Latest news with #SecondCircuit
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
New immigration case arrives to a Supreme Court that appears wary of Trump's deportation policies
An appeal that landed at the Supreme Court Tuesday could test the justices' emerging concern about President Donald Trump's aggressive deportation policies and whether he is willing to defy judicial orders. The new administration case arises from its desire to deport migrants to South Sudan and other places where they have no connection, without sufficient notice or ability to contest their removal. A US district court judge based in Boston said last week that the administration 'unquestionably' violated his order when it began deportation flights and provided little time for migrants to challenge their removal to war-torn South Sudan. Irrespective of how the justices' respond to this latest deportation case, the controversy calls attention to developing distrust among the conservative justices regarding the Trump immigration agenda. This is one area where his norm-busting approach, typically splitting the justices along ideological lines, has driven them together. That was seen in the trajectory of earlier cases involving Venezuelan migrant deportations under the wartime Alien Enemies Act and, separately, in the justices' oral arguments in a dispute related to birthright citizenship. One of the tensest moments in that May 15 hearing came when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked US Solicitor General D. John Sauer if he was indeed saying the administration could defy a court order. 'Did I understand you correctly to tell Justice (Elena) Kagan,' Barrett began, 'that the government wanted to reserve its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York because you might disagree with the opinion?' 'Our general practice is to respect those precedents, but there are circumstances when it is not a categorial practice,' Sauer answered. 'Really?' Barrett said, leaning forward on the bench and pressing on, in search of some answer revealing adherence to court orders. She amended the hypothetical scenario to involve the high court itself. 'You would respect the opinions and judgment of the Supreme Court,' she asked, 'You're not hedging at all with respect to the precedent of this court?' 'That is correct,' Sauer said. Barrett was not the only conservative picking up on concerns voiced by liberal Kagan or asking about Trump administration regard for Supreme Court rulings. 'I want to ask one thing about something in your brief,' Justice Brett Kavanaugh said to Sauer. 'You said, 'And, of course, this Court's decisions constitute controlling precedent throughout the nation. If this Court were to hold a challenged statute or policy unconstitutional, the government could not successfully enforce it against anyone party or not, in light of stare decisis.' You agree with that?' 'Yes, we do,' Sauer said. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court is often aligned with Trump. The justices have endorsed many of his arguments for expanded executive branch authority. Last Thursday, the justices by their familiar 6-3 split bolstered the president's control over independent agencies, in that case, intended to protect workers. But when it comes to Trump's immigration crackdown, his uncompromising moves have caused the justices to shrink back. New fissures could emerge with Tuesday's case testing the deportation of migrants to places where they could face persecution and without any meaningful opportunity to contest their removal. The migrants whom the administration intended to send to South Sudan are now being held at a US military base in Djibouti. The migrants are from multiple countries, including Vietnam, Mexico, and Laos, and all have criminal records, according to the Department of Homeland Security. US District Court Judge Brian Murphy, who last week said the administration had violated his order when it undertook the deportation flight, on Monday reiterated his stance that the detainees are owed due process. 'To be clear,' he said, 'the Court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal histories. But that does not change due process.' In the administration's filing to the Supreme Court Tuesday, Sauer contended the administration had fulfilled the requirements of a Department of Homeland Security policy for such third-country deportations. Challenging Murphy's action, he wrote, 'The United States has been put to the intolerable choice of holding these aliens for additional proceeding at a military facility on foreign soil – where each day their continued confinement risks grave harm to American foreign policy – or bringing these convicted criminals back to America.' The court's response to the multitude of Trump cases arising over his many executive orders has been varied, defying any throughline. Even in the immigration sphere, Trump has on occasion prevailed. On May 19, for example, the court allowed him to lift the Biden administration's temporary humanitarian protection for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living and working in the US. