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The justices once again did not act on a high-profile petition from the state of Mississippi asking the court to review the constitutionality of a state law that bans virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts struck down the law.

Obama relied on the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allows the president to declare national monuments on “land owned or controlled by the federal government.” The designation resulted in a ban on most commercial fishing, prompting a group of commercial-fishing associations to go to court, where they argued that the designation as a monument went beyond Obama’s power under the Antiquities Act because submerged land in the ocean is not land “controlled” by the federal government.

. Sotomayor stressed that Longoria’s case “implicates an important and longstanding split among the Courts of Appeals over the proper interpretation of” the commentary, with most circuits concluding that “a suppression hearing is not a valid basis for denying the reduction.”

The Sixth Amendment guarantees “the right to a speedy and public trial.” In Smith v. Titus, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down the case of a Minnesota man who was convicted of murder for the shooting deaths of two people who had broken into his home.

Smith argued that the decision to close the courtroom violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment. The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected that argument, and federal courts turned down Smith’s requests for post-conviction relief. Smith came to the Supreme Court in November, contending that the state supreme court’s ruling was contrary to clearly established Supreme Court decisions – the standard for relief under federal post-conviction laws.

even if his role in leading the protest onto the highway was negligent, it couldn't make him personally liable for the actions of an individual whose only association to him was attendance at the protest.

On Monday, the Supreme Court threw out the suit for now, declaring that the 5th Circuit's interpretation of state law "is too uncertain a premise on which to address" the question currently at issue.

any reasonable officer should have realized that Taylor's conditions of confinement offended the Constitution,

whether Louisiana would permit such a suit.

In a second case — involving cruel and unusual punishment of a prisoner — the justices also repudiated a 5th Circuit decision.

the prison officers responsible for this treatment could not be sued because the law "wasn't clearly established" that "prisoners "couldn't be housed in cells teaming with human waste" "for only six days." Thus, the 5th Circuit granted the officers qualified immunity from being sued.

The constitutional question — namely whether such a suit violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech — is only raised if Louisiana law in fact permits such a suit in the first place,

New Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett heard her first oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Monday. Participating by phone with the other justices

The telephone format allows each justice only a few minutes to ask questions so there was no way to compare Barrett's questioning with other newbies in recent years.

Barrett could well be forgiven for bowing out of the court's work last week, with six days to prep before her Monday debut. But Chief Justice John Roberts also had just six days to prepare in 2005

Barrett's choice to forgo participating last week meant she did not vote in two significant cases decided by the court in opinions released Monday.

In an important First Amendment case involving a Black Lives Matter protest, the court sided with activist DeRay Mckesson in his effort to avoid a lawsuit by a police officer who was severely injured by an unknown assailant.

On Monday, the Supreme Court threw out the suit for now, declaring that the 5th Circuit's interpretation of state law "is too uncertain a premise on which to address"

Acknowledging these "exceptional circumstances," the high court, in essence, then asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to decide what the state law actually is — in short, whether Louisiana would permit such a suit.

This one involved a Texas state prisoner, Trent Taylor, who alleged that for six days in 2013 he was held in what the court called "shockingly unsanitary cells."

Taylor did not eat or drink for nearly four days. Correctional officers then moved Taylor to a second, frigidly cold cell, which was equipped with only a clogged drain in the floor to dispose of bodily wastes.

Because the cell lacked a bunk, and because Taylor was confined without clothing, he was left to sleep naked in sewage."

the Supreme Court noted that the 5th Circuit "properly held that such conditions ... violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment."

went on to say that the prison officers responsible for this treatment could not be sued because the law "wasn't clearly established" that "prisoners "couldn't be housed in cells teaming with human waste" "for only six days."

For 80 years it has been the practice that the Senate has not confirmed any nomination made during an election year, and we shouldn’t make an exception now.8

Biden — and this is not something we’ve said very often — was absolutely correct.10 It’s a political cauldron to avoid.11 There should be no hearings. There should be no confirmation.12 Not during a presidential election year, with millions of votes having been cast in highly charged contests.13

This year is a tremendous opportunity for our country to have a sincere and honest debate about the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system of government.19

The Supreme Court seat doesn’t belong to any president or any political party.24

Our view is this: Give the people a voice.30

For years, conservative justices have said the court disfavors the Second Amendment. Justice Amy Coney Barrett is likely to shift the balance, and a case to help her do so may be knocking.

