Category Archives: US Supreme Court

Supreme court strikes down Mexico’s lawsuit against US gunmakers

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Lawsuit alleged that Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms aided the illegal trafficking of firearms to drug cartels

The US supreme court on Thursday spared two American gun companies from a lawsuit by Mexico’s government accusing them of aiding illegal firearms trafficking to drug cartels and fueling gun violence on the south side of the US-Mexico border.

The justices, in a unanimous ruling, overturned a lower court’s decision that had allowed the lawsuit to proceed against the firearms maker Smith & Wesson and distributor Interstate Arms. The lower court had found that Mexico plausibly alleged that the companies aided and abetted illegal gun sales, harming its government.

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Supreme court allows White House to revoke temporary protected status of many migrants

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Ruling reverses hold on Trump administration’s ending humanitarian parole of Venezuelan migrants and others

The US supreme court on Friday announced it would allow the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, bolstering the Republican president’s drive to step up deportations.

The court put on hold Boston-based US district judge Indira Talwani’s order halting the administration’s move to end the immigration humanitarian “parole” protections granted to 532,000 people by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal from the country, while the detailed case plays out in lower courts.

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FBI to reinvestigate 2023 White House cocaine find and leak of supreme court Dobbs draft

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Agency also announced new inquiry into pipe bombs found outside Democratic and Republican offices in 2021

The FBI will launch new investigations into the 2023 discovery of a bag of cocaine at the White House during Joe Biden’s term, as well as into pipe bombs discovered at Democratic and Republican party headquarters before the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot by supporters of Donald Trump, and the leak of the supreme court’s draft opinion before the historic overturning of national abortion rights with the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.

Dan Bongino, a rightwing podcaster turned deputy director of the FBI, made the announcement on X, where he said he had requested weekly briefings on any progress in looking into the old cases. The incidents have been popular talking points on America’s political right wing and among conspiracy theorists.

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Supreme court blocks Trump bid to resume deportations under 1798 law

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Administration’s appeal to quickly deport Venezuelans under Alien Enemies Act rejected with two dissenting

The supreme court has rejected the Trump administration’s request to remove a temporary block on deportations of Venezuelans under a rarely used 18th-century wartime law.

Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

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Trump officials ask supreme court to help strip legal status from Venezuelans

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Justice department calls on court to hold judge’s order against ending temporary protected status for 300,000

The Trump administration asked the US supreme court on Thursday to intervene and assist in its attempt to strip temporary protected status (TPS) from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants in the US, a move that would clear the way for their deportation.

The justice department asked the supreme court justices to put on hold a federal judge’s order from March that halted the decision of the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to terminate the temporary legal status that previously was granted to some Venezuelans.

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Trump officials contacted El Salvador president about Kilmar Ábrego García, sources say

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Administration in touch with Nayib Bukele over detention of wrongly deported man, according to two people

The Trump administration has been in touch directly with the Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele in recent days about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The nature of the discussion and its purpose was not clear because multiple Trump officials have said the administration was not interested in his coming back to the US despite the US supreme court ordering it to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s release.

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US supreme court seems open to religious public charter schools

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Oklahoma case is part of a broader push to erode separation of church and state, and a test of role of religion in schools

The US supreme court’s conservative majority seemed open to establishing the country’s first public religious charter school as they weighed a case Wednesday that could have significant ramifications on the separation of church and state.

The Oklahoma state charter school board approved the application for St Isidore, a Catholic virtual charter school. The ACLU and other groups filed suit, as did Republican attorney general Gentner Drummond. The state supreme court sided with Drummond, ruling that the US and Oklahoma constitutions “prohibit the state from using public money for the establishment of a religious institution”.

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Supreme court orders US to help return man wrongly deported to El Salvador

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Justices uphold judge’s order and say Trump officials must ‘facilitate’ return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to United States

The US supreme court upheld on Thursday a judge’s order requiring Donald Trump’s administration to facilitate the return to the United States of a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador.

US district judge Paula Xinis last week issued an order that the administration “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.

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White House asks supreme court to allow deportations under wartime law

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Appeals court had upheld block on flights using Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members

The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to intervene to allow the government to continue to deport immigrants using the obscure Alien Enemies Act.

The request came one day after a federal appeals court upheld a Washington DC federal judge’s temporary block on immigrant expulsions via a wartime act that allows the administration to bypass normal due process, for example by allowing people a court hearing before shipping them out of the US.

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‘She is evil’: Amy Coney Barrett under attack by right wing after USAid ruling

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Supreme court justice who frequently votes alongside conservative colleagues branded ‘DEI judge’

Amy Coney Barrett, the Donald Trump-appointed conservative supreme court justice, has been branded a “DEI judge” by furious rightwing figures, after she voted to reject Trump’s attempt to freeze nearly $2bn in foreign aid.

Coney Barrett, part of the court’s rightwing majority, split with her fellow conservative justices this week. She and John Roberts, the chief justice, voted to leave in place a ruling from a US district judge that ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze the nearly $2bn in aid for foreign aid work that had already been performed, and that had been approved by Congress.

