Latest news with #USSupremeCourt
Mint
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Mint
Trump Agenda Stuck in Legal Wrangling Despite Supreme Court Wins
President Donald Trump has cast successes at the US Supreme Court as broad endorsements of his authority to fire agency heads, shrink the government workforce and halt billions of dollars in federal spending. Some lower court judges see it differently. Supreme Court rulings are supposed to be the final word on disagreements over the law. But the growing number of decisions being issued with little explanation on an emergency basis — often referred to as the 'shadow docket' — is creating even more legal wrangling. Now, tensions are building not only between the executive branch and the courts, but also within the judiciary. 'This is not helpful at all for lower court judges,' said Dickinson College President John Jones, a former federal district judge in Pennsylvania confirmed during the George W. Bush administration. 'You're reading an abbreviated opinion from the Supreme Court like it's a Rosetta Stone.' The Justice Department has been arguing that the emergency track wins should translate into victories in other lawsuits against Trump's agenda. Federal judges are pushing back, saying the high court isn't giving them enough to work with. This week, the Supreme Court stepped in to settle one such dispute that one of its earlier orders created. A Maryland federal judge had blocked Trump's removal of Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, saying it was different in key ways from a firing fight the justices resolved in the president's favor on May 22. In a two-paragraph order on Wednesday, the conservative majority said the district judge got it wrong, and the officials couldn't keep their jobs while they pressed the merits of their lawsuit. The problem, some judges say, is that more cases are reaching the justices on an emergency basis — often in the early stages, without oral arguments and with minimal or no explanation. These orders are frequently just a few paragraphs issued in weeks or even days, in stark contrast with argued cases that unfold over months and result in lengthy opinions offering more robust guidance. In yet another in the growing stack of firing cases, a Washington federal judge last week refused to let Trump oust Democrats from the Federal Trade Commission. US District Judge Loren AliKhan said she wouldn't read the 'tea leaves' in the justices' May 22 decision, a four-paragraph order that let Trump fire top officials at two other agencies. That ruling 'weighs against' the dismissed officials, she said, but doesn't settle questions over a 90-year-old precedent limiting a president's firing power at federal agencies. 'It would be an act of judicial hubris' to base a decision on what the justices might do later, AliKhan wrote in her order reinstating one of the commissioners. She was 'unsure of what to make of' the justices' order, absent more details about what they intended or how they reached their outcome. An appeals court has temporarily paused her ruling. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. A senior White House official who requested anonymity to discuss pending litigation said lower court judges aren't respecting the spirit of the Supreme Court's orders as well as the rulings themselves, and seemed to be taking extraordinary steps to avoid applying them to other cases. The official accused judges of defying the Supreme Court because of policy disagreements. The conflicts are growing as the Trump administration has taken lower court losses to the justices on an emergency basis 21 times so far this year. Unlike cases the court hears on the merits, emergency cases usually don't involve in-person arguments, robust written briefs or lengthy opinions that explain how the majority reached a decision. They don't offer a rubric for lower courts to apply new precedents going forward. For the Supreme Court's 2023-24 term, the average length of a majority opinion was 5,010 words, according to Empirical SCOTUS, a blog that tracks data on the high court. The majority's July 14 emergency order that allowed the administration to go ahead with Education Department layoffs — praised by Trump on social media as 'a Major Victory' — was only 104 words. There are rare exceptions, such as the fight over Trump's birthright citizenship plan, in which the justices heard arguments and wrote a lengthy opinion. Still, the majority's June decision — which Trump called a 'GIANT WIN' on social media — left key issues unresolved for lower courts to sort through. The justices curbed judges' authority to expansively halt government actions but didn't completely rule out nationwide blocks. They didn't touch the core question of whether Trump's executive order is constitutional. In an emergency order, the Supreme Court considers which side is ultimately likely to succeed on the underlying legal questions, but the justices also focus on the harm each side might suffer in the interim. Tension on the Supreme Court over the escalating shadow docket activity predates Trump's latest term in office. Justice Elena Kagan wrote in 2021 that the conservative majority's use of the process resulted in decisions that were becoming 'more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend.' Justice Samuel Alito accused critics of portraying the process as something 'sinister' in order to 'intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.' In remarks to a federal judges' conference on Thursday, Kagan underscored her concerns about the challenges that emergency orders create for lower courts. The justices 'don't usually meet about shadow docket matters and discuss them in the way we do with merits cases,' she said. There is 'a real responsibility that I think we didn't recognize when we