Tag: Supreme Court Watch

Jamie Raskin Goes Scorched Earth on SCOTUS Trump Immunity Case

Parnas, who had been tasked with helping Giuliani connect with Ukrainian officials in his effort to “find dirt on the Bidens” ahead of the 2020 election, has been unearthing the inner workings of his former associates since the scheme blew up. On Tuesday, Parnas revealed that Giuliani had basically insisted on bribes while meeting with […]

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Sam Alito Thinks We’re All Stupid

ADF is not hiding its strategy. Alito, on the other hand, keeps to the stealthy shadows, attempting to advance arguments that promote fetal personhood while simultaneously insisting that this unprecedented expansion of personhood rights won’t come at the expense of women’s lives and autonomy. It’s a deception of the highest order and onlookers might be […]

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The Supreme Court Might Put Trump Above the Law

But he also expressed concern about malicious prosecutions. “You know how easy it is in many cases for a prosecutor to get an indictment,” Roberts remarked to Dreeben, tacitly accepting Trump’s assertion that baseless prosecutions would inevitably occur without immunity. And at one point he seemed to assume that some form of presidential immunity existed […]

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The Jaw-Dropping Things Trump Lawyer Says Should Qualify for Immunity

Idaho already has a near-total abortion ban, but the Alliance Defending Freedom, the far-right Christian legal advocacy group arguing the lawsuit on behalf of the state, is utilizing the case to advance the idea of fetal personhood. This stipulation would effectively require doctors to treat fetuses—no matter how underdeveloped—with the same medical care as the […]

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Trump Lawyer Makes Disturbing Immunity Claim Before Supreme Court

Idaho already has a near-total abortion ban, but the Alliance Defending Freedom, the far-right Christian legal advocacy group arguing the lawsuit on behalf of the state, is utilizing the case to advance the idea of fetal personhood. This stipulation would effectively require doctors to treat fetuses—no matter how underdeveloped—with the same medical care as the […]

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Anti-Choice Lawyer Reveals Giant Hole in Logic in SCOTUS Abortion Case

“Only pregnant women will be forced to surrender their EMTALA rights to make healthcare decisions about their bodies, and only pregnant women will have treatment guaranteed under federal law limited to Idaho’s prohibitory terms,” the brief reads. “Pregnant women stripped of their EMTALA rights under bans like Idaho’s have already experienced devastating harms because of […]

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Anti-Choice Lawyer Gives Away the Game in SCOTUS Abortion Case

“Only pregnant women will be forced to surrender their EMTALA rights to make healthcare decisions about their bodies, and only pregnant women will have treatment guaranteed under federal law limited to Idaho’s prohibitory terms,” the brief reads. “Pregnant women stripped of their EMTALA rights under bans like Idaho’s have already experienced devastating harms because of […]

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The Latest Supreme Court Case on Abortion Is the Scariest One Yet

“Only pregnant women will be forced to surrender their EMTALA rights to make healthcare decisions about their bodies, and only pregnant women will have treatment guaranteed under federal law limited to Idaho’s prohibitory terms,” the brief reads. “Pregnant women stripped of their EMTALA rights under bans like Idaho’s have already experienced devastating harms because of […]

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The Supreme Court Wants Nothing to Do With Homelessness

Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested that even without the Eighth Amendment to rely upon, a homeless person might be able to invoke other common-law defenses to avoid punishment if they had nowhere else to go. “Do you concede that there are instances in which a necessity defense, long recognized at common law, would apply to eating […]

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How Religious Freedom Could Help Liberals Win the Abortion Rights War

The state of Indiana, along with Becket and other allies, does not make a serious constitutional argument. But it does take a view of religion that rings true to plenty of Americans. Some of those Americans might be judges. One reason that people might not understand liberal Jews, or progressives in general, to be really […]

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So, What’s Going on With Clarence Thomas These Days?

But as they put themselves to this task, the court continued to quietly snitch out the GOP for their misrule. At one point, the court warns in its unsigned opinion of an “evolving electoral map” that could “dramatically change the behavior of voters, parties, and states across the country, in different ways and at different […]

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If Trump’s Sitting in His Hush-Money Trial, Who the Heck Is Posting?

