Fogbow

Supreme Court will take up major abortion case next term

In a Monday order list, the court agreed to review Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case about the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court will consider “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

The US supreme court agreed on Monday to consider a major rollback of abortion rights, saying it will take up Mississippi’s bid to enforce a 15-week ban on abortion.

The court’s order sets up a showdown over abortion, probably in the fall, with a more conservative court seemingly ready to dramatically alter nearly 50 years of rulings on abortion rights.

The court first announced a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion in the 1973 Roe v Wade decision and reaffirmed it 19 years later.

The state’s ban had been blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with supreme court precedent that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the fetus can survive outside her womb.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Mon May 17, 2021 11:22 am I open this thread with the same sense of dread I feel when I open the Another Shooting thread.

07/01/2021 10:23 am ET Updated 3 days ago
Supreme Court Says California Can’t Collect Names Of Dark Money Donors
The court ruled in favor of conservative organizations that opposed the requirement that donors’ identities be disclosed to the state attorney general’s office.

Jessica Gresko

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered California to stop collecting the names and addresses of top donors to charities.

The justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines to side with two nonprofit groups, including one with links to billionaire Charles Koch. The groups argued that California’s policy of collecting the information violates the First Amendment.

The nonprofits had drawn strong support from groups across the political spectrum, including the American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

California had defended its policy by saying that the information’s collection was necessary to prevent fraud. But Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a majority opinion joined by the court’s other conservatives that there is a “dramatic mismatch” between California’s interest in preventing wrongdoing by charities and its donor information requirement.

“The upshot is that California casts a dragnet for sensitive donor information from tens of thousands of charities each year, even though that information will become relevant in only a small number of cases involving filed complaints,” Roberts wrote.

In a dissent for the court’s three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned of the decision’s consequences.

“Today’s analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye. Regulated entities who wish to avoid their obligations can do so by vaguely waving toward First Amendment ‘privacy concerns,’” she said.

California requires all charities that collect money from state residents to give the state an IRS form identifying their largest contributors. The information is not supposed to be disclosed publicly. Just three other states, Hawaii, New Jersey and New York, require charities to provide the IRS form.



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme- ... e21cbea181

Justice Sonia Sotomayor has revealed that changes have been made in the supreme court’s structure of oral arguments following studies confirming what women on the court have long noticed – that female justices were more prone to being interrupted by male justices and attorneys.

Speaking at a New York University School of Law event on Wednesday, Sotomayor said the new format now allows justices to ask questions individually, in order of seniority, after an attorney’s time is up.

Amy Coney Barrett,John Roberts<br>Chief Justice John Roberts, right, stands at the top of the steps with Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett after her investiture ceremony at the