Free Republic

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Tuesday that a man’s challenge to his former placement on the No Fly List can move forward, finding the government failed to show his lawsuit is moot. Yonas Fikre, a U.S. citizen who previously resided in Sudan, claimed his placement on the list was unlawful and sued the FBI. The government later removed him from the list and signaled it was unlikely he would be readded. It then contended Fikre’s lawsuit was moot as a result and should be tossed. The government warned that not declaring lawsuits like Fikre’s moot at the onset could require...

Majority Democrats on a Senate committee on Thursday abandoned their work, which was targeting conservatives on the Supreme Court, when GOP members suggested subpoenas for the staff of leftist Justice Sonia Sotomayor... Senate Judiciary Committee “punted” on votes scheduled regarding the issuance of subpoenas for GOP donors Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow. Sen Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has accused the two of “stonewalling” an investigation into the high court “that seeks to determine whether two Republican-appointed justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, acted with any impropriety,” the report said. The confrontation was launched when ProPublica said they helped facilitate trips for...

Democrats hit the brakes on plans to subpoena conservative legal scholar Leonard Leo and billionaire Harlan Crow during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, scoring a win for the integrity of the Supreme Court. The move came after Republican Ranking Member Lindsey Graham warned Chairman Dick Durbin and other Democrats that their efforts to intimidate friends and acquaintances of conservative Supreme Court Justices, specifically Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito under the guise of "ethics reform," would backfire. "I promise you, everything that was working well with the committee is now in jeopardy," Graham warned. "You’re going to...

Justice Samuel Alito said Congress has “no authority” to regulate the Supreme Court in an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section published Friday, pushing back against Democrats’ attempt to mandate stronger ethics rules. Alito, one of the high court’s leading conservatives, is just one of multiple justices who have come under recent scrutiny for ethics controversies that have fueled the renewed push. “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito told the Journal. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.” Although the Constitution...

Far-Left justice correspondent for The Nation and frequent MSNBC pundit Elie Mystal suggested a "rich White person" take Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to "see the Titanic" amid reports of a missing tourist submersible. Mystal was criticized for "wishing death" on Alito and later claimed it was just a "joke." Responding to a tweet from New York Times columnist David French calling his comments "vile," Mystal said it was a "joke" and included a link to the Supreme Court's Dobbs opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade last year, arguing, "This is vile." Several on Twitter accused Mystal of "wishing death"...

Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday granted a request from the Justice Department to leave in place the Food and Drug Administration's approval of a widely used abortion pill, preserving access to the drug and reinstating a number of steps by the agency that made it easier to obtain while legal proceedings continue. The decision from the conservative court came in the most significant case involving abortion since it overturned Roe v. Wade less than one year ago, a ruling that threw the legal landscape into chaos and led to near-total bans on abortion in more than 12 states....

Washington — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito extended a temporary pause on a lower court order that imposed limitations on the widely used abortion pill mifepristone to Friday at 11:59 p.m. The brief order issued by Alito preserves broad access to mifepristone for two more days.

Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States have been on their guard ever since the unprecedented leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion occurred during the court’s deliberations on Roe v. Wade. The leak sparked protests throughout the country, attacks on scores of pro-life centers and faith-based institutions nationwide, and even an assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Alito said that the leak made the justices “targets for assassination.” “It was a shock because nothing like that had happened in the past,” Alito said of the leak in October. “So it certainly changed the atmosphere at the court...

House Rep. Jim Jordan pushed back against the House Judiciary Committee’s star witness Rev. Robert Schenck during a Supreme Court “Undue Influence” hearing on Thursday, challenging Schenck’s credibility in past legal proceedings. The hearing came as a result of Schenck alleging that Justice Samuel Alito leaked a Supreme Court opinion in 2014 and accusations that the justice may have leaked the Dobbs opinion in May. “One thing I’ve learned, people who mislead folks on small things, mislead them on big things,” Jordan said during the hearing. House Rep. Jim Jordan grilled conservative-turned-progressive activist Rev. Robert Schenck Thursday in a House...

