Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito further distanced themselves from their Supreme Court colleagues on Wednesday when they were the only two jurists to note their objections to the court’s refusal to let the Trump administration immediately enforce its preferred policy on gender-affirming care in prison.
The court’s unsigned order contained no explanation from the majority or the dissenting duo. Still, it’s the latest data point showing Thomas and Alito backing the administration even when their fellow GOP appointees — including President Donald Trump’s own three appointees — decline to do so.
Wednesday’s order follows last month’s Supreme Court rejection of Trump’s desired mail-ballot restrictions for the midterm elections. That loss led the president to lash out at the court, including his own appointees, while calling Thomas and Alito “legends.”
Asked during a recently published CBS News interview about a Wall Street Journal study showing that Alito sided with Trump more than any of his colleagues, the justice said he’s “not trying to decide cases to help President Trump.”
Whatever his or Thomas’ intentions, their latest actions spotlight their dynamic of voting for the president’s position when other justices don’t. Their votes come ahead of the rapidly approaching Election Day in less than two weeks, with voters set to determine which party will control Senate confirmation of justices for the near future.
Alito said he’s staying on the court at least through this court term, even if Democrats win back Senate control. Thomas has likewise not signaled that he is stepping down imminently. If he stays on the court through the next term, he will become the longest-serving justice ever. In their late 70s, Thomas and Alito are the two eldest members of the current court, but they aren’t very old by the court’s historical standards.
Yet if Trump has an opportunity to appoint their successors or any other justices before he leaves office in 2029, their latest votes underscore why he will likely model his next selection(s) on them, rather than on the justices he has put on the bench thus far, who have backed him in a series of significant cases but not all of them.
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
The post Supreme Court’s split on gender care highlights Alito and Thomas as pro-Trump outliers appeared first on MS NOW.
With Americans deciding the congressional balance of power in November’s midterm elections, Justice Elena Kagan is reminding the nation of how the Supreme Court’s decisions have shaped the ballot.
It’s an antidemocratic shape, according to the Obama-appointed justice’s remarks Tuesday at Catholic University’s law school in Washington.
Kagan said the court “has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings on how the political system works and has created a democracy that does not work as well as it should.”
Her off-bench comments reprised impassioned criticisms she has made in dissenting opinions from the GOP-appointed majority’s rulings on gerrymandering in 2019 and earlier this year on the Voting Rights Act and campaign finance.
In 2019’s Rucho v. Common Cause, the majority said partisan gerrymandering claims present “political questions” that courts can’t answer. Writing the dissent for what was then a four-justice minority, she said the case marked “the first time ever” that the court “refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities.”
Writing for the current three-justice minority this year, Kagan called the six-justice majority’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” Leading the same trio on campaign finance, in dissent from a ruling that struck down more limits and overturned another precedent in the process, she said the majority “jettisons a rule needed to protect our democracy’s integrity.”
On Tuesday, she said the American people “look around this political system and think that all this money chasing all these political candidates is a nightmare.” She added, “And they’re right.”
The justices are in between their October and November hearing sessions, but they will continue to field any emergency applications that come to them regarding the midterms or anything else. Currently, there is a pending application from New Hampshire Republicans to prevent the use of student IDs in voting.
The justices have weighed in on an array of election disputes already this year — and they haven’t always backed the GOP. But whatever the outcome in the midterms, Kagan’s comments provide a useful backdrop for understanding the political landscape the court has helped set.
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
The post Justice Kagan reminds Americans of Supreme Court majority’s antidemocratic actions appeared first on MS NOW.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s application to enforce its ban on gender-affirming medical care for federal inmates after a judge blocked the policy.
The denial came in an unexplained order. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito noted they would have granted the administration’s application, but they also did not explain their reasoning.
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said the high court’s action “protects incarcerated trans people from the administration’s attempt to steamroll over constitutional rights for now.” But she added, “the fight to uphold the dignity and respect our community deserves is far from over.”
Urging the justices to lift the judge’s order while it appeals, the administration argued that the public interest favors such a result because the policy “provides appropriate, individualized treatment for gender dysphoria, while disallowing only interventions that are medically unnecessary.”