ThanksgivingWelcome to Homeownership

In dissent, Judge Stephanos Bibas, a former law professor appointed to the court by President Trump (and the author of a scathing decision on Friday rejecting the president’s challenge to the election results in Pennsylvania), wrote that the framers of the Constitution would not have allowed lawmakers to bar felons convicted of nonviolent crimes from owning guns.

That dissent was written by Justice Barrett when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago. The law forbidding people with felony convictions from owning guns, she wrote, should not apply when the crimes in question were nonviolent.

Before Justice Barrett’s arrival, the court’s four most conservative justices had repeatedly written that the court should return to the subject of the Second Amendment

the right to abortion cannot be a constitutional right because states restricted abortion in 1868 at the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment. Mississippi argues that the public in 1868 would have understood the 14th Amendment to permit state restrictions on abortion to continue.

This is not a new argument—it formed the basis of then-Justice William Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe and was made repeatedly by Justice Antonin Scalia over the course of his career on the bench, including in his dissent in Casey

Chief Justice John Roberts recognized in his confirmation testimony, it is “completely circular,” using state practice to interpret the constraints the 14th Amendment was written to impose on the states.

destabilize a central part of the court’s jurisprudence protecting fundamental constitutional rights. As a result, Dobbs also threatens the fundamental rights to use birth control, marry a loved one, and make decisions about sexual intimacy.

For good reason, state practice in 1868 has never been a measure of what fundamental, personal rights are guaranteed against state infringement by the 14th Amendment. This is illustrated not only by Roe and Casey—which explicitly rejected the idea that the state practice in 1868 fixes the fundamental rights for all future generations—but also by many other landmark Supreme Court rulings vindicating the 14th Amendment’s promise of liberty for all.

In 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down a restriction on the use of birth control dating back to 1879, holding that it infringed on the right of a married couple to choose whether to start a family and bear children.

In 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment protected a right to sexual intimacy by LGBTQ adults, despite a very long history of laws that prohibited same-sex intimacy and sexual conduct. In Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, the Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment guaranteed the right to marry a loved one of the same sex, even though marriage had historically been limited to a union of a man and a woman. Both decisions drew on Loving to safeguard bedrock rights to love, marry, and form a family, ensuring equal dignity to LGBTQ persons.

If the fundamental rights protected by the 14th Amendment are determined by looking to state practice in 1868—as Mississippi and its allies urge—Loving’s holding protecting the right to marry as a fundamental right would be in doubt, as would many other landmark precedents, including Lawrence and Obergefell.

It explicitly rejects Loving’s reasoning, arguing that the Supreme Court was wrong to recognize a fundamental right to marry in that case. It claims that Lawrence and Obergefell are “lawless” rulings and urges the Supreme Court in Dobbs to leave “those decisions hanging by a thread.”

Only 40 percent of U.S. adults approved of the court, down from 53 percent a year earlier. According to Gallup, a majority (53 percent) of U.S. adults now disapprove of the way the court is handling its job.

“The justices are plainly conscious of public attitudes toward the court,” said Lawrence Baum, a political science professor at Ohio State University. “But that’s only one consideration for the justices and not necessarily the most important one — particularly on issues like abortion or gun rights where they may have intense personal preferences about the right outcome.”

when Congress introduced more bills designed to curb the court, the justices struck down fewer laws. According to Clark, that suggests that the court saw the bills as a signal from Congress that they were going too far, even though the bills were unlikely to pass.

“Is legitimacy something that’s enough to get a justice to move away from something [he or she] strongly feels?”

In that sense, this new term might be a turning point — and not just because of the importance of the cases or the risk of a backlash to an individual decision. The next few months might be the beginning of a new era in which the conservative justices move sharply away from where most Americans stand on major issues, and dare politicians to do something about it.

But SB 8, written to sidestep that kind of legal challenge, explicitly forbids any “officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity” in Texas from enforcing it. The idea is that, if no state official can enforce the law, abortion rights plaintiffs have no one to sue.

