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Under the cover of night, a work crew removed the statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney — author of the infamous Dred Scott decision — from the grounds of the State House, ending the monument’s 145-year prominent perch in Annapolis. At 12:20 a.m. Friday, flatbed trucks with equipment including a large crane pulled onto the street encircling the State House. Workers cordoned off the front lawn of the historic building and placed straps around the statue, the latest monument linked to the Confederate era to be removed from a public square. Just before 2 a.m., the...

“Does a state violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause or Free Speech Clause when it punishes a judge who has discretionary authority to solemnize marriages because she states that her religious beliefs preclude her from performing a same-sex wedding?” That’s the question Judge Ruth Neely from Pinedale, Wyoming, wants the Supreme Court to answer. On August 4, she filed a petition with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), asking them to review a March 7, 2017 ruling from the Wyoming Supreme Court. That ruling handed down a public censure and effectively removed her from a circuit court...

In the wake of a violent white supremacist rally in neighboring Virginia, House Speaker Michael E. Busch said Monday it’s time to take down Maryland’s most prominent Confederate-era monument. Busch said the statue of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney — author of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to black people — should no longer preside over the front lawn of the Maryland State House.“It certainly doesn’t belong there,” said Busch, an Anne Arundel County Democrat.“It's the appropriate time to remove it,” he said. Leaving it in place after white supremacists...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says the Trump administration can strictly enforce its ban on refugees, but is leaving in place a weakened travel ban that includes grandparents among relatives who can help visitors from six mostly Muslim countries get into the U.S. The justices acted Wednesday on the administration’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling last week. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson ordered the government to allow in refugees formally working with a resettlement agency in the United States. Watson also vastly expanded the family relations that refugees and visitors can use to get into the country.

BREAKING: Supreme Court says Trump administration can enforce refugee ban for now.

The Government’s motion seeking clarification of our order of June 26, 2017, is denied. The District Court order modifying the preliminary injunction with respect to refugees covered by a formal assurance is stayed pending resolution of the Government’s appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and Justice Gorsuch would have stayed the District Court order in its entirety.

EXCLUSIVE: Felicity Jones will star as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis Of Sex, with Mimi Leder set to direct for Focus Features and Participant Media. The film will shoot in Montreal in September. The drama follows the travails of Ginsburg as she faced numerous obstacles to her fight for equal rights throughout her career. Daniel Stiepleman wrote the script, which made the 2014 Black List. Robert W. Cort is producing with Ram Bergman exec producing. Ginsberg was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, becoming only the second female justice (after...

Lawyers for the state of Hawaii and other challengers to President Trump's executive order argued to the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the current phase of that dispute should play out first in a lower appeals court. The variety of Supreme Court actions that the Trump Administration has sought are either outside of normal procedures or are unnecessary, the new filing contended. Administration lawyers moved late last week to get the Supreme Court itself to clarify what it meant on June 26 in narrowing the government's power to impose a sweeping exclusion of foreign nationals from Muslim-majority nations and of...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4705146/Trump-s-travel-ban-diluted-State-Department-again.html

(Photo: ADF/Screengrab)Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene's Flowers in Richland, Washington, speaks as supporters rally around her in November 2016.Barronelle Stutzman, also known as the "Christian grandmpa florist," is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her appeal to reverse a Washington court's decision earlier this year that found her guilty of discrimination for refusing to provide flowers for a gay wedding.The Associated Press reported on Sunday that lawyers for Stutzman are claiming that Washington's high court violated her First Amendment protection for artistic expression in its ruling in February.Alliance Defending Freedom positioned in a post on Friday that Stutzman is taking...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has declined a proposal by Democrat Commissioner Ellen Weintraub to undertake new rulemaking regarding alleged foreign influence in the 2016 election to target conservative media including the Drudge Report and Breitbart News, stating it “cannot support proposals that would burden the free speech rights of American citizens based on incomplete information about foreign activities in the 2016 election.” The FEC has declined to consider new rulemaking over alleged foreign influence in the 2016 presidential election that could target conservative media including InfoWars and Breitbart News. In a statement released by Vice Chair Caroline Hunter and...

