Latest news with #USSupremeCourt
Mint
38 minutes ago
- Politics
- Mint
Massive setback for Donald Trump: Appeals court strikes down birthright citizenship order nationwide
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that President Donald Trump's executive order aiming to curtail automatic birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, blocking its enforcement nationwide. The decision marks a major legal blow to Trump's immigration agenda and could set the stage for another showdown at the US Supreme Court. In a 2-1 decision, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling by a federal judge in Seattle, declaring that Trump's directive violated the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment. 'The court agrees that the president cannot redefine what it means to be American with the stroke of a pen,' said Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state led the legal challenge. The executive order had sought to deny US citizenship to children born on American soil unless at least one parent was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident. Despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that curtailed the power of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions, the 9th Circuit allowed the broader block, saying anything less would fail to protect the four states involved—Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon. 'It is impossible to avoid this harm absent a uniform application of the citizenship clause throughout the United States,' wrote US Circuit Judge Ronald Gould, who authored the majority opinion. Gould, joined by Judge Michael Hawkins, argued that limiting the injunction geographically would force states to revise government benefits programs in anticipation of families relocating from areas where the order was active. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Patrick Bumatay, a Trump appointee, contended that the plaintiff states lacked standing to sue and warned that the decision risked "judicial overreach." Trump's 2019 executive order directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the US citizenship of children born on US soil to non-citizen parents who lacked green cards or American citizenship. The Constitution's Citizenship Clause says: 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens…' The case originated from a ruling by Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee in Seattle, who became the first to halt the order. In his ruling, Coughenour called Trump's directive 'blatantly unconstitutional,' a position now affirmed by the appellate court. Trump's legal team could now appeal directly to the Supreme Court or request a broader review by the full 9th Circuit panel.
Indian Express
7 hours ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Man accused of attempting to assassinate Trump returns to court and hopes to represent himself
A man charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump last year at his Florida golf course will return to court Thursday to once again explain why he wants to fire his court-appointed lawyers and represent himself. Ryan Routh previously made the request earlier this month during a hearing in Fort Pierce before US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon. She did not rule during the hearing but said she would issue a written order later. But now Routh, 59, is set to be back in front of Cannon, a day after his court-appointed federal public defenders asked to be taken off the case. Routh is scheduled to stand trial in September, a year after prosecutors say a US Secret Service agent thwarted his attempt to shoot Trump as he played golf. Routh has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and several firearm violations. The judge told Routh earlier this month that she doesn't intend to delay the September 8 start date of his trial, even if she lets him represent himself. Routh, who has described the extent of his education as two years of college after earning his GED certificate, told Cannon that he understood and would be ready. In a June 29 letter to Cannon, Routh said that he and his attorneys were 'a million miles apart' and that they were refusing to answer his questions. He also suggested in the same letter that he could be used in a prisoner exchange with Iran, China, North Korea or Russia. 'I could die being of some use and save all this court mess, but no one acts; perhaps you have the power to trade me away,' Routh wrote. On Wednesday, the federal public defender's office filed a motion for termination of appointment of counsel, claiming that 'the attorney-client relationship is irreconcilably broken.' Attorneys said Routh refused to meet with them for a scheduled in-person meeting Tuesday morning at the federal detention center in Miami. They said Routh has refused six attempts to meet with their team. 'It is clear that Mr. Routh wishes to represent himself, and he is within his Constitutional rights to make such a demand,' the motion said. The US Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants have a right to represent themselves in court proceedings, as long as they can show a judge they are competent to waive their right to be defended by an attorney. Prosecutors have said Routh methodically plotted to kill Trump for weeks before aiming a rifle through the shrubbery as Trump played golf on September 15 at his West Palm Beach country club. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Routh allegedly aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and flee without firing a shot. Law enforcement obtained help from a witness who prosecutors said informed officers that he saw a person fleeing. The witness was then flown in a police helicopter to a nearby interstate where Routh was arrested, and the witness confirmed it was the person he had seen, prosecutors have said. Routh has another, unrelated hearing in Cannon's courtroom scheduled for Friday on the admissibility of certain evidence and testimony that can be used for the trial. In addition to the federal charges, Routh also has pleaded not guilty to state charges of terrorism and attempted murder.