This scheme, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his dissenting opinion in Whole Woman’s Health, “is not only unusual, but unprecedented.” As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, the law is “engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny.”

The new challenge from the DOJ argues that, at least in an unusual case such as this one, the United States should be allowed to sue the state of Texas — and that it should be able to do so specifically because no one else can. As Judge Robert Pitman, who briefly blocked SB 8 before his decision was stayed by the Fifth Circuit, summarized the DOJ’s argument, the United States should be allowed to step in when “(1) a state law violates the constitution, (2) that state action has a widespread effect, and (3) the state law is designed to preclude review by the very people whose rights are violated.”

The second and more difficult question is why the federal government should be the plaintiff of last resort. DOJ rests the lion’s share of its argument on In re Debs (1895), a Gilded Age decision giving federal courts extraordinary authority to halt union activities that disrupt interstate commerce (Debs arose out of a massive railroad strike that threw shipping in the Midwest into disarray).

Ordinarily, if a state law permitted private parties to sue abortion providers in state court, those providers could wait to be sued, and then argue that the law permitting them to be sued is unconstitutional during that state court proceeding. But SB 8 is designed to frustrate this normal process as well. For one thing, it contains a simply extraordinary provision stating that SB 8 defendants may not assert their “belief that the requirements of this subchapter are unconstitutional or were unconstitutional” as a defense in state court.

Although this Court is unlikely to protect abortion rights, there are still potent reasons why even anti-abortion justices should oppose SB 8. For one thing, if Texas can offer bounties to anti-abortion plaintiffs — and evade judicial review in the process — other, bluer states could pass copycat laws. Do the justices really want New York to pass a law permitting “any person” to collect a bounty from gun owners?

I don’t have any illusions that this Supreme Court will hold that doctors who perform abortions cannot be punished. But I’d hope that we could all agree that doctors who are falsely accused of violating a state law should not be punished. If due process means anything, it should mean that Dr. Smith should get her day in court before she is forced into bankruptcy.

President Biden first announced the rules in September as part of a broader strategy from his administration to combat the spread of the Delta variant, which drove a surge of infections toward the end of the summer. 

The Supreme Court was asked to intervene last month and swiftly held oral arguments to weigh the emergency requests.

"As a result of the court's decision, it is now up to states and individual employers to determine whether to make their workplaces as safe as possible for employees, and whether their businesses will be safe for consumers during this pandemic by requiring employees to take the simple and effective step of getting vaccinated," Mr. Biden said. "The court has ruled that my administration cannot use the authority granted to it by Congress to require this measure, but that does not stop me from using my voice as president to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans' health and economy."

"Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life — simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock — would significantly expand OSHA's regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization," the court said.

The Supreme Court received more than a dozen requests for emergency action in cases challenging the requirement after the 6th U.S. Circuit's ruling, with business associations, Republican-led states and private businesses covered by the rule arguing OSHA lacked the power to issue the vaccine requirement.

The Biden administration estimated that more than 80 million employees could be impacted by the policy.

The second rule examined by the Supreme Court was issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in November and laid out vaccine requirements for staff at a wide range of facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid. The requirement does not have a daily or weekly testing option for unvaccinated workers, but does include medical and religious exemptions.

. Then, in a separate case brought by 14 states, a federal district court in Louisiana blocked the rule from taking effect nationwide, but the 5th Circuit narrowed the scope of the order to the 14 states that together sued the Biden administration. 

"After all, ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm," the Supreme Court said.

"The omnibus rule is undoubtedly significant — it requires millions of healthcare workers to choose between losing their livelihoods and acquiescing to a vaccine they have rejected for months. Vaccine mandates also fall squarely within a state's police power, and, until now, only rarely have been a tool of the federal government," Thomas wrote. "If Congress had wanted to grant CMS authority to impose a nationwide vaccine mandate, and consequently alter the state-federal balance, it would have said so clearly. It did not."

The 7-1 decision comes as a welcome relief to critics who say racial discrimination in jury selection persists across the country some 30 years after the Supreme Court ruled potential jurors cannot be struck because of race.

