate the tech companies that punished former President Donald Trump for inciting a failed insurrection.

Thomas made the remarks in a Monday Supreme Court opinion that vacated a lower court ruling, which had prevented Trump from blocking certain Twitter followers who he did not want to comment on his tweets.

Thomas, who traditionally sides with corporations, suggested that the high court would allow Congress to erode the First Amendment by arguing that tech companies do not have the free speech rights to control their platforms. Continue reading.

Supreme Court upholds FCC move to loosen media ownership rules

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a move by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to relax media ownership rules, handing down a unanimous ruling that favors large broadcasters.

The decision dealt a blow to challengers who argued that laxer regulations could usher in more media consolidation at the expense of minority and female media ownership.

The justices found the FCC had acted reasonably in its 2017 regulatory rollback, which included scrapping a rule that had barred a single company from owning a radio or TV station along with a newspaper in a single local market. Continue reading.

Supreme Court appears to favor upholding voting laws lower court found unfair to minorities

The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed inclined to make it more difficult to challenge widely used voting laws that in practice might be more of a burden to minority voters.

The justices spent two hours in a teleconference hearing reviewing the protections provided by the Voting Rights Act, first passed in 1965 to forbid laws that result in discrimination based on race.

The cases involve two voting regulations in Arizona that are in common use across the country. One throws out the ballots of those who vote in the wrong precinct. The other restricts who may collect ballots cast early for delivery to polling places, a practice President Donald Trump denounced as “ballot harvesting.” Continue reading.

Supreme Court faces landmark challenge on voting rights

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday over a set of Arizona voting restrictions alleged to be racially discriminatory in a dispute that could set the most important voting rights precedent in nearly a decade.

A potentially landmark ruling in the coming months may determine whether a suite of voting restrictions working their way through GOP state legislatures across the country will survive legal scrutiny before the 2022 midterm elections and the next race for the White House.

For the 6-3 conservative-majority court, the case marks a first chance to define the sweep of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). That provision, Section 2, makes it illegal to enact laws that place an unequal burden on the franchise of racial minorities. Continue reading.

The Supreme Court undercuts Trump’s voter fraud claims — one last time

Former president Donald Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results has long lost its direct relevancy, now that his successor, Joe Biden, has been inaugurated. But for more than a few dead-enders in Trump’s party, the claims contained in that challenge live on. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote Monday, Republicans can’t quit Trump’s and his allies’ claims, even as they’ve watered them down and are now using them to argue for changing election laws that could otherwise hurt the GOP in the post-Trump era.

But now the Supreme Court delivered perhaps one final blow to Trump’s effort — thanks in significant part to Trump’s own nominees to the court.

As The Post’s Robert Barnes reported Monday, in addition to its key decision against Trump’s attempt to prevent a grand jury from getting access to his tax returns, it also declined to take up cases involving Trump’s and Trump allies’ challenges to the election results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona: Continue reading.

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