first started down this road to explain things better.' The Trump administration's 21 emergency requests in six months exceeds the total number brought by the Biden administration and during the combined presidencies of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, according to research by Stephen Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor and prominent critic of the court's use of the shadow docket. The government has won 16 of the cases at least in part, even if only temporarily. The administration withdrew one application and largely lost four cases, including one filed by Venezuelans who were at risk of being sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison. Trump's wave of policies testing the bounds of presidential power has been met with a deluge of lawsuits, many of which have included requests by challengers for swift intervention by judges. The Justice Department, in turn, has quickly moved to at least temporarily halt the effects of lower court losses while it appeals. But that strategy hasn't always worked. It took just over two weeks for a federal appeals court in Boston to deny the government's emergency request to resume cuts to scientific research grants that a district judge blocked. In a July 18 order, a three-judge panel said it had 'no difficulty distinguishing' the facts of the case from the justices' emergency order in April letting the administration cut teacher-training grants. The Justice Department on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the grant fight. In its latest emergency application the administration claimed that 'district-court defiance' of the justices' April order 'has grown to epidemic proportions' in other funding cases. A Boston federal judge this month rejected the Justice Department's attempt to 'misguidedly argue' that two other Supreme Court orders required her to let Trump fire Department of Health and Human Services workers. In the first order, the justices said Trump could broadly proceed with a push to shrink the federal workforce but didn't rule on the lawfulness of any agency plan. In the other, the majority didn't offer an explanation when it let layoffs continue at the Education Department. The HHS case was likely to 'wind its way up and down the appellate courts,' US District Judge Melissa DuBose wrote, but 'this court declines the defendants' invitation to short circuit that process.' Soon after the Supreme Court ruled in the mass firing fight, the San Francisco federal judge handling that case rejected the government's argument that it was effectively over. US District Judge Susan Illston wrote that the justices' 'terse order' was 'inherently preliminary' and left issues unsettled. With agencies carrying out layoffs following the Supreme Court's order, she wrote, 'the issues in this case remain of significant public importance.' The Justice Department raced to a federal appeals court, which this week temporarily paused Illston's latest order while it decides what to do. Should the government lose the latest round, it could bring the case back to the justices. With assistance from Suzanne Monyak and Greg Stohr. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
CBS News
12 hours ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Federal court strikes down California ammo background checks, sparking gun safety debate
Gun control efforts in California took a big hit on Thursday as the 9th Circuit Court struck down a state law requiring background checks to buy ammunition. While some say this is a step back for gun safety, others believe this is part of common-sense gun laws. The 2015 mass shooting at a San Bernardino County office killed 16 people, including both shooters who carried out the attack. The next year, California voters supported Proposition 63, which required background checks for those buying ammunition. "To me, it's peculiar," said John Donohue, a Stanford Law Professor. "It really is a peculiar feature that these two federal judges are striking down the will of the people as well as the will of the California legislature." Professor Donohue feels the law made sense since roughly 400,000 guns were stolen last year. "Guns are stolen all the time because gun owners leave them in unlocked cars very often," he said. "So, if you can at least pose a restraint when the bad guy goes to get the ammunition, you're screening out people who the law says should not be having access to firearms." Gun owner Bradley Stolfi from Cloverdale disagrees. He says he supports common-sense gun laws. He shared his thoughts with us when background checks on ammunition were first signed into law. "I think every firearm should require a background check, and it should be thorough," Stolfi said. Stolfi equates a background check for a firearm to getting a driver's license. He says once people pass that process, drivers are no longer required to get background checks every time they fuel up. He does, though, advocate for stricter training to become a gun owner since guns and ammunition have evolved since the 2nd Amendment was drafted more than 230 years ago. "I don't see any need for any magazine to be able to hold more than 10," he said. "That's going to get me in a lot of trouble with guys I know, but that's what I think." While the 9th Circuit Court's decision will most likely be appealed, Professor Donohue wonders about the broader impact the decision will have on gun ownership. He says this might give gun lobbyists ammunition to attack background checks for firearm purchases. "Certainly, there has been an effort that has gotten support from the US Supreme Court to be very, very aggressive in implementing the Second Amendment in these types of challenges," said Professor Donohue. "Many things that I thought would not have been struck down have in fact been struck down."
