Free Republic

Perhaps encouraged by Democratic senators in August warning the Supreme Court to “heal” itself or face restructuring, one progressive group has doubled down on advocating court-packing, while another liberal group this week released a “Supreme Court shortlist” of 32 prospective judicial nominees for a future Democratic president, filled mostly with activists but only a few judges. It would appear that the left is increasingly focused on the Supreme Court, and many of the groups expressed annoyance that the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates—one of whom could be in a position to fill the next high court vacancy—have had little to say...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic "conversion prayer" or receive a failing grade. The Thomas More Law Center is defending Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in 11th grade at La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland. Wood refused to deny her faith "by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – 'There is no god by allah and Muhammad is the messenger of allah,'" Thomas More said. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled...

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in three cases that could set important precedents about whether federal civil rights protections on the basis of sex also guarantee legal protections on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. The three cases involve people who claim to have been fired because they are gay or identify as transgender. Two are gay men and the other is a man who identifies as a woman. The two gay men argue that they were fired due to their sexual orientation. However, decisions were split at the U.S. Court of Appeals as to whether...

All of the usual anti-Kavanaugh protesters showed up in D.C. this past Sunday to mark the one-year anniversary of Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court. Women's March promoters partnered with NARAL, the Center for American Progress, and Demand Justice to train demonstrators in the art of screaming, "Impeach the m-----------" and chanting, "Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!" To show what their version of democracy looks like, this scuzzy bunch of mostly female agitators took to the streets around the Supreme Court building. They blocked traffic and created a mess before marching...

In a new NPR series called "Off the Script," 55-year-old social students and civics teacher Ruben Sandoval, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, asked Beto O'Rourke how he would circumvent the Supreme Court to achieve his mandatory buyback of AR-15s. Specifically, Sandoval referenced two landmark cases that protect the Second Amendment and an American's right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. "As you know, one of the courses that I teach, I teach Texas government and also state and local government bath at Coronado and EPCC [El Paso Community College]. So we kind of discuss these issues as...

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The case arose when Harris Funeral Homes, a fifth generation family business, was sued by the EEOC because of its sex-specific dress code. The question before the Court is whether the word “sex” in Title VII and other civil rights laws includes “transgender status.” There is much at stake. A change in the law could force organizations to open women’s shelters to biological men. It could throw open the doors of locker rooms, restrooms and showers to the opposite...

The oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the case of Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC and two other cases involving LGBT employment issues seem to indicate that we’re heading toward yet another set of close decisions split along partisan lines. If you’ve been following our ongoing coverage of the case here, you’re already aware that the dispute in Harris involves a funeral director named Aimee Stephens who was fired after announcing that he was transgender and planned to begin living and dressing as a woman on the job. Two other cases deal with gay workers who were allegedly...

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued New York could have changed their law at any time in the past half-decade and only chose to do so in order to avoid defending the statute before the Supreme Court– which could lead to a win for gun rights. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed continued efforts by New York officials to hold off on a challenge to the City’s restrictive gun laws. New York had asked the nation’s high court to turn away the case brought by three local gun owners who argue the City’s “premises permit” scheme — which...

Many times we at ANP have warned that if we thought liberals went crazy after the election of President Trump, then became downright unhinged during the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, just to go into a freefall of depression when special counsel Robert Mueller could not establish any "collusion" with Russia on the part of the Trump campaign of 2016, we have seen nothing that will compare to the outright insanity we will observe by crazed liberals should President Trump win reelection. While that prospect is yet more than a year away, watching the events over...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a 2020 presidential contender, on Monday issued a judicial ethics plan that would close a loophole and allow misconduct investigations of federal judges to continue even if they are elevated to the Supreme Court or resign from the bench. “It’s time to ensure that judges do not hear cases where they have conflicts of interests, strengthen our nation’s ethics rules for judges, and ensure accountability for judges who violate these rules,” Warren wrote in the proposal. Closing the loophole would have ramifications for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who has faced sexual assault allegations, which he...