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Yet Trump's drive to swiftly deport migrants deemed dangerous without the requisite due process of law has plainly fueled distrust of the administration across the federal judiciary. At the Supreme Court, the justices' confidence in Trump has been additionally undermined by the administration's stalling on the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador in mid-March and sent to a brutal prison. The justices on April 10 ordered the administration to 'facilitate' the Salvadoran national's return to the US. He is still not home. In a more recent detainee case, on May 16, the Supreme Court majority referred to Abrego Garcia as it expressed new wariness – and a new consensus – on Trump's use of 18th century wartime law for deportations. The first time the justices weighed in on a case involving Trump's effort to invoke the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, on April 7, the justices divided bitterly. Chief Justice John Roberts and most of the conservatives clashed with the liberals, who warned that the majority's decision largely favoring the administration failed to account for the 'grave harm' the alleged Venezuelan gang members faced if deported to a Salvadoran prison as Trump wanted. 'The Government's conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law,' the liberal justices wrote. 'That a majority of this Court now rewards the Government for its behavior … is indefensible. We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this.' But as Trump has accelerated his deportation tactics, the court's votes on the Alien Enemies Act have shifted. And on May 16, a new majority of liberal and conservative justices voiced fears that migrants would be deported without sufficient due process. It was becoming evident that the Trump team was only grudgingly complying, if at all, with the court's earlier order that the Alien Enemies Act required due process. Lawyers for detainees said they were given scant notification and hasty deadlines for challenging their cases. Lawyers for a group of Venezuelan migrants being held in a north Texas detention center sought an emergency order to ensure they would not be rushed out of the country; the justices responded by imposing a brief freeze in the early morning of April 19 on deportations. After taking more time to review the situation, the court on May 16 extended the freeze and ordered a lower court hearing on whether Trump was lawfully invoking the Alien Enemies Act – a measure that has been used only three times since the country's founding and only during wartime. 'Evidence now in the record (although not all before us on April 18) suggests that the Government had in fact taken steps on the afternoon of April 18 toward removing detainees under the AEA – including transporting them from their detention facility to an airport and later returning them to the facility,' the justices said in an unsigned opinion joined by conservatives and liberals. Referring to the court majority's April 19 middle-of-the-night order preventing those deportations, the justices added, 'Had the detainees been removed from the United States to the custody of a foreign sovereign on April 19, the Government may have argued, as it has previously argued, that no U.S. court had jurisdiction to order relief.' To underscore that point, the majority referred to the Abrego Garcia case as evidence that the administration might claim it could not return detainees wrongly deported. (Only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from that May 16 order suspending use of the Alien Enemies Act.) Perhaps the most important court test in these early months of Trump's second presidency will be resolution of the dispute over injunctions preventing Trump from ending birthright citizenship for babies born in the US to undocumented people or those with temporary status. The right dates to the 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment and has been reinforced by Supreme Court precedent going back to 1898. The legal issue in the case heard May 15 is not the bottom-line constitutionality of Trump's move to erase the birthright guarantee but rather the method lower court judges have used to temporarily block Trump's order signed on his first day back in office. US district court judges have employed 'nationwide injunctions,' under which a single judge blocks enforcement of a challenged policy not only in the judge's district but throughout the country. Trump wants the injunctions narrowed to cover only the individual parties to a lawsuit in a specific district. Some justices have in the past suggested lower court judges have exceeded their authority with such sweeping injunctions. But Trump may be forcing some of them to rethink that view because of the move to end more than 150 years of automatic birthright citizenship. 'Let's just assume you're dead wrong,' about the validity of Trump's executive order, Kagan told Sauer. 'Does every single person that is affected by this EO have to bring their own suit? Are their alternatives? How long does it take? How do we get the result that there is a single rule of citizenship that is the rule that we've historically applied rather than the rule that the EO would have us do?' Conservative justice Neil Gorsuch also questioned whether 'patchwork problems,' such as babies born in the US to undocumented migrants having varying citizenship rights depending on the state – could 'justify broader relief.' The remarks reflected the larger dilemma for a court that itself has pushed boundaries. Some Trump positions play to the justices' interests; but some are so extreme that they rattle the justices' own presumptions.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump appointee Barrett challenges administration on nationwide injunctions, surprises and delights liberals