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Trump administration gives schools deadline to cut DEI or lose federal funds

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Education department gives ultimatum to stop using ‘racial preferences’ as factors in admissions or risk losing money

The Trump administration is giving the US’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, raising the stakes in the president’s fight against “wokeness”.

In a memo on Friday, the education department gave an ultimatum to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. Schools are being given 14 days to end any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race.

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Trump administration files first supreme court appeal over firing of government watchdog

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Attempt to remove head of the office of special counsel is key test of executive branch’s battle with US judiciary to reshape federal government

Donald Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch.

Hampton Dellinger, the head of the office of the special counsel (OSC), is among the fired government watchdogs who have sued the Trump administration, arguing that their dismissals were illegal and that they should be reinstated.

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US supreme court may revive doctrine that would curb federal agencies’ power

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Case on nondelegation doctrine comes after conservative court substantially curbed regulatory power in recent years

The US supreme court may soon revive an obscure, pro-big business legal doctrine that could make it virtually impossible for the US government to develop new laws and regulatory rules that protect Americans.

The theory, called the “nondelegation doctrine”, could also potentially invalidate large pieces of bedrock American laws and protections put in place since the first Congress.

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US court rules banning gun sales to young adults under 21 unconstitutional

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Conservative New Orleans court ruling for people between 18 and 21 comes amid major shifts in firearm legal landscape

A conservative US appeals court on Thursday ruled that a ban on handgun sales to people between the ages of 18 and 21 violates the second amendment.

The ruling, handed down by a panel of three judges on the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans, comes amid major shifts in the national firearm legal landscape following a landmark US supreme court decision that expanded gun rights in 2022.

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Who banned TikTok? Politicians toss culpability like a football

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Claiming a threat from a ‘foreign adversary’, the US has yet to prove China shared propaganda or collected US user data

The United States of America deleted TikTok early on the morning of 19 January. A government formed “by the people, for the people”, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, has made scant evidence available to those people as to why. As those in power at the 11th hour realize how unpopular such a paternalistic move might be, each is doing their best to lay blame with the others.

Why did the US ban an app used and beloved by some 170 million Americans? For fear of China’s propaganda and data collection. It’s a far-reaching, unprecedented move. The text of the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, passed in April and signed by Joe Biden, reads: “This bill prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (eg, TikTok).” Both a federal appeals court and the US supreme court have affirmed that rationale as sufficient.

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Trump inauguration to move indoors amid frigid temperatures in Washington – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. You can read our latest reporting here:

Donald Trump told CNN that he will decide what to do with TikTok once he takes office, after the supreme court upheld legislation that will ban it on Sunday unless its Chinese owner sells its US operations.

“It ultimately goes up to me, so you’re going to see what I’m going to do,” Trump said in an interview with the network. Asked if he would try to reverse the ban, should it go into effect, Trump said: “Congress has given me the decision, so I’ll be making the decision.”

It is not clear that the Act itself directly regulates protected expressive activity, or conduct with an expressive component. Indeed, the Act does not regulate the creator petitioners at all …

Petitioners, for their part, have not identified any case in which this Court has treated a regulation of corporate control as a direct regulation of expressive activity or semi-expressive conduct … We hesitate to break that new ground in this unique case.

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Donald Trump reportedly weighing up TikTok ban delay

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President-elect ‘has warm spot’ for platform and wants political solution to ‘preserve app but protect data’

Donald Trump is considering suspending a TikTok ban in the US with an executive order when he enters the White House on 20 January, according to a report.

The president-elect is exploring an executive order that would postpone enforcement of a sale-or-ban law due to come into force on 19 January, said the Washington Post. The report added, however, that Trump’s legal grounds for suspending a law passed by Congress are questionable.

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US judicial body rejects request to refer Clarence Thomas to justice department

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Request was made after Thomas failed to disclose luxury trips by Texas businessman and GOP donor Harlan Crow

A judicial policymaking body on Thursday rejected a request by Democratic lawmakers to refer the conservative US supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas to the Department of Justice to examine claims that he failed to disclose gifts and travel provided by a wealthy benefactor.

The secretary to the US judicial conference, the federal judiciary’s top policymaking body, pointed at amendments Thomas had made to his annual financial disclosure reports for the decision.

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Chief justice Roberts warns intimidation and violence risk judicial independence

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In sobering year-end report, chief justice laments litany of threats judges face, which he says put the rule of law at risk

Violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to disobey lawful court rulings are putting the United States’s revered principle of judicial independence in jeopardy, the chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts, has warned.

In a sobering end of year report, Roberts – seen as the leading rightwinger on the court’s current six-to-three pro-conservative majority – laments a litany of threats contemporary judges face in America’s increasingly polarised political climate, which he says are putting the rule of law at risk.

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Trump asks US supreme court to pause ban-or-divest law for TikTok

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Court will hear arguments in case that could see app banned in US if not sold to American firm by 19 January

President-elect Donald Trump has urged the US supreme court to pause implementation of a law that would ban popular social media app TikTok or force its sale, arguing he should have time after taking office to pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.

The court is set to hear arguments in the case on 10 January.

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