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
15 hours ago
- Politics
- First Post
Supreme Court green lights Trump's removal of 3 Democrats from consumer safety panel
The US Supreme Court has allowed the removal of 3 Democratic members from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, siding with the Trump administration in a dispute over presidential authority. The decision overturns a lower court ruling that had reinstated the Biden-appointed officials. read more Ties between the US and Pakistan have improved under Donald Trump. File Photo/Reuters The US Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the removal of three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), siding with the Trump administration in a dispute over presidential authority. The three officials, appointed by President Biden to serve seven-year terms, were fired by Donald Trump in May. A federal judge had reinstated them, calling the firings unlawful, but the Supreme Court overturned that decision in response to an emergency appeal from the Justice Department. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The administration argued that the CPSC, like other federal agencies, falls under presidential control—giving the president the power to remove commissioners without cause. The court's three liberal justices dissented. The CPSC, created in 1972, is tasked with protecting consumers by issuing recalls and enforcing product safety rules. By law, the five-member panel must be bipartisan, with no more than three commissioners from the president's party. The ruling reflects broader legal tensions over the extent of presidential power. In June, a Biden-appointed judge, Matthew Maddox, had ruled that the CPSC's structure offered some independence from the executive branch, unlike agencies where firings had been upheld. The case could eventually lead to a challenge of the 1935 Humphrey's Executor ruling, which held that presidents cannot fire members of independent agencies without cause. That decision has long frustrated conservatives, who argue federal agencies should answer directly to the president. Attorneys for the ousted commissioners warned that allowing such removals could undermine the agency's independence and its ability to function free from political pressure.
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Ten years after US Supreme Court's ‘Obergefell' judgment legalised same-sex marriage, an erosion of LGBTQIA+ rights
Written by Kanav N Sahgal June 26 marked the 10-year anniversary of Obergefell vs Hodges — the landmark US Supreme Court ruling that legalised same-sex marriage in the country. While some activists celebrated the anniversary, others decried how drastically the legal and political landscape has regressed for LGBTQIA+ people since that historic victory. Backlash against the LGBTQIA+ community, especially transgender individuals, is on the rise across the United States. But more tellingly, the US Supreme Court's jurisprudence in the years since Obergefell has shifted sharply to the right — limiting rather than expanding LGBTQIA+ rights in a range of arenas: Education, public accommodation law and, more recently, healthcare access. During this time, the Court has also routinely upheld religious objections to LGBTQIA+ equality in four separate cases — most recently, just days ago, in the case of Mahmoud vs Taylor, where the Court ruled that parents have the right to opt their children out of public-school instruction involving LGBTQIA+-themed storybooks based on religious free exercise rights. Two previous cases — one in 2018 (Masterpiece Cakeshop vs Colorado Civil Rights Commission) and another in 2023 (303 Creative LLC vs Elenis) — involved business owners who operated public accommodations and approached the Court seeking permission to deny same-sex couples' access to services. In both cases, the Supreme Court sided with the business owners, holding that enforcing anti-discrimination laws in these contexts would violate their First Amendment rights. In another case from 2021, Fulton vs City of Philadelphia, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favour of a Catholic foster care agency that refused to certify same-sex couples as foster parents. This list is not exhaustive — and does not even include the Court's recent rulings that have sharply curtailed legal protections for transgender people. But why this shift? One obvious reason is that the composition of the US Supreme Court has changed drastically over the past decade. During his first term as president, Donald Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Court — Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — giving the nine-member bench a comfortable conservative supermajority. These three joined three other conservative-leaning justices already on the bench, forming a solid conservative bloc of six. This left only three Democratic appointees on the Court, unable to influence outcomes unless at least two conservative justices defected to their side. Also, unlike in previous decades, it has now become increasingly rare to find justices who cross ideological lines or serve as moderating influences. In the past, several justices — though appointed by Republican presidents — maintained a degree of independence in their rulings. Take, for example, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, both of whom, despite being Republican appointees, did at various times cast decisive swing votes in landmark LGBTQIA+ rights cases. Justice Kennedy famously authored the majority opinion in Obergefell and provided the crucial fifth vote that allowed the decision to take effect. Yet, just a few years later, he ruled against LGBTQIA+ plaintiffs in Masterpiece Cakeshop, authoring the majority opinion there as well. Similarly, Justice O'Connor cast the fifth and deciding vote in Bowers vs Hardwick (1986), a case that upheld laws criminalising sodomy. But