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett sparred with U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer Thursday, pressing him on whether the Trump administration would follow federal court precedent. The exchange quickly became one of the day's most talked-about moments and could reignite criticism of Barrett from Trump allies. The back-and-forth took place Thursday during oral arguments in a case related to President Donald Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship with a specific focus on whether lower courts should be able to block executive actions from taking effect nationwide. Justice Barrett, a Trump appointee, grilled Sauer about the administration's stance toward lower court rulings, which followed similar lines of inquiry from her colleagues on the bench. "I want to ask you about a potential tension," she began, before stopping to correct herself. "Well, no, not a potential tension, an actual tension that I see in answers that you gave to Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Kagan." Justice Kagan Snaps At Trump Lawyer In Major Case: 'Every Court Has Ruled Against You' Barrett then asked Sauer if the Trump administration "wanted to reserve its right to maybe not follow a Second Circuit precedent, say, in New York, because you might disagree with its opinion?" Read On The Fox News App "You resisted Justice Kagan when she asked you whether the government would obey" such a precedent, she said. Sauer responded, "Our general practice is to respect those precedents. But there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice, and that is not …" Barrett interrupted, asking if that is the Trump administration's practice or "the long-standing practice of the federal government?" Sauer replied that it is "the long-standing policy of the Department of Justice." "Really?" she asked. Supreme Court Takes On Birthright Citizenship: Justices Seemingly Split On Lower Court Powers "Yes, as it was phrased to me, we generally respect circuit precedent, but not necessarily in every case," Sauer said. "Some examples might be a situation where we are litigating to get that circuit precedent overruled and so on," he added later. "That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this week," Barrett stressed, pointing to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that Trump's birthright citizenship order is unconstitutional. "And what do you do the next day, or the next week?" she asked. "Generally, we follow this," Sauer said, which provoked a somewhat incredulous response from the justice. "So, you're still saying generally?" she asked him. "And you still think that it's generally the long-standing policy of the federal government to take that approach?" The remarks sparked divided political reactions on social media, with Democratic strategist Max Burns noting, "Trump Solicitor General D. John Sauer tells Justice Amy Coney Barrett that Trump 'generally' tries to respect federal court decisions but he has the 'right' to disregard legal opinions he personally disagrees with. Coney Barrett seems to be in disbelief." "John Sauer just said the quiet part out loud: unless the Supreme Court tells them directly, Trump's team might ignore lower court rulings," said Seth Taylor, a 2024 DNC delegate. "That's not governance – that's constitutional brinksmanship." "Amy Coney Barrett (ACB) is proving once again she may the the worst SCOTUS pick ever by a Republican," conservative commentator and podcast host Cash Loren said on social media. "She has a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. … Yet you can hear her disdain for the Trump administration." 100 Days Of Injunctions, Trials And 'Teflon Don': Trump Second Term Meets Its Biggest Tests In Court Earlier this year, Barrett sided with three of the Supreme Court's liberal justices and Chief Justice John Roberts in rejecting, 5-4, the Trump administration's request to block billions in USAID money for previously completed projects. The decision sparked fierce criticism from Trump supporters, who have attempted to label Justice Barrett an "activist" justice and someone who has been insufficiently loyal to the president who tapped her for the high court. Others have pointed out her track record as a reliably conservative voter and the fact the court has lifetime appointments to allow justices to ostensibly act without undue political interference. Trump later said he had no knowledge of the attacks against her, telling reporters, "She's a very good woman." "She's very smart, and I don't know about people attacking her. I really don't know." Trump added. The court ruling could come in a matter of days or weeks. But it will likely hinge closely on the votes of two Trump appointees, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Barrett, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News Friday. Overall, he said of the hearing, "it got pretty sporty in there." "There were some lively moments, at least lively for the Supreme Court," he said, before noting the justices to watch are Gorsuch and Barrett. "Justice Barrett is probably the greatest concern right now for the Trump administration," Turley article source: Trump appointee Barrett challenges administration on nationwide injunctions, surprises and delights liberals
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lisa Rubin: The biggest takeaway from SCOTUS' birthright citizenship hearing is not an obvious one