Monday's ruling can provide "new life to these so-called Batson claims in the lower courts and the issue of racial bias in jury selection," said Steve Vladeck, CNN contributor and law professor at American University Washington College of Law, referring to the 1986 case Batson v. Kentucky.

"This discrimination became apparent only because we obtained the prosecution's notes which revealed their intent to discriminate. Usually that does not happen," said Foster's lead lawyer, Stephen Bright, from the Southern Center of Human Rights. "The practice of discriminating in striking juries continues in courtrooms across the country. Usually courts ignore patterns of race discrimination and accept false reasons for the strikes."

"The Court today invites state prisoners to go searching for new 'evidence' by demanding the files of the prosecutors who long ago convicted them . ...I cannot go along with that 'sort of sandbagging of state courts.' New evidence should not justify the relitigation of Batson claims,

Nearly 20 years after the conviction, through an open records request, Foster's lawyers obtained the notes the prosecution team took while it was engaged in the process of picking a jury.

"The prosecutors in this case came to court on the morning of jury selection determined to strike all the black prospective jurors," Bright said. "Blacks were taken out of the picture here, they were taken and dealt with separately."

One set of documents from the prosecution files shows that potential jurors who were black had a "B" written by their name and their names highlighted with a green pen. On some juror questionnaire sheets, the juror's race "black," "color" or "negro" was circled. One juror, Eddie Hood, was labeled "B #1. Others were labeled B#2, and B#3.

The Supreme Court's 1986 case held that once a defendant has produced enough evidence to raise an inference that the state impermissibly excluded a juror based on race, the state must come forward with a race-neutral explanation for the exclusion.

Roberts said his decision to embrace Marshall’s vision was a reaction to “the personalization of judicial politics.”

Roberts praised justices who were willing to put the good of the Court above their own ideological agendas. “A justice is not like a law professor, who might say, ‘This is my theory … and this is what I’m going to be faithful to and consistent with,’ and in twenty years will look back and say, ‘I had a consistent theory of the First Amendment as applied to a particular area,’”

I think it’s bad, long-term, if people identify the rule of law with how individual justices vote.”

Instead of nine justices moving in nine separate directions, Roberts said, “it would be good to have a commitment on the part of the Court to acting as a Court, rather than being more concerned about the consistency and coherency of an individual judicial record.”

n Roberts’s view, the most successful chief justices help their colleagues speak with one voice. Unanimous, or nearly unanimous, decisions are hard to overturn and contribute to the stability of the law and the continuity of the Court; by contrast, closely divided, 5–4 decisions make it harder for the public to respect the Court as an impartial institution that transcends partisan politics.

“It’s sobering to think of the seventeen chief justices; certainly a solid majority of them have to be characterized as failures,” Roberts said with a rueful smile. “The successful ones are hard to number.”

“the chief’s ability to get the Court to do something is really quite restrained.

advocates for traditional marriage want the court to let the political process play out, rather than have judges order states to allow same-sex couples to marry

Proponents of same-sex marriage said they expect the court to settle the matter once and for all with a decision that invalidates state provisions that define marriage as between a man and a woman

Same-sex couples can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia.

Now there are just 14 states in which same-sex couples cannot wed.

The justices will consider two related questions. The first is whether the Constitution requires states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The other is whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

The federal appeals court that oversees those four states upheld their same-sex marriage bans in November, reversing pro-gay rights rulings of federal judges in all four states.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who on Tuesday pledged “no action” on any Supreme Court nomination before the election, said in a statement that the nominee “will be determined by whoever wins the presidency in the fall.”

“The president’s focused on criteria that, frankly, is more important, and that is that individual’s qualifications, and their experience and their view of the law,” Earnest said. “That will take precedence over any sort of political consideration.”

Sandoval would represent an unconventional pick for the president, a former constitutional law professor who has prized prestigious law pedigrees and extensive legal backgrounds in the jurists he has previously selected for the Court.

While the selection of a Republican could heighten the political pressure on Senate GOP leaders, it could also alienate the Democratic base and runs counter to Obama’s emphasis on taking a long view of who deserves to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Speaking to reporters last week, the president said he planned to select someone with extraordinary legal credentials. “We’re going to find somebody who is has an outstanding legal mind, somebody who cares deeply about our democracy and cares about rule of law,” he said.

