Latest news with #Scotusblog
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
US supreme court allows Trump administration to freeze teacher-training grants
The US supreme court is letting the Trump administration temporarily freeze $65m in teacher-training grants that would promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in a 5-4 decision. The decision came down on Friday afternoon, with five of the court's conservatives – Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh – in the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented. In the unsigned opinion, the court said that the states made it clear 'that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running', but the Trump administration had a strong case that it would not be able to reclaim any of the funds spent while the lower court's order remained in place. Friday's order came after eight states – California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin – sued over the withdrawn grants, which were supposed to fund teacher recruitment. The Trump administration canceled the funds, claiming the programs included DEI materials and were in violation of the president's executive orders. A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order against the administration in March, which would have stopped the termination of the grants in question until the lawsuit is resolved, finding that the states were likely to win their claim. The administration made its case to the supreme court that federal courts were acting beyond their authority, 'by ordering the executive branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the executive branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back', Scotusblog reported back in March.
New York Times
24-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
An Important Judicial Tool Mysteriously Goes Missing at the Supreme Court
When the Supreme Court ruled last month in favor of a woman sent to death row in Oklahoma based on lurid sexual evidence, it used a judicial tool that was once commonplace but has all but disappeared in recent years. That tool is the summary reversal. Its decline is a mystery. Summary reversals are neither full-blown rulings issued after oral arguments nor terse orders on emergency applications on what critics call the shadow docket. They are a third thing: unsigned decisions on the merits based only on what is ordinarily the first round of briefs in the case, the ones arguing over whether the justices should grant review at all. 'We use them when a lower court decision is squarely contrary to one of our precedents,' Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. explained in a 2021 speech at Notre Dame. A new study to be published in The Columbia Law Review found that in the first 15 terms after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court in 2005, it issued an average of more than seven summary reversals each term. That is a significant number in an era in which the court issues fewer than 70 signed decisions per term in argued cases. In the past four terms, by contrast, there was an average of about one summary reversal, Kalvis E. Golde, a law student at Columbia and a Scotusblog columnist, found in the study. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