This is an adapted excerpt from MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin's May 15 comments on the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship case. On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over Donald Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship, but the biggest takeaway from those arguments has nothing to do with birthright citizenship at all. Instead, perhaps the most important moment of Thursday's hearing came when the Trump administration's top appellate lawyer (who was previously Trump's personal Supreme Court advocate), Solicitor General D. John Sauer, revealed a troubling sign of creeping authoritarianism. During an exchange between Sauer and Justice Amy Coney Barrett — Trump's latest nominee to the court and, in most cases, a reliable conservative — the justice confronted him about the administration's approach to compliance with court orders issued by courts other than the Supreme Court (aka, federal, district and appeals courts). Sauer told Barrett that it is 'general practice' for the government to 'respect those precedents,' but added that 'there are circumstances when it is not a categorical practice.' Barrett then asked Sauer whether he believes that has been the 'general practice' of only the Trump administration or the Justice Department historically. 'As I understand it, [it is the] long-standing policy of the Department of Justice,' he replied. 'As it was phrased to me, [we] generally respect circuit precedent but not necessarily in every case. Some examples might be a situation where we're litigating to try and get that circuit precedent overruled, and so forth.' Barrett pushed Sauer further, responding that she wasn't referring to circumstances such as when the Second Circuit (one of the 13 federal appellate circuits) 'has a case from 1955 and you think it's time for it to be challenged.' 'That's not what I'm talking about,' Barrett continued. 'I'm talking about, this week, the Second Circuit holds that the executive order is unconstitutional, and then what do you do the next day or the next week?' Sauer responded again that 'generally,' the administration would follow that order. 'So you're still saying 'generally'? And you still think that it's generally the policy — long-standing policy — of the federal government to take that approach?' Barrett pressed. 'That is my understanding,' Sauer confirmed. Here's what that means in plain English: The Trump administration, through its top lawyer, is telling the Supreme Court that it doesn't believe it has to comply with lower court orders in all circumstances. And contrary to Sauer's assertion, that finds no support in long-standing DOJ policy, much less department norms. It's one thing to hear political actors — whether that's the White House press secretary or even Vice President JD Vance — assert that the administration should not be bound by federal court orders it considers lawless. But it's another thing entirely to hear the administration's top appeals lawyer say as much in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Admin Admits It Could Game Court System Without Nationwide Injunctions
Here's an interesting hypothetical: the White House wins its nationwide injunction case before the Supreme Court. Judges can no longer issue these national holds on various forms of federal government action, or face an exceedingly high bar to do so. At the same time, the high court has not ruled on the core issue of birthright citizenship. The result: lone people affected by President Trump's executive order have to sue — each individually — to say that the order is illegal. One of them, a New Yorker, makes it up to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and wins. What then? Would the Trump administration then treat its executive order as invalid for everyone else affected within the Second Circuit's jurisdiction, which includes New York, Connecticut and Vermont?. Or would it continue to deny citizenship to every other person born to undocumented parents in the area, forcing each of them to sue and receive an individual order declaring that the executive order was unlawful and cannot be applied to them? An appeal only happens when a losing party believes it is in the right, and wants a higher court to agree, overturning and adverse ruling. But would the Trump administration do that in this case? It could, hypothetically, refuse to appeal to the Supreme Court, which could then issue a national, precedent-setting order striking down the executive order. By not appealing, it could force thousands of people to file individual lawsuits against an executive order widely known and affirmed to be unconstitutional, but that, in a world without lower-court injunctions, only the Supreme Court can block. This was the nightmare scenario articulated by Justice Elena Kagan, and further buttressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, at oral arguments in the birthright citizenship nationwide injunction case on Thursday. The hypothetical illustrates the potentially very messy consequences of the Supreme Court stripping district courts of their ability to issue nationwide injunctions in cases like those challenging the birthright citizenship executive order. Justice Kagan raised it to Solicitor General John Sauer as an extreme example, the kind of hypothetical that he would need to confront in order to buttress his argument for why this could work in practice. But Sauer couldn't reassure Kagan or, later, Barrett. He said that 'our practice generally is to respect circuit precedent within the circuit.' Kagan replied that it 'generally is your practice.' She added: 'I