Frustrated liberals have been asking for the last four years what it’s going to take for President Trump’s supporters to abandon him. Because, like, don’t they know he’s about to be impeached!? New York Times columnist David Brooks attempted to answer the question last week by imagining a conversation with someone he simply referred to as “Flyover Man,” because apparently he didn’t know a single real Trump supporter. It never seems to occur to liberals that perhaps the real problem isn’t that a lot of people continue supporting the president even though he can be strange, vulgar, and sometimes even...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a challenge to Republican-drawn congressional districts in Ohio that Democrats said were drawn to unlawfully diminish their political clout, a move that follows a major ruling by the justices in June that foreclosed such lawsuits. The court’s action in the case involving a practice known as partisan gerrymandering means that 16 U.S. House of Representatives districts will no longer be reconfigured, as a three-judge panel had ordered in May. The Supreme Court had put the panel’s ruling on hold ahead of its rulings, issued the next month, in two major gerrymandering cases...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was reportedly absent from the bench Monday as the court reconvened for its new term. Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opening remarks that Thomas was "indisposed" due to an illness but said the conservative judge would still be participating in deciding the three cases the court is hearing arguments about, according to Reuters. Details of Thomas's illness were not immediately disclosed. SNIP

The U.S. Supreme Court kicked off its new nine-month term with a flurry of activity on Monday, hearing arguments in three cases and rejecting numerous appeals that piled up over the summer. With conservative Justice Clarence Thomas absent due to an unspecified illness, the court began hearing its first argument in a case focusing on whether states can discard the so-called insanity defense in criminal prosecutions. The case involved a man sentenced to death in Kansas for fatally shooting four family members while suffering from severe depression. In remarks from the bench before the first argument, Chief Justice John Roberts...

In an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, the ABA says: “Imposing governmental attorneys’ fees on patent applicants who choose civil actions under [the law] will hamper equal access to justice and chill the assertion of meritorious claims.” The Supreme Court is considering in Peter v. NantKwest Inc. whether the phrase “all the expenses of the proceedings” in a provision of U.S. patent law includes expenses incurred by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when its attorneys defend the office in litigation

Louisiana’s aberrant take on the right to a jury trial in America will itself go on trial Monday, as the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a challenge to the non-unanimous verdict law that state voters just ditched, but only going forward. On the opening day of the court’s new term, the justices are set to take up the case of Evangelisto Ramos, an oil-supply boat worker who was convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of 43-year-old Trenice Fedison in New Orleans.

James Kraig Kahler intentionally shot and killed his wife, their two teenage daughters and Mrs. Kahler’s grandmother in 2009. Now he’s going to the Supreme Court. At his Kansas trial, the defense psychiatrist testified that Mr. Kahler had lost touch with reality due to a serious mental disorder. But the defendant couldn’t offer an insanity defense, because Kansas passed a law abolishing it in 1995. Some form of an insanity defense has been part of English law since the late Middle Ages.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up a major abortion case that could lead to new curbs on access to the procedure as it considers the legality of a Republican-backed Louisiana law that imposes restrictions on abortion doctors.

The Supreme Court of the United States announced Friday that it would take up its first abortion case since Justice Brett Kavanaugh was added to the bench. According to a court order, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of June Medical Services v. Gee, which comes out of Louisiana and deals with a state requirement that abortion providers have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 miles. Proponents of the admitting privileges requirement say that the measure is a safety precaution for women undergoing the procedures. “Abortion activists are more than willing to lower the bar on...

While I don’t know them personally, I can’t help but feel empathy for Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s two young daughters, Margaret and Liza. I’m sure it’s hard for them to understand why anyone would attempt to humiliate someone they know is a wonderful man, all based on something even the attackers know is a lie. I suspect that, like me, Margaret and Liza never thought they would have a famous father, or that anything so terrible could happen to him as it has to all three of us. My father certainly wasn’t famous when I was growing up, but he is...