Kuwait Times
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Kuwait Times
Abrego scores legal wins, but remains jailed
WASHINGTON: Kilmar Abrego, the migrant whose wrongful deportation to El Salvador made him a symbol of President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration policies, won two key victories in US courts on Wednesday but will remain behind bars on human smuggling charges for now. In dual rebukes to the Trump administration after Abrego was brought back to the U.S. to face the charges, one federal judge ruled that he must be released on bail, and another ruled that authorities must give his lawyers three days' notice before they try to deport him again to a different country. 'These rulings are a powerful rebuke of the government's lawless conduct and a critical safeguard for Kilmar's due process rights,' Abrego's lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement. Still, Abrego will remain in criminal custody in Tennessee for at least 30 days. His lawyers, while pushing for his release on bail, had asked that any such order be delayed given the risk that immigration authorities could swiftly detain and deport him upon his exit from jail. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin in a statement accused Abrego of being a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 and said he 'will never walk America's streets again.' Abrego denies being part of the gang. Abrego, 29, a Salvadoran migrant who had been living in Maryland, was deported and imprisoned in El Salvador in March despite a 2019 judicial ruling that he could not be sent there because of a risk of gang persecution. That prompted Trump's critics to argue that his administration was infringing on legal rights as it moved aggressively to deport millions of migrants living illegally in the US. Abrego then challenged that deportation in a civil lawsuit before US District Judge Paula Xinis in Greenbelt, Maryland. The US Supreme Court in April upheld Xinis' order that the administration facilitate Abrego's return. In June, US officials brought Abrego back to the US after securing an indictment accusing him of transporting migrants in the US illegally as part of a smuggling ring. Abrego has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has been held in criminal custody in Tennessee since his return. His lawyers have accused the Trump administration of bringing the charges to cover up violations of his rights. US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville, Tennessee last month granted Abrego's request to be released ahead of his trial. But Abrego's lawyers later asked Holmes not to release Abrego right away, citing the risk he would be detained and deported to a country other than El Salvador. Federal prosecutors challenged Holmes' ruling. On Wednesday, US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw rejected that challenge, writing that prosecutors had not shown sufficient evidence that Abrego posed a public safety threat or was a flight risk to justify his continued detention ahead of trial. But he said the government was entitled to another hearing over whether to detain Abrego due to their allegation that he sometimes transported children. — Reuters After Crenshaw's order on Wednesday, Holmes said she would delay her order for release by at least 30 days. In a simultaneous decision on Wednesday, Xinis ruled that if Abrego is released from criminal custody, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement could not detain him in Tennessee. She also ruled that his immigration case must be returned to Maryland, and that he must be notified at least three days before any deportation to a third country. On Xinis' ruling, McLaughlin said, 'The fact this unhinged judge is trying to tell ICE they can't arrest someone who is subject to immigration arrest under federal law is insane.' Xinis' order did not bar immigration authorities in Maryland from taking him into custody. --Reuters
India Today
18 hours ago
- Health
- India Today
Trump asks Supreme Court to approve cuts to health grants tied to diversity
The Trump administration urged the US Supreme Court to allow it to carry out major funding cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, arguing that current diversity-related programmes are 'undisputedly counter to the administration's priorities.'The move is the latest in President Donald Trump's ongoing push to reduce federal spending and eliminate government support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — including those related to biomedical research and transgender Justice Department filed an emergency request to the court, seeking to lift a June order by U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston. That ruling blocked the administration's plan and ordered the government to restore access to more than $783 million in NIH grant funding. The lawsuit was brought by researchers and 16 Democratic-led states, led by Massachusetts. In its filing, the Justice Department argued that the district court's injunction forces the government to 'continue paying $783 million in federal grants that are undisputedly counter to the administration's priorities.'The NIH, considered the world's largest biomedical research funder, has come under increasing pressure since Trump's return to the presidency in January. Critics say his administration's broad effort to dismantle diversity and health equity programs is politicizing science and jeopardizing public health.'The cuts harm the health of Americans and people across the globe,' warned an open letter signed in June by dozens of NIH scientists and staff. The signatories accused the agency of turning its back on inclusive research and of