The Trump administration has told the Supreme Court that a lower court ruling earlier this week altering an executive order on immigration would bring thousands more refugees into the county and requires the justices’ “immediate intervention,” according to filing documents obtained early Saturday by Fox News. In a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court late last month lifted key components of an injunction against President Trump's temporary travel ban on refugees and visitors from six mostly-Muslim countries.

The Latest on a judge’s decision on President Donald Trump’s travel ban (all times local): 3:50 p.m. The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court for greater freedom in limiting visitors to the United States from six mostly Muslim countries and refugees from around the world. The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal with the high court late Friday that seeks to undo a Hawaii judge’s ruling from a day earlier. That ruling diluted President Donald Trump’s restrictions on refugees and visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

We are all familiar with the old adage that hard cases make bad law. But perhaps the more appropriate aphorism for modern-day courts is that high-profile political cases make bad law. ... The missing likely-to-succeed standard ... It strikes me as dangerous for the court to suggest (albeit implicitly) that lower courts can in some undefined set of cases issue a preliminary injunction or a stay without even addressing the "likely to succeed" component of the relevant analysis. This could unintentionally cause a loosening of the prerequisites for temporary relief - leaving the "extraordinary" nature of the relief as merely...

The Trump administration said Friday it will ask the Supreme Court to block a federal judge’s ruling limiting the scope of President Trump’s travel ban. “The Supreme Court has had to correct this lower court once, and we will now reluctantly return directly to the Supreme Court to again vindicate the rule of law and the executive branch's duty to protect the nation,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. The decision came one day after a Hawaii-based judge dealt Trump a defeat by ordering the government to expand the number of people who are exempt from the...

Ruling applies nationwide and means grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins are no longer subject to the ban WASHINGTON—A Hawaii judge late Thursday ordered a nationwide loosening of President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on U.S. entry for some travelers from six Muslim-majority countries, ruling the administration’s strict approach contradicted a recent Supreme Court ruling.

Evidence shows that John Roberts, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, was “hacked” by a Deep State surveillance operation overseen by Obama administration CIA director John Brennan and Obama director of national intelligence James Clapper. Roberts, the Bush appointee who made the decisive vote to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare before the 2012 election, was allegedly the victim of the same Deep State surveillance program that spied on President Donald Trump. Tapes released by Federal Judge G. Murray Snow — preserved on a Whistleblower Soundcloud page — show real estate billionaire Timothy Blixseth explaining Brennan and Clapper’s surveillance...

A U.S. appeals court refused Friday to clarify the scope of the Supreme Court's lifting of the blockade against President Trump's travel ban, citing a lack of jurisdiction. Earlier Friday, the state of Hawaii had asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to expand the categories of people who can bypass the travel ban. On Thursday, a U.S. district judge had refused to act on Hawaii's request, leaving in place the Trump administration's rules regarding what classes of people to exempt from the travel ban. The judge in that case, Derrick Watson, also claimed he did not have the...

In remarks given at a judicial conference in Pennsylvania this week, Roberts reiterated his long-held view that the Court should speak with one voice wherever possible — that is to say, he supports a consensus-driven approach to opinion writing in which the justices strive for unanimity and avoid writing their own concurrences or dissents. In doing so, he appeared to rebuke Gorsuch, who has flashed a propensity for writing on his own in his first months as a justice.

Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- In Peruta v. California, the Ninth Circuit held that the right to carry concealed arms outside the home was not protected by the Second Amendment.The Ninth refused to consider that the ability to carry openly was prohibited by California law, thus nullifying the right to carry outside of the home. On Monday, 26 June, the Supreme Court officially denied the petition for a write of certiorari. The Ninth Circuit denial of Second Amendment rights outside the home will stand. From politico.com: The Supreme Court declined to review a case about the right to carry firearms outside the home,...