Asked about a potential nomination on Saturday, Sandoval told the Morning Consult, “It would be a privilege.” He called the Supreme Court “the essence of justice in this country.”

In a Wednesday interview with CNN, Reid said he would endorse Sandoval for the nomination. “I don’t pick the justices, but I know if he were picked, I would support the man,” he said. “He’s a good person, has a great record, and has been a tremendously good governor in spite of having to deal with some very big problems there.”

It is unclear how many potential nominees are under White House consideration for the high court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama was seen last week carrying a thick binder of materials on potential picks to review.

As the standoff continued with Senate Republicans, Obama reiterated Wednesday morning that he intended to “do his job” by nominating a candidate during the remaining months of his presidency.

Some Democrats see a Sandoval nomination as the best opportunity to fracture the front of Republican opposition and force McConnell to take up the nomination in this contentious election year. It would also put on the spot a handful of Senate Republicans who are up for reelection in blue states in November.

Several Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, which is charged with considering a Supreme Court nominee, said Wednesday that it would not matter if Obama picked a Republican. “The short answer is no, it doesn’t change anything,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

But some Republican senators acknowledged a Sandoval pick would put GOP senators in a tough spot politically. “This is one reason why I have not wanted to shut the door on considering a nominee,” said Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), one of two Senate Republicans who is at least open to a confirmation hearing. “We may well be sent a nominee who is deserving of thorough vetting and consideration.”

Nominating Sandoval would carry clear political risks for Obama. Sandoval is aligned with Democrats on some key issues, including abortion rights and the environment. As governor, he has moved to implement the Affordable Care Act, and has said he considers same-sex marriage to be a settled issue.

But Sandoval is not seen as labor-friendly — potentially alienating a swath of the Democratic base. His legal credentials are also lacking compared to some of the other names under consideration who are mainly sitting federal judges. And he initially called the landmark health-care law “unconstitutional,” signing onto a brief in 2012 challenging the constitutionality of the measure’s individual mandate. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected that argument, and upheld the law.

“If courts don’t have to defend their decisions, then they’re just acts of will, of power. They’re not even pretending to be legal decisions.”

On that docket — the “merits docket” — the court ordinarily agrees to hear about 1 percent of the petitions asking it to intercede. In its last term, it decided just 53 merits cases.

“The political branches of government claim legitimacy by election, judges by reason,” he wrote. “Any step that withdraws an element of the judicial process from public view makes the ensuing decision look more like fiat, which requires compelling justification.”

The Trump administration has been a major contributor to the trend, Professor Vladeck wrote, having filed 36 emergency applications in its first three and a half years.

Lower courts have struggled to make sense of the court’s orders, which are something less than precedents but nonetheless cannot be ignored by responsible judges.

One is that Republicans tend to win.

“federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election rules in the period close to an election.”

A trial judge refused to block it, but, about a month before the 2006 general election, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an injunction forbidding state officials to enforce it.

“The Purcell principle,” he wrote, is “the idea that courts should not issue orders which change election rules in the period just before the election.”

“No one can read Purcell itself and think it created the doctrine that it now has been transformed into by the Supreme Court.”

“bolster the legitimacy of the court in the eyes of the public, something especially important in controversial cases, such as election cases.” And they “may also discipline justices into deciding similar cases alike, regardless of the identity of the parties.”

Barrett tried to distance herself and the judiciary from the politics swirling around her nomination and the presidential election.“It is the job of a judge to resist her policy preferences. It would be a dereliction of duty for her to give in to them," she said.

Barrett will become the fifth woman ever to serve on the high court, succeeding the late liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"is one of our nation’s most brilliant legal scholars.”

Barrett will become the fifth woman ever to serve on the high court, succeeding the late liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Petitions challenging voting procedures in Pennsylvania and North Carolina are pending before the high court, which ruled 5-3 along ideological lines Monday night against extending Wisconsin's deadline for absentee ballots.

It represents the culmination of conservatives' decades-long project to win control of the Supreme Court, perhaps for decades to come.

Democrats immediately cited McConnell's 2016 refusal to act on Obama's nominee as reason to delay action until after the election, to no avail.

All 12 Republicans voted to send her nomination to the Senate floor; all 10 Democrats boycotted the vote. 