am asking whether it would be your practice in this case?' Sauer replied more clearly: 'There are circumstances, as I was suggesting, where we think we would want to continue to litigate that in other district courts in the same circuit.' Kagan replied later, after Sauer said that the administration would obey a Supreme Court ruling finding the executive order invalid, that for the years it would take for a case to wind its way up from the district level, through the appellate courts, and on to the high court, 'there are going to be an untold number of people who, according to all the law this court has ever made, ought to be citizens who are not being treated as such.' Sauer replied with the same: individuals could always go to court and ask a judge to declare that the executive order was unlawful and cannot be applied to them. It's a stunning argument, in part because of the nature of the order. The government would not be treating them as U.S. citizens. They would be subject to deportation, though it's not clear to where: some of them could be stateless, obtaining neither the citizenship of their parents nor that which the U.S. Constitution has guaranteed them for 150 years. The administration could further game the system, Kagan suggested. She asked Sauer to assume that they 'lose in the lower courts as uniformly as you have been,' and that the government then never decides to appeal. Doing so would only offer the court with a chance to invalidate the policy nationally; not appealing would mean that they could keep the executive order in effect while losing each individual lawsuit. 'Why would you take this case to us?' Kagan asked, adding later: 'If I were in your shoes, there is no way I would approach the Supreme Court in this case.' 'The government has no incentive to bring this case to the Supreme Court, because it's not really losing anything,' she added. Sauer said eventually that a person injured by the government's failure to comply with a Second Circuit precedent could file a lawsuit that eventually makes its way up to the Supreme Court. Later on, Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed on the same point: would the administration continue to implement the executive order in the Second Circuit, even if it lost an individual case about the same order in the same circuit? Sauer replied again by saying that there were some cases where certain precedents were 'not categorical.' He added that he believed it was nothing new: all administrations do that. Barrett replied with a loud 'really?' to that argument. She remarked later that Sauer seemed to be saying that the government would respect 'the opinions and judgments of the Supreme Court' but that it would only respect the 'judgment but not necessarily the opinion of the lower court.' The practical impact of this all would be to allow the government to continue enforcing its executive order — depriving people born in the U.S. of their citizenship — even after appeals courts ruled it unlawful. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson summed up the result later. 'Your argument turns our justice system into a catch-me-if-you-can kind of regime from the standpoint of the executive where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people's rights,' she said.
NDTV
15-05-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
Arun Subramanian: The Indian-Origin Judge Overseeing Sean 'Diddy' Combs' Trial
US District Judge Arun Subramanian on Monday began presiding over the high-stakes federal trial of rapper Sean 'Diddy' Combs in New York. Combs is facing serious charges, including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. The trial, expected to last eight weeks, could lead to life imprisonment for Combs upon conviction. Indian-origin Judge Subramanian, appointed by former President Joe Biden in 2022, also oversaw the jury selection process. Who Is Arun Subramanian? Arun Srinivas Subramanian was born in 1979 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Indian parents who migrated to the US. His father was a control systems engineer, and his mother worked as a bookkeeper. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Case Western Reserve University and obtained his Juris Doctor (JD) from Columbia Law School in 2004. Arun Subramanian began his legal career by clerking for Judge Dennis Jacobs at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then served as a law clerk for Judge Gerard E. Lynch at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. He later went on to clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Mr Subramanian joined the law firm Susman Godfrey LLP in New York in 2007. He became a partner and worked there until 2023. Over the course of his career, he helped recover more than $1 billion for clients, including public and private entities defrauded or harmed by illegal practices. He also represented victims of child pornography trafficking and took on consumer rights cases. Mr Subramanian has contributed significantly to the legal community through pro bono service. He served for years on the pro bono panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and has taken on numerous public interest cases. Arun Subramanian was recommended for a federal judgeship by Senator Chuck Schumer. Former President Biden nominated him in 2022, and after clearing Senate procedures, he received his judicial commission in 2023. He holds the distinction of being the first South Asian judge appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