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito faced backlash Tuesday for joking about a child in a Ku Klux Klan robe visiting a black Santa during arguments in a high-profile free speech case. The justices were weighing the case of a Christian graphic designer from Colorado who objects to designing wedding websites for same-sex couples when Alito proposed a hypothetical scenario, asking whether a black person dressed as Santa could refuse to take a picture with a child dressed in a KKK robe. Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson, who is representing the state in the challenge against its law, responded “No,” because...

In her recent guest essay in the New York Times, former Times reporter and columnist Linda Greenhouse accuses Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito of weaponizing religious liberty. In reality, Alito merely issued a plea that religious liberty is provided “special protection” promised by the Constitution. It appears Greenhouse actually believes religious liberty should be relegated to a lower tier status than other rights. Doing so would do serious damage to our Constitution and to the fundamental rights millions of Americans enjoy under its protection. To support her claims, Greenhouse takes aim squarely at the role religious liberty plays in America,...

On Thursday morning the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to strike down restrictive "may issue" concealed carry laws in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion and explained how the Second Amendment is not a second-class right. The arguments made by the dissenting justices were wildly irrelevant from the issue of constitutionality and current law, prompting Justice Samuel Alito to file a separate, concurring opinion destroying their claims. He also took issue with their ignorance and arrogance surrounding the facts of lawful gun ownership vs. criminality. (Take a look, bolding is mine)

Abortion has been at the forefront of American politics for 50 years, ever since the Supreme Court chose to nationalize the issue in Roe v. Wade, declaring that the federal government, as constructed by the Constitution, did indeed have a role to play in the question. The Court, as expressed by Associate Justice Harry Blackmun, determined that state laws against abortion may conflict with an expectant mother’s Constitutional “right to privacy” – a concept not actually found anywhere in the Constitution, but created for Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965. Under Roe v. Wade, the federal government can therefore split a...

On her MSNBC show on Saturday, Tiffany Cross made a quartet of claims that ran from the comically absurd to the grotesquely chilling. Cross began by calling Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, "dim-witted."Let's see. Alito was a high school valedictorian. He went on to graduate summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Princeton, and got his law degree from Yale. Care to match wits, anyone? Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr suggested a special counsel may need to be appointed to discover who released the draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and said the leaker could potentially be charged with obstruction of justice. Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered the marshal of the court to begin an investigation to discover who leaked Justice Samuel Alito’s ruling striking down the landmark 1973 decision, but Barr said that might not be enough.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal from a Catholic hospital in California that was sued after refusing to perform a hysterectomy for a transgender man. The court's denial, issued without comment, sends the lawsuit back to state court for further proceedings against the hospital and avoids, for now, the issue of when claims of religious freedom can trump anti-discrimination laws. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said the court should have taken the case. The dispute arose when Evan Minton arranged with Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Sacramento to schedule a hysterectomy, which he...

The left thinks its power is so broad as to be essentially limitless, and so singularly vested as to be checked virtually solely at its own discretion.Interested to know what the top liberal legal minds of the United States Supreme Court think about government power and your private property? First, take 10 minutes to read Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion, written for the majority, in the court’s Thursday night decision to stop the ban on rental income; then spend another 10 minutes on Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent.Here’s a hint: The left thinks its power is so overarching as to impact nearly...

For the first time in a generation, there are six conservative justices on the Supreme Court. In time, this sextet will incrementally push the Court to the right. Yet, three of them are already sounding an alarm. Twice this term, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch warned that Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett lack backbone. In an excessive force case, the conservative trio wrote that the two newest Justices were "unwilling to...bear[] the criticism that" denying the prisoner's appeal "would inevitably elicit." And in a religious liberty case, the Thomas-3 charged that Kavanaugh and Barrett lacked...

Justice Samuel Alito has drawn attention for his fiery criticism of Supreme Court rulings, with some court watchers especially struck by the degree of barely concealed hostility he directed at fellow conservative justices. Alito voiced opposition last week as the court, now with six conservative justices and three liberals, handed a narrow win to a Catholic charity and spared ObamaCare from a GOP challenge. The two decisions signaled the court may not be moving as far or as fast to the right as some expected. “My guess is that he's frustrated with what appear to be political compromises to reach...

President Joe Biden celebrated the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Obamacare on Thursday, promising to expand the law in the future. “Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision is a major victory for all Americans benefitting from this groundbreaking and life-changing law,” Biden wrote in a statement.