Category Archives: US Supreme Court

Blow to Republicans as supreme court denies bid to overturn electoral maps

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Party urged justices to overturn maps imposed in North Carolina and Pennsylvania that made elections more competitive

The US supreme court has rejected requests from Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to overturn electoral maps imposed by the state supreme court in both places that make elections more competitive.

The justices ruled 6-3 on Monday not to block the new North Carolina maps from going into effect, with justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas saying they would have paused the state supreme court’s ruling.

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‘We must march forward’: Kamala Harris commemorates Bloody Sunday anniversary in Selma

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US vice president takes to Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama as congressional efforts to restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act falter

US vice president Kamala Harris visited Selma, Alabama on Sunday to commemorate a defining moment in the fight for the right to vote, making her trip as congressional efforts to restore the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act have faltered.

Under a blazing blue sky, Harris took the stage at the foot of the bridge where in 1965 white state troopers attacked Black voting rights marchers attempting to cross.

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This time McConnell holds few cards to stop Biden’s supreme court pick

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Ketanji Brown Jackson can expect little support from across the aisle but Republicans are wary of overreach before midterms

The photograph is a study in contrasts. On the left, standing stiffly and staring glumly, is Mitch McConnell, 80, the Republican minority leader in the Senate accused of committing professional fouls when confronting judicial confirmations.

On the right, at a slightly awkward distance from McConnell, is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, chosen by a Democratic president to be the first Black woman on the US supreme court, smiling warmly at the camera, her posture more relaxed than the senator’s.

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US supreme court reinstates death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber

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Court upholds Trump justice department’s challenge to overturning of death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in 6-3 vote

The US supreme court on Friday reinstated the convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence for his role in the 2013 attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others, ruling in favor of the federal government.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices sided with the justice department’s challenge to a 2020 lower court ruling that had upheld Tsarnaev’s conviction but overturned his death sentence.

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Supreme court blocks men behind CIA’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ from testifying

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The case was filed by Abu Zubaydah, a Guantánamo prisoner arrested and held without charge since 2002, in Poland

Two psychologists who devised the CIA’s post-9/11 system of US “enhanced interrogation”, which has been widely denounced as torture, cannot be called to testify in a case in Poland brought by a terrorism suspect subjected to the abuses, the supreme court has ruled.

In a 6-3 ruling on Thursday, the court allowed the US government to block the psychologists from giving evidence in a case brought by Abu Zubaydah, a Guantánamo prisoner who was arrested in 2002 and has been held without charge ever since. The majority of the justices granted the government the privilege of “state secrets” – a power that prevents the public disclosure of information deemed harmful to national security.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination is rare moment of celebration for Biden

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Biden is embattled on all fronts – from a stalled domestic agenda to international order – but a supreme court pick is an enduring act

Two years ago exactly, Joe Biden stood on a debate stage in Charleston, South Carolina, his candidacy on the ropes, and made a promise: if elected president, he would nominate the first Black woman to the supreme court.

Days later, Biden won the South Carolina primary on the strength of his support among Black voters. The victory propelled him to the Democratic nomination and then to the presidency. Last month, Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement, presenting Biden with an opportunity to fulfill that campaign commitment.

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Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to become first Black woman on supreme court

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  • White House praises ‘exceptionally qualified nominee’
  • Jackson, if confirmed, will replace retiring Stephen Breyer

Joe Biden on Friday nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the supreme court, seeking to elevate a Black woman to the nation’s highest court for the first time in its 232-year history.

Biden’s decision to nominate Jackson to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, for whom she clerked, sets up a fierce confirmation battle in the deeply partisan and evenly-divided Senate. Breyer, the most senior jurist in the court’s three-member liberal wing, will retire at the end of the court’s current session this summer.

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Biden interviews three Black women as potential supreme court picks – reports

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The White House is urging liberal groups to support nominees against critics’ attacks, CNN reports

Joe Biden has interviewed at least three potential supreme court nominees and is expected to reveal his decision by the end of this month, according to multiple sources close to the president.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, Leondra Kruger and J. Michelle Childs – all Black women – were among the contenders who spoke with the president, those familiar with the matter told CNN and the Washington Post.

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Biden’s supreme court short list narrows to three names

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Ketanji Brown Jackson and Leondra Kruger were evaluated last year, but J Michelle Childs has become a third candidate

Joe Biden had zeroed in on a pair of finalists for his first supreme court pick when there were rumors last year that Justice Stephen Breyer would retire. But since the upcoming retirement was announced late last month, it has come with the rise of a third candidate, one with ready-made bipartisan support that has complicated the decision.

For Biden, it’s a tantalizing prospect. The president believes he was elected to try to bring the country together following the yawning and rancorous political divide that grew during the Trump administration and especially following the Capitol insurrection in January 2021.