being complicit in 'a political agenda that undermines evidence-based health policy.'The Trump administration has frequently turned to the Supreme Court — now dominated by a 6-3 conservative majority — to clear legal roadblocks to its sweeping policy changes. So far, the high court has largely sided with the administration on most contested issues since request in the NIH case could have long-term consequences for government-funded research programs, particularly those aimed at addressing racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ disparities in health ruling came in two lawsuits challenging the cuts. One was filed by the American Public Health Association, individual researchers and other plaintiffs who called the cuts an "ongoing ideological purge" of projects with a purported connection to gender identity, DEI "or other vague, now-forbidden language." The other was filed by the states, most of them Democratic-led.- EndsWith inputs from ReutersMust Watch
New York Post
18 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Post
US appeals court makes decision on landmark California ammunition background checks case
A divided federal appeals court on Thursday said California's first-of-its-kind law requiring firearm owners to undergo background checks to buy ammunition is unconstitutional, violating the Second Amendment right to bear arms. In a 2-1 vote, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California upheld a lower court judge's permanent injunction against enforcing the law. Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta said the law 'meaningfully constrains' people's right to keep and bear arms. Advertisement The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif. declared a law that requires gun owners to undergo background checks to buy ammunition in California unconstitutional. Getty Images She also said California failed to show the law was consistent with the country's historical tradition of firearm regulation as required under a 2022 landmark US Supreme Court decision, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. 'By subjecting Californians to background checks for all ammunition purchases, California's ammunition background check regime infringes on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms,' Ikuta wrote. Advertisement The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat who defended the law, was disappointed by the decision. 'Our families, schools, and neighborhoods deserve nothing less than the most basic protection against preventable gun violence, and we are looking into our legal options,' a spokesperson said. The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has called the January 2024 injunction 'extremist, illogical, and incoherent,' had no immediate comment. Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta said hte law 'meaningfully constrains' citizens' right to bear arms. REUTERS Advertisement All three judges on Thursday's panel were appointed by Republican presidents, though appointees of Democratic presidents hold a 9th Circuit majority. California can ask an 11-judge appeals court panel or the Supreme Court to review the decision. 'Overreaching The plaintiffs included Kim Rhode, who has won three Olympic gold medals in shooting events, and the California Rifle & Pistol Association. In a joint statement, the group's president and general counsel Chuck Michel called the decision a victory against 'overreaching government gun control,' while Rhode called it 'a big win for all gun owners in California.' Advertisement Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! Many gun rights groups and 24 mostly Republican-led US states submitted briefs supporting the law's opponents, while a few gun safety groups sided with California. Janet Carter, managing director of Second Amendment litigation at Everytown Law, in a statement said California's law imposed a 'minimal burden'–a $1 fee and one-minute delay–for most firearms owners seeking ammunition. 'Background checks for ammunition sales are common sense,' she said. Voters had in 2016 approved a California ballot measure requiring gun owners to undergo initial background checks to buy ammunition, and buy four-year ammunition permits. Legislators later amended the measure to require background checks for each ammunition purchase. California said it received 191 reports in 2024 of 'armed and prohibited individuals' who were blocked through background checks from buying ammunition. Law not 'Heavy-Handed,' dissent says Advertisement The injunction was issued by US District Judge Roger Benitez in San Diego, who has ruled in several cases in favor of gun owners. An appeals court panel put the injunction on hold during California's appeal. California said several old firearms restrictions supported the background checks. These included colonial era rules requiring licenses to produce gunpowder, the disarmament around 1776 of people who refused to take 'loyalty oaths,' and late-19th century rules requiring government permission to carry concealed weapons. Advertisement Circuit Judge Jay Bybee dissented from Thursday's decision. He accused the majority of flouting Supreme Court guidance by effectively declaring unlawful any limits on ammunition sales, given the unlikelihood a state can point to identical historical analogues. The law 'is not the kind of heavy-handed regulation that meaningfully constrains the right to keep and bear arms,' Bybee wrote. Advertisement President George W. Bush appointed Ikuta and Bybee to the bench, while President Donald Trump appointed Circuit Judge Bridget Bade, who joined Thursday's majority. The case is Rhode v Bonta et al, 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-542.