in 2003, she joined the majority in Lawrence vs Texas, which overturned Bowers and effectively decriminalised consensual same-sex intimacy nationwide. It would be difficult, if not downright impossible, to imagine or expect the current crop of conservative justices to display that kind of openness to LGBTQIA+ issues today. But a second, less frequently discussed reason for the weakening of jurisprudence on LGBTQIA+ rights in the United States comes from the Obergefell decision itself. While Obergefell legalised same-sex marriage nationwide, it also included a carveout that acknowledged the rights of individuals with 'decent and honourable religious or philosophical' objections to continue holding dissenting views on same-sex marriage. Ironically, this one sentence — arguably obiter dicta, and therefore not necessarily binding precedent — has since been repeatedly invoked by the Supreme Court's conservative majority again and again. In Mahmoud, for instance, the conservative bloc relied on Obergefell to explicitly justify parents' religious objections to LGBTQIA+ themed story books being read to their children. In a similar vein, the conservative bloc's resistance to substantive due process claims in the context of LGBTQIA+ rights has also intensified in recent times, most notably since the reversal of Roe vs Wade (1973) in Dobbs vs Jackson Women's Health Organisation (2022). There, in his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly called for the Court to reconsider Obergefell, suggesting rather unequivocally that if the logic employed in Dobbs were to be applied consistently, then the constitutional foundation for same-sex marriage may also fail to survive renewed judicial scrutiny. Ten years after Obergefell, therefore, same-sex marriage remains a legal right — but the broader legal framework supporting it has been deeply eroded by the US Supreme Court, and there appears to be little hope for reversal in the near future. The writer is a researcher at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and visiting faculty at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
3 days ago
- Politics
- Business Standard
Lawyers seek to delay Abrego Garcia's release over deportation fears
Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia have asked a federal judge in Tennessee to delay releasing him from jail in order to prevent the Trump administration from trying to swiftly deport the Maryland construction worker. US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr in Nashville is expected to rule soon on whether to free Abrego Garcia while he awaits trial on human smuggling charges. If the Salvadoran national is released, US officials have said he would be immediately detained by immigration authorities and targeted for deportation. Abrego Garcia became a prominent face in the debate over President Donald Trump's immigration policies when he was wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador in March. That expulsion violated a US immigration judge's order in 2019 that shields Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faces threats of gang violence there. The administration claimed that Abrego Garcia was in the MS-13 gang, although he wasn't charged and has repeatedly denied the allegation. Facing mounting pressure and a US Supreme Court order, the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the US last month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called preposterous. The smuggling case stems from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding, during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. Police in Tennessee suspected human smuggling, but he was allowed to drive on. US officials have said they'll try to deport Abrego Garcia to a country that isn't El Salvador, such as Mexico or South Sudan, before his trial starts in January because they allege he's a danger to the community. US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville ruled a month ago that Abrego Garcia is eligible for release after she determined he's not a flight risk or a danger. Abrego Garcia's attorneys asked her to keep him in jail over deportation concerns. Holmes' ruling is being reviewed by Crenshaw after federal prosecutors filed a motion to revoke her release order. Abrego Garcia's attorneys initially argued for his release but changed their strategy because of the government's plans to deport him if he is set free. With Crenshaw's decision imminent, Abrego Garcia's attorneys filed a motion Sunday night for a 30-day stay of any release order. The request would allow Abrego Garcia to evaluate his options and determine whether additional relief is necessary. Earlier this month, US officials detailed their plans to try to expel Abrego Garcia in a federal court in Maryland. That's where Abrego Garcia's American wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is suing the Trump administration over his wrongful deportation in March and is trying to prevent another expulsion. US officials have argued that Abrego Garcia can be deported because he came to the US illegally around 2011 and because a US immigration judge deemed him eligible for expulsion in 2019, although not to his native El Salvador. Following the immigration judge's decision in 2019, Abrego Garcia was released under federal supervision, received a federal work permit and checked in with ICE each year, his attorneys have said. But US officials recently stated in court documents that they revoked Abrego Garcia's supervised release. Abrego Garcia's attorneys in Maryland have asked US District Judge Paula Xinis to order the federal government to send Abrego Garcia to that state to await his trial, a bid that seeks to prevent deportation. His lawyers also asked Xinis to issue at least a 72-hour hold that would prevent immediate deportation if he's released from jail in Tennessee. Xinis has not ruled on either request.
