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The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the deportation of several immigrants who were put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties. The decision comes after the court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger. The court’s latest order makes clear that the South Sudan flight detoured weeks ago can now complete the trip. It reverses findings from...

Just over two weeks after the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors, the justices agreed to take up another high-profile issue involving transgender people – specifically, the constitutionality of laws that bar transgender women and girls from participating on girls’ and women’s sports teams. In a list of orders released on Thursday morning, the court granted a pair of petitions filed by Idaho and West Virginia, seeking review of lower-court rulings that barred them from enforcing such laws. Idaho was the first state to enact such a ban in...

A federal judge in New York has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to strip immigration protections from Haitians fleeing instability in their country. The ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan preserves, for now, the Biden administration’s 2024 extension of the protections, known as “temporary protected status,” for up to 500,000 Haitians living in the United States. Cogan’s 23-page decision is the latest legal development in the administration’s efforts to roll back TPS designations and other immigration programs that allow immigrants from countries facing humanitarian crises to live and work here legally. In a separate case, the Supreme Court...

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with plans to overhaul the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by reorganizing several of its agencies and substantially cutting their workforce. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose in Providence, Rhode Island, issued an injunction at the behest of a group of Democratic-led states who challenged a plan HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced in March to consolidate agencies and fire 10,000 of the department’s employees. The layoffs, in addition to earlier buyout offers and firings of probationary employees, reduced the number of full-time HHS employees to...

Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking at a moment when threats against judges are on the rise, warned on Saturday that elected officials’ heated words about judges can lead to threats or acts of violence by others. Without identifying anyone by name, Roberts clearly referenced Republican President Donald Trump and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York when he said he has felt compelled to issue public rebukes of figures in both parties in recent years. “It becomes wrapped up in the political dispute that a judge who’s doing his or her job is part of the problem,” Roberts said...

The Supreme Court has set a new, higher bar for judges seeking to block Trump administration policies nationwide. But some legal routes remain open.A Supreme Court ruling limiting the ability of judges to block White House policies will bring a wave of urgency and uncertainty to the federal courts, experts said, as plaintiffs pursue new ways of blocking President Trump’s agenda and judges sort out how to apply the court’s complex ruling. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that district court judges likely exceeded their authority with so-called nationwide injunctions. Also known as universal injunctions, they have been used by...

Emboldened by Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the president said his administration will flex its authority on issues ranging from immigration to higher education.An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president’s top priorities, a White House official said, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limits the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president’s agenda “as soon as possible,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to...

SummarySupreme Court ruling causes confusion over birthright citizenship Lawyers and advocates field calls from anxious clients Uncertainty remains on policy across different states WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court's conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges' power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about...

The court tied the hands of judges at a time when Congress has been cowed and internal executive branch constraints have been steamrolled.The Supreme Court ruling barring judges from swiftly blocking government actions, even when they may be illegal, is yet another way that checks on executive authority have eroded as President Trump pushes to amass more power.The decision on Friday, by a vote of 6 to 3, will allow Mr. Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship to take effect in some parts of the country — even though every court that has looked at the directive has...

Why did Justice Kagan oppose nationwide injunctions in 2022 but support them now? @ScottJenningsKY : "In 2022, Justice Kagan actually gave an interview and said out loud what a lot of conservatives have been saying this year, which is that how can it be that an individual district court judge can issue a nationwide injunction and effectively grind a presidency to a halt and, you know, take years and years and years for it to go through the process?" "Now, she obviously voted the other way this time around. I wonder what caused her to change her opinion."

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In what some are taking as perhaps a bad omen, President Trump responded to the SCOTUS ruling on nationwide injunctions by screaming "UNLIMITED POWER!" and shooting lightning from his fingertips. "That's probably not good," said an eyewitness as a cackling Trump scorched an aide with lightning. "It sounded like he said something to the effect of ‘Now, nothing can stop me from controlling the galaxy'. It's a bit concerning." While many conservatives had felt that district courts issuing nationwide injunctions was an unfair check on executive power, they no longer felt so sure after witnessing Trump levitate...

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., released Friday, finally put the brakes on the reckless abuse of nationwide injunctions by lower courts—and has Democrats in full meltdown mode. The left’s favorite judicial weapon just got neutered, and the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore. The liberal wing of the court didn’t do itself any favors, either. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent was so horrible that Justice Amy Coney Barrett felt compelled to call it out in the majority opinion. But Justice Elena Kagan’s credibility also took a direct hit. In a stunning display of judicial flip-flopping, Kagan’s...

Democrats warned the decision paves the way for “a vile betrayal of our Constitution.” Democratic members of Congress sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling that limited district courts’ use of nationwide injunctions in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. The court did not rule on whether the Trump administration has legal standing to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of some immigrants. Yet Democrats warned the decision paves the way for “a vile betrayal of our Constitution,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in a social media post. “The Supreme Court’s decision...

Maryland parents have a religious right to withdraw their children from classes on days that storybooks with gay and transgender themes are discussed, the court ruled.Public schools in Maryland must allow parents with religious objections to withdraw their children from classes in which storybooks with L.G.B.T.Q. themes are discussed, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s liberal members in dissent. The case extended a winning streak for claims of religious freedom at the court, gains that have often come at the expense of other values, notably gay rights. The case concerned a...

The CASA ruling has been handed down, and rogue judges and unhinged liberals are hardest hit. While it doesn’t address the issue of birthright citizenship per se, it did strike down the national injunction power that district judges have been abusing since the outset of the second Trump presidency. SCOTUSblog set up the issue: Whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts' nationwide preliminary injunctions on the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states. And in a 6-3 ruling, the Court ruled:...

For months, President Donald Trump has griped in private about some of the Supreme Court justices he appointed during his first term, believing they were not sufficiently standing behind his agenda. But on Friday, all of his appointees — including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the one who’s earned his particular ire — ruled in his favor in a case challenging his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, with Barrett writing the majority opinion. The ruling was a decisive win for a president who has long railed against unelected judges blocking some of his executive actions. The decision limits lower...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Friday ruled that individual judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions, but the decision left unclear the fate of President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship.The outcome was a victory for the Republican president, who has complained about individual judges throwing up obstacles to his agenda. He called it a “monumental victory.”But a conservative majority left open the possibility that the birthright citizenship changes could remain blocked nationwide. Trump’s order would deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally.The cases now return to lower courts, where...

SummaryCase was latest Obamacare challenge to reach Supreme Court US Preventive Services Task Force appointments at issue WASHINGTON, June 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday preserved a key element of the Obamacare law that helps guarantee that health insurers cover preventive care such as cancer screenings at no cost to patients.The justices in a 6-3 decision reversed a lower court's ruling that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which under the 2010 law formally called the Affordable Care Act has a major role in choosing what services will be covered, is composed of members who were...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court issued a ruling this morning that it is legal for President Donald Trump to be the president. In a 6-3 decision, the court held that since Trump was, in fact, elected to be president, his ability to "do president things" was protected under the law. "The court hereby rules that a president can be president," wrote Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who penned the decision for the majority. "By virtue of being president, that person is the president. I can't freaking believe I'm having to explain this." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a scathing dissent...

The Supreme Court upheld the religious freedom of Maryland parents who challenged a school district policy that prevented them from opting their children out of lessons involving LGBTQ books. The court ruled, 6-3, that the Maryland parents were entitled to a preliminary injunction. The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, involved Maryland parents of various faith backgrounds—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim—asking the court for a temporary injunction, allowing them to opt their kids out of instruction that utilize LGBTQ books that Montgomery County Public Schools has mandated schools teach. Although Maryland law requires schools to allow parents to opt their children out...