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Russia is the ‘aggressor’, says White House, but Biden open to more talks with Putin – live

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Today’s call between the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, lasted about 30 minutes, per the Washington Post.

In the call, Lavrov said the Kremlin is working on a full written response to the US proposal regarding Russia demands on Ukraine, which the White House delivered last week.

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Stephen Breyer to retire from supreme court, giving Biden chance to pick liberal judge

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Breyer, 83, had been under pressure from progressives eager to fill a seat on the supreme court while the Democrats hold power

Justice Stephen Breyer will retire from the supreme court, according to widespread media reporting on Wednesday, which, if confirmed by the court, will provide Joe Biden with the opportunity to fulfill a campaign pledge by nominating the first Black woman judge to the bench.

Such a choice would be a milestone and bolster the liberal wing of the bench, even as it weathers a dominant conservative super-majority achieved under the Trump administration.

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Battered Biden gets opportunity to change political narrative as Breyer retires

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Analysis: president faces high expectations as he prepares make one of his most consequential decisions

In his spare time, Justice Stephen Breyer enjoyed taking the bench at humorous “mock trials” of characters such as Macbeth and Richard III for Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company. The case usually turned on epic battles over succession.

Now Washington is about to be consumed by the question of who will inherit Breyer’s crown following his reported decision to retire from the US supreme court. At 83, he is its oldest member, one of three liberals outnumbered by six conservatives.

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Supreme court rejects Trump bid to shield documents from January 6 panel

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Court’s move leaves no legal impediment to turning National Archives documents over to congressional committee

The US supreme court has rejected a request by Donald Trump to block the release of White House records to the congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol, dealing a blow to the former president.

The order, which casts aside Trump’s request to stop the House select committee from obtaining the records while the case makes its way through the courts, means more than 700 documents that could shed light on the attack can be transferred to Congress.

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Group whose anti-abortion ad Amy Barrett signed accused of promoting harassment of doctors

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In one case, a doctor whose name was published by Indiana group was warned by FBI of kidnapping threat against her daughter

An Indiana group whose anti-abortion campaign was endorsed in a signed advertisement by Amy Coney Barrett before she became a supreme court justice, keeps a published list of abortion providers and their place of work on its website, in what some experts say is an invitation to harass and intimidate the doctors and their staff.

In one case, court records show, a doctor whose name was published by the group, which is called Right to Life Michiana, was warned by the FBI of a kidnapping threat that had been made online against her daughter.

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Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

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Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.

Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.

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Trump asks supreme court to block release of 6 January records

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An appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago but prohibited documents from being turned over

Donald Trump turned to the supreme court Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol.

A federal appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago, but prohibited documents held by the National Archives from being turned over before the supreme court had a chance to weigh in. Trump appointed three of the nine justices.

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Sotomayor decries abortion ruling but court’s conservatives show their muscle

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The highest court in the US has been defied by a group of extremist Republicans openly flouting the court’s own rulings

Sonia Sotomayor, the liberal-leaning justice on the US supreme court, put it plainly. For almost three months, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature of Texas had “substantially suspended a constitutional guarantee: a pregnant woman’s right to control her own body”.

“The court should have put an end to this madness months ago,” Sotomayor said.

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‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical anger

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A short history of the Rose decision’s emergence as a signature cause for the right

Public opinion on abortion in the US has changed little since 1973, when the supreme court in effect legalized the procedure nationally in its ruling on the case Roe v Wade. According to Gallup, which has the longest-running poll on the issue, about four in five Americans believe abortion should be legal, at least in some circumstances.

Yet the politics of abortion have opened deep divisions in the last five decades, which have only grown more profound in recent years of polarization. In 2021, state legislators have passed dozens of restrictions to abortion access, making it the most hostile year to abortion rights on record.

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Conservative US supreme court justices signal support for restricting abortion in pivotal case

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Case poses a direct threat to the legal underpinnings of the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion

Conservative justices in the US supreme court have signaled their support for curbing abortion access during oral arguments in the most important reproductive rights case in decades, threatening the future of abortion access across the country.

Campaigners have warned the case poses a direct threat to the legal underpinnings of Roe v Wade, a landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion. In their lines of questioning on Wednesday, liberal justices warned against abandoning important legal precedent, while conservatives argued for reviewing it.

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The Mississippi and Texas laws threatening US abortion rights

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As the supreme court hears new challenges to Roe v Wade, American abortion rights hang in the balance

According to recent polls, Americans overwhelmingly support Roe v Wade, the 1973 US supreme court ruling that protects a woman’s right to an abortion. But two new legal challenges to that decision could jeopardise the ability of American women to access abortions – and have knock-on effects for reproductive rights across the globe.

Guardian US health reporter Jessica Glenza has been reporting on laws that severely restrict abortion access in Mississippi and Texas; she tells Nosheen Iqbal that this is a ‘perilous moment’ for reproductive rights in the US.

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