“The American people will never forget this blatant act of bad faith," Schumer said. "It will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate.”

The state court said the extra time was needed because of the coronavirus pandemic and delays in mail service.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have granted requests from Republican lawmakers and the Trump campaign to block lower court rulings allowing the longer deadline.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party had asked the justices to temporarily block a ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that allowed election officials to count some mailed ballots received up to three days after Election Day.

Democrats have consistently pushed for more lenient rules when it comes to mail-in ballots and how and when they are counted. Republicans have resisted such changes, with many of them arguing that the relaxed rules could open the process to abuse and fraud.

“That question has national importance, and there is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the federal Constitution.”

The state court ordered a three-day extension for ballots clearly mailed on or before Election Day and for those with missing or illegible postmarks “unless a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it was mailed after Election Day.”

In response, Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, a Democrat, said a provision of the State Constitution protecting “free and equal elections” allowed the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to extend the deadline.

“All ballots must still be mailed on or before Election Day,” Judge James A. Wynn Jr. wrote. “The change is simply an extension from three to nine days after Election Day for a timely ballot to be received and counted. That is all.”

“In the past three years alone, the board has twice extended the absentee-ballot receipt deadline after hurricanes hit the state’s coast,” its brief said. “No one challenged those extensions.”

The district court agreed with the challengers that the law is unconstitutional, and it permanently blocked Kentucky from enforcing the law.

A divided 6th Circuit panel turned down Cameron’s request to join the case. It explained that Cameron’s plea had come “years into” the case, after both the district court’s ruling and the 6th Circuit’s opinion upholding that ruling. Granting a motion to intervene after the court of appeals has already issued its opinion, the court reasoned, would “provide potential intervenors every incentive to sit out litigation untill we issue a decision contrary to their preferences, whereupon they can spring into action.”

Cameron went to the Supreme Court in October 2020, asking the justices to weigh in on whether he should have been allowed to intervene and, if so, to send the case back to the lower courts for another look in light of their June 2020 decision in June Medical. In March 2021, the court agreed to take up only the procedural question.

In the Supreme Court, Cameron framed the case as a “dispute about a State’s sovereign ability to defend its laws.”

The attorney general’s office can’t enter the case now, the clinic wrote, because the office didn’t file a notice of appeal from the district court’s 2019 ruling. Allowing Cameron to intervene in the 6th Circuit in 2020, the clinic told the justices, “would create an impermissible end-run around Congress’s express statutory limits on appellate jurisdiction.”

there is no reason to disturb the denial of that motion by the court of appeals.

Arizona and 22 other states filed a “friend of the court” brief supporting Cameron in which they described the question presented by the case as one “of profound substantive importance to our democratic system of governance.” “States,” they wrote, “have a compelling and indisputable sovereign interest in defending the constitutionality of their laws when challenged in federal court.”

“I agree that we would prevail under Babcock,” Mr. Thompson replied, “but I don’t think that question is fairly presented by this case.”

“What if California had a regulation that permitted union organizers to go onto the property of your clients one hour a day, one day a year. Is that a taking subject to the per se rule?”Yes, the lawyer replied.

who may be giving Justice Elena Kagan a run for her money in the department of well-designed hypothetical questions — surely knew.

Until that decision, the court had limited the definition of a categorical taking to a physical occupation of private property, eminent domain being the prime example. Government actions that didn’t “take” private property in the literal sense, but simply limited its use in certain ways, were regarded as “regulatory takings,”

The case left the court sharply divided. It was decided on the final day of the term in 2001 with six separate opinions.

That was the war that resumed at the Supreme Court this week, and that history explains why, from the Pacific Legal Foundation’s point of view, anything short of total victory is beside the point.

This case is not only a test for the court. It is also a test for those who see the court as now populated with their ideological allies. What demands does one make of one’s friends?

If I had to predict the outcome, I think the court’s eventual decision will send the Cedar Point Nursery case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit with instructions to evaluate the California law as a regulatory rather than a categorical taking.

