Sorted by date Results 1 - 11 of 11
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative justices holding the Supreme Court's majority seem likely to sink President Joe Biden's plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans. In arguments lasting more than three hours Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts led his conservative colleagues in questioning the administration's authority to broadly cancel federal student loans because of the COVID-19 emergency. The plan has so far been blocked by Republican-appointed judges on lower courts. It was not clear that any of the six j...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Thursday an eight-month investigation that included more than 120 interviews and revealed shortcomings in how sensitive documents are secured has failed to find who leaked a draft of the court's opinion overturning abortion rights. Ninety-seven employees, including the justices' law clerks, swore under oath that they did not disclose a draft of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, the court said. It was unclear whether the justices themselves were questioned about the leak, w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — New Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued her first Supreme Court opinion Monday, a short dissent in support of a death row inmate from Ohio. Jackson wrote that she would have thrown out lower court rulings in the case of Ohio inmate Davel Chinn, whose lawyers argued that the state suppressed evidence that might have altered the outcome of his trial. The two-page opinion came on the same day the high court was hearing cases that are part of a wider dispute over the power of the federal government. In her dissent, Jackson w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the biggest challenge to abortion rights in decades, the Supreme Court's conservative majority on Wednesday signaled they would allow states to ban abortion much earlier in pregnancy and may even overturn the nationwide right that has existed for nearly 50 years. With hundreds of demonstrators outside chanting for and against, the justices led arguments that could decide the fate of the court's historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion throughout the United States and its 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. C...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of the Supreme Court signaled Monday they would allow abortion providers to pursue a court challenge to the controversial Texas law that has virtually ended abortion in the nation's second-largest state after six weeks of pregnancy. But it was unclear how quickly the court would rule and whether it would issue an order blocking the law that has been in effect for two months, or require providers to ask a lower court to put the law on hold. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, two conservative a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court returned to the courtroom Monday for the start of a momentous new term, after a nearly 19-month absence because of the coronavirus pandemic. Abortion, guns and religion all are on the agenda for a court with a rightward tilt, including three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump. Chief Justice John Roberts was in his usual place in the center chair and Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's longest serving member, was to his right. But almost everything else was a little different for a court t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Controversial Trump administration policies on the census, asylum seekers and the border wall, held illegal by lower courts, are on the Supreme Court's agenda Friday. The most pressing case before the justices when they meet privately, and by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, involves the census. They are considering the Trump administration's appeal to be allowed to exclude people living in the U.S. illegally from the population count that will be used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives — and by...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up President Donald Trump's policy, blocked by a lower court, to exclude people living in the U.S. illegally from the census count that will be used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives. Never in U.S. history have immigrants been excluded from the population count that determines how House seats, and by extension Electoral College votes, are divided among the states, a three-judge federal count said in September when it held Trump's policy illegal. The justices put the c...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Clarence Thomas spoke and Chief Justice John Roberts ruled. The Supreme Court's most unusual term featured victories for immigrants, abortion rights, LGBTQ workers and religious freedoms. The usually quiet Thomas' baritone was heard by the whole world when the coronavirus outbreak upended the court's traditional way of doing business. When the biggest decisions were handed down, the chief justice was almost always in the majority and dictated the reach of the court's most controversial cases, whether they were won b...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Supreme Court justice gets it in his mind to ask a question, and pretty soon, he's got questions for everyone. And so the next question: Will Clarence Thomas ever stop talking? Before this week, the intervals between Thomas' questions during high court arguments were measured in years. He once went 10 years, from 2006 to 2016, without asking even one. Now he's been an active questioner for three straight days. He'll have the chance to continue his streak next week in six arguments over three days. It might be the setting, t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — In different circumstances, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might be on a valedictory tour in her final months on the Supreme Court. But in the era of Donald Trump, the 84-year-old Ginsburg is packing her schedule and sending signals she intends to keep her seat on the bench for years. The eldest Supreme Court justice has produced two of the court's four signed opinions so far this term. Outside court, she's the subject of a new documentary that includes video of her working out. And she's hired law clerks to take her through J...
