The most pertinent of the three cases in terms of Trump administration priorities involves whether immigrants in custody for deportation proceedings have the right to a hearing to request their release when their cases are not promptly adjudicated. The other immigration cases to be decided concern whether U.S. government officials can be sued over mistreatment of non-citizens.
Democrats have expressed worry that Gorsuch could act as a rubber stamp for the Republican president’s policies on a nine-seat Supreme Court poised to revert to a conservative majority. With four liberals and four conservatives now on the court, Gorsuch’s confirmation would restore the conservative majority that had existed for decades until the death last year of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Any appeals of decisions by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart in Seattle face a regional court dominated by liberal-leaning judges who might not be sympathetic to Trump’s rationale for the ban, and a currently shorthanded Supreme Court split 4-4 between liberals and conservatives.
A source involved in the selection process said Trump has made his choice between two conservative U.S. appeals court judges — Neil Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman. Adding an element of drama to what is normally a sober announcement, CNN said both finalists, Gorsuch and Hardiman, had been brought to Washington ahead of Tuesday’s announcement.
The justices let stand a July 2016 decision by a lower court that found that the 2011 Texas statute ran afoul of a federal law that bars racial discrimination in elections and directed a lower court to find a way to fix the law’s discriminatory effects against minorities.
A divided Supreme Court questioned whether race or politics was the main factor used in drawing the controversial legislative districts in Virginia and North Carolina.
The top court agreed to hear an appeal by former senior Bush officials – including John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller – seeking to block a lawsuit filed by immigrants, mainly Muslims, detained after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ginsburg, 83, a liberal appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993, acknowledged that the Senate, which has the responsibility to confirm or reject judicial nominations, did not have to confirm the nominee. But she said it did have an obligation to at least consider Garland instead of taking no action at all.
Supporters of Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s U.S. Supreme Court selection, on Tuesday launched a new push to persuade the Republican-led Senate to act on the nomination before the Nov. 8 presidential election, but their calls fell on deaf ears.
The court, divided in part 4-4, rejected a request made by Republican Governor Pat McCrory after an appeals court ruled last month that the 2013 law discriminates against minority voters. Five votes are needed for an emergency request to be granted.
His appointments of dozens of judges to the country’s influential federal appeals courts have tilted the judiciary in a liberal direction that will influence rulings for years to come and be further entrenched if Democrat Hillary Clinton wins this November’s presidential election.
The court ruled 8-0 in overturning McDonnell’s conviction for accepting $177,000 in luxury gifts and sweetheart loans for him and his wife from a wealthy Richmond businessman seeking to promote a dietary supplement, finding that it did not constitute a criminal act under federal bribery law.
The 5-3 ruling held that the Republican-backed 2013 law placed an undue burden on women exercising their constitutional right to end a pregnancy established in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
The court’s decision on whether a Republican-backed 2013 Texas law placed an undue burden on women exercising their constitutional right to abortion is one of three remaining cases for the court to decide on Monday, the last day of its term.
The Supreme Court was weighing for the second time a challenge to the admissions system used by the University of Texas at Austin brought by Abigail Fisher, who was denied entry to the school for the autumn of 2008.
The laws in New York and Connecticut, among the strictest in the nation, were enacted after a gunman with a semiautomatic rifle killed 20 young children and six educators in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The law requires abortion doctors to have “admitting privileges,” a type of formal affiliation, at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the clinic. That provision has been implemented. A second provision, not yet in effect, requires clinics to have costly hospital-grade facilities including extensive standards for such attributes as corridor width, room size, floor tiles and the swinging motion of doors.
The voters who sued in 2013 said Scott’s district was racially “gerrymandered” by state legislators in 2012 to cram black voters into it and reduce black influence in neighboring districts in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.