As the justices have turned away challenges to state policies, they have expressed sympathy for local officials who face potentially intrusive federal regulation and protracted litigation. Led by Roberts, the court has also dismissed concerns about the consequences for minority voters as it has curtailed the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

That case from Shelby County, Alabama, centered on a provision of the 1965 act that required states with a history of discrimination to seek approval from the Department of Justice or a federal court before changing electoral policy. By a 5-4 vote, the court invalidated the provision that still covered nine states, including Georgia.

The justices are now considering, in a recently argued Arizona case, the strength of a separate Voting Rights Act provision that prohibits any measure that denies someone the right to vote because of race. Unlike the "pre-clearance" provision previously in dispute, this section of the law comes into play after legislation has taken effect and puts the burden on those protesting the law to initiate a lawsuit.

Resolution of that Arizona case, known as Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, will have repercussions for controversy over laws like Georgia's, which were immediately challenged Thursday night by advocates who say they will disproportionately hurt Blacks.

Across the country, Republican legislators have proposed voting changes that would reverse the pandemic-era steps that made it easier for people to vote last November, especially by mail, and led to record numbers of votes cast.

Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act soon after the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama. The law reflected the reality of the time that although the Fifteenth Amendment barred racial bias in voting, Blacks were still deterred from casting ballots through poll taxes, literacy tests and other rules.

Roberts has also made clear that he abhors remedies tied to race, saying in a 2006 voting-rights case: "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race." Yet in the aftermath of the polarizing 2020 election, the country and the high court may be headed for a new chapter of voting-rights cases of a deeper partisan character, intensifying concerns about the future of the Voting Rights Act, as well as First Amendment guarantees of free speech and association.

Georgia's law, signed by Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday, emerges from Republican efforts nationwide, particularly in battleground states that experienced record turnout and Democratic victories last November. Among its myriad provisions, the Georgia law imposes new voter identification requirements for absentee ballots and empowers state officials to take over local election boards.

The three voting rights groups that sued - the New Georgia Project, the Black Voters Matter Fund and Rise Inc. -- grounded their complaint in the Voting Rights Act and in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The challengers emphasized Georgia's history of racial discrimination. "(V)oting in Georgia is highly polarized, and the shameful legacy of racial discrimination is visible today in Georgia's housing, economic, and health disparities," they wrote, adding that the new law "interacts with these vestiges of discrimination" to deny equal opportunity in the political process. Lower federal court judges have struggled over the standard for assessing the denial of voting rights, and that dilemma is at the heart of the Supreme Court's new Arizona controversy.

In dispute are laws require ballots cast by people at the wrong precinct to be discarded and bar most third parties -- beyond a relative or mail carrier -- from collecting absentee ballots, for example, at a nursing home.

During oral arguments, Roberts and fellow conservatives focused on potential voter fraud and highlighted state authority for overseeing elections. Arizona officials argued that the measures would help prevent voter coercion and other irregularities, as the challengers contended that the new requirements would especially disenfranchise Native Americans and other minorities.

The high court's resolution of the Arizona controversy could have a dramatic impact on the raft of new legislation and ultimately how easy it is for minorities to register and vote. Resolution is expected by the end of June.

She serves as the court's official spokesperson and manages a staff of six employees who assist in furthering the public's understanding of the history and function of the court.

For more than a year, due to Covid-19, the court building and the chamber itself have been closed to the public.

The officer suffered from a brain injury, loss of teeth, and a head injury.

A federal appeals court allowed the suit to go forward in a decision that stunned civil liberties communities who argued that if the opinion is left on the books it would chill the speech rights of protesters and dismantle civil rights era precedent that safeguard's the First Amendment's right to protest. The Supreme Court has held that lawful protestors cannot be held liable when someone within their ranks commits unlawful activity.

"The Supreme Court has long recognized that peaceful protesters cannot be held liable for the unintended, unlawful actions of others," said American Civil Liberties Union National Legal Director David Cole, who is representing McKesson. "If the law had allowed anyone to sue leaders of social justice movements over the violent actions of others, there would have been no Civil Rights Movement. The lower court's ruling is a threat to the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans."

"The First Amendment does not condone physical violence," a group of First Amendment lawyers represented by Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger told the court in support of McKesson. Dellinger argued that while the Constitution does not excuse the attacker's "criminal, tortious and morally indefensible conduct," it does protect the organizer who "neither committed nor incited" the illegal activity.