Omar, on the other hand, asked Shafik about protests specifically, pointing out several attacks against antiwar as well as Palestinian solidarity protests, including an alleged chemical attack against pro-Palestinian protesters in January that is still under police investigation, according to Shafik. Columbia has also been sued by five Jewish students and two student organizations after […]

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The Supreme Court Could Change How We Think About January 6

Let’s cast our minds back: Congress was supposed to approve a new farm bill—the massive legislation that covers nutrition, farming, and conservation policy—in 2023, five years after the 2018 farm bill went into effect. But negotiations stretched into this year, with Congress passing a one-year extension of the 2018 measure. The House Agriculture Committee is […]

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You’ll Never Guess Who Doesn’t Want to Repeal a Zombie Abortion Ban

Omar, on the other hand, asked Shafik about protests specifically, pointing out several attacks against antiwar as well as Palestinian solidarity protests, including an alleged chemical attack against pro-Palestinian protesters in January that is still under police investigation, according to Shafik. Columbia has also been sued by five Jewish students and two student organizations after […]

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The Shocking Reason Some Democrats Won’t Repeal a Zombie Abortion Ban

Omar, on the other hand, asked Shafik about protests specifically, pointing out several attacks against antiwar as well as Palestinian solidarity protests, including an alleged chemical attack against pro-Palestinian protesters in January that is still under police investigation, according to Shafik. Columbia has also been sued by five Jewish students and two student organizations after […]

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The Supreme Court May Not Have Doomed the Right to Protest After All

At the same time, the justices also held that a “mental state of recklessness” would be enough to meet that threshold. “[Colorado] must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the 7–2 majority. “The State need not prove any […]

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Don’t Panic About the Supreme Court’s Right to Protest Ruling—Yet

At the same time, the justices also held that a “mental state of recklessness” would be enough to meet that threshold. “[Colorado] must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the 7–2 majority. “The State need not prove any […]

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Alina Habba Reawakens Severe Doubts About Her Legal Education

But none of this should be news to Trump, who so far has been hit with two other gag orders in his prior legal trials. In October, Judge Arthur Engoron silenced the former president after he ushered a wealth of far-right venom onto Engoron’s chief law clerk. Trump was later fined $15,000 for violating the […]

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The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Massive Blow to the Right to Protest

Other lawmakers, such as Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, completely threw the judicial system under the bus, blaming Trump’s woes—which also include repercussions for bank fraud, sexual abuse, election interference, hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and more—as the failures of another pillar of government. “I’m very uncomfortable with the weaponized justice system,” Vance told the outlet. […]

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The Shady Right-Wing Threats to Keep Biden Off Some State Ballots

Democratic and Republican conventions are largely pre-scripted campaign events nowadays. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, political parties sometimes gathered with no clear sense of who their eventual nominee would be, with plenty of horse-trading, negotiations, and campaigning to occur on site. The advent of party primary elections, however, meant that parties found out […]

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Seriously? GOP State Official Threatens to Kick Biden Off the Ballot

No matter which definition you accept, Kennedy’s defense of the rioters—who chanted “Kill them all” while hunting down former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—is inaccurate, even from a cursory review of footage from the day. The rioters who ransacked their way through the halls of Congress did indeed wield weapons, including […]

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Do the Homeless Have the Right to Fall Asleep?

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city’s ordinances were foreclosed by the appeals court’s landmark 2019 decision in Martin v. City of Boise. In Martin, a group of homeless plaintiffs had sued Idaho’s largest city to stop it from enforcing criminal provisions that made it a misdemeanor to camp in public places. […]

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The White House Goes to the Supreme Court to Help the Homeless

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city’s ordinances were foreclosed by the appeals court’s landmark 2019 decision in Martin v. City of Boise. In Martin, a group of homeless plaintiffs had sued Idaho’s largest city to stop it from enforcing criminal provisions that made it a misdemeanor to camp in public places. […]

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Sonia Sotomayor’s Retirement Is Not the Point

Sotomayor, by comparison, has not given Americans nearly as much to be worried about with her health. Her only publicly known medical condition is type 1 diabetes, which is not life-threatening if treated properly. She received treatment from paramedics for low blood sugar in 2018, but no other serious incidents have been reported beyond that. […]

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The Supreme Court Could Puncture Prosecutorial Immunity

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a separate opinion in Burns where he concurred only with the court’s judgment. He also noted, almost in passing, that he was skeptical of Imbler’s reasoning. “[Imbler] relied for that holding upon a common law tradition of prosecutorial immunity that developed much later than 1871, and was not even a logical […]

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Anti-Choice Lawyer Makes Huge Slip-Up in SCOTUS Abortion Pill Case

Still, Trump was very likely trying to curry Yass’s favor. A person close to Trump’s campaign anonymously told The New York Times they expected Yass to make a large donation to a group backing Trump’s current presidential bid. Yass, for his part, said he had never donated to Trump and did not intend to do […]

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Supreme Court Considers Wrecking Abortion Access Nationwide

But in a bizarre rant on his social media platform last week, the GOP presidential pick admitted that he actually has half a billion dollars in cash, which he decided would be better used to fund his presidential campaign than pay back the state of New York for defrauding its taxpayers, banks, and businesses. “THROUGH […]

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How Hobby Lobby Could Be Trump’s Reproductive Rights Wrecking Ball

If the Supreme Court reanimates Comstock, it could effectively green-light a ban on some methods of contraception, all without overturning Griswold. “To the extent that the court would literally have a huge shitstorm on his hands were it to overrule yet another precedent, and one as high-profile as Griswold, yeah, this is a great interim […]

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