Lawyers for inmates with the American Civil Liberties Union implored the high court not to back the government’s attempt to “overturn a three decades-long status quo.” They said the government turned to the justices at this preliminary stage of the litigation not because it has a pressing legal claim but rather because it is upset about how the district judge applied settled law to the facts in this case.
Over the past couple of years, the Supreme Court has ruled against transgender people in a series of cases involving sports, the military, passports and gender-affirming care for minors.
When he granted a preliminary injunction for inmates in June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, said he didn’t want to wade into “the culture war being waged against transgender individuals.” He said he was merely making a legal decision that the government had failed to follow proper procedures when it implemented the new policy.
The Washington judge called the government action “arbitrary and capricious” because it “failed to seriously consider its own experience providing gender-affirming care to inmates for years under its prior policy.” Lamberth issued a subsequent order in August maintaining the injunction, finding that despite officials’ claims, it wouldn’t cause safety issues to continue inmates’ medical care while the litigation proceeds.
Over dissent from a Trump appointee, a federal appellate panel declined to lift Lamberth’s injunction.
In the administration’s application to the justices, Solicitor General John Sauer said the Bureau of Prisons had previously provided both what he called “mental-health treatment (such as psychotherapy and psychiatry services)” and “sex-rejecting interventions (such as sex-trait-modification surgeries, hormone interventions, and social accommodations).”
Sauer said the government concluded it could no longer justify the second category for two reasons: that such interventions weren’t supported by the latest evidence and that they “raised security and prison-administration concerns that outweighed whatever limited benefits they had.”
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
The post Supreme Court rejects Trump administration on gender-affirming care in prison appeared first on MS NOW.
The third-grade teacher of Stylianos Constantinou told the Nicosia district court on Wednesday that he informed the headmaster regarding marks on the boy’s body which had been attributed to his father.
The witness said it was his duty to inform a member of the school’s violence prevention team and that the headmaster was one.
He said there were indications of beatings and that the child had said they came from his father.
The prosecution cited an education ministry manual that requires school staff to report cases when told a child is experiencing domestic violence.
The incident occurred when Stylianos was in second grade, when the boy complained of back pain during class, whereupon the school matron and speech therapist called the teacher to see the marks.
Stylianos took his own life at the age of 14, with the trial examining whether family or state service negligence contributed to his death.
On Monday the same teacher described the boy as a gentle child who saved school food for his siblings and resembled “a saintly recluse”.
He said Stylianos arrived with dirty clothes and an unpleasant odour, and that the school tried to support him.
The defence also questioned him regarding statements made in his main testimony that were absent from his testimony in 2020, which the witness said he had testified unprepared and emotionally charged.
On the decision to end the boy’s school escort, he said it was collective and that he had reservations.
He said he was told the matter would be reviewed if problems arose, and rejected the suggestion that he had agreed the child no longer needed support.
He said the canteen head had agreed with the mother that Stylianos would receive food and that she would pay for it, and that the child also received free meals through a ministry programme.
He had no personal knowledge that there was no food at the home, as he had not visited the family, and the information came from what the child told his escort.
He said the boy’s clothes smelled strongly of farm animals and ruled out mould as the cause. “I don’t think clean clothes can absorb such a bad smell just by being next to dirty clothes,” he said. He said he or his wife bought clothes for the boy but kept no receipts.
Liberal justice says recent decisions on redistricting and campaign finance have undermined democracy and polarized US even more
Elena Kagan criticized rulings made by the US supreme court’s conservative majority this week, arguing that its recent decisions on redistricting and campaign finance had undermined America’s democracy.
“The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works,” said Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, during a discussion at Catholic University’s law school in Washington DC on Tuesday, according to multiple reports.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Finn Gomez/Getty Images
© Photograph: Finn Gomez/Getty Images
© Photograph: Finn Gomez/Getty Images
In late August, President Donald Trump announced what he called the “biggest oil deal in world history.” Since then, the full text of the accord — which grants the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuela’s oil reserves — has been one of the most sought-after secrets in Washington, DC. ProPublica has reviewed a copy of the […]
The post The secret terms of Trump’s Venezuelan oil deal appeared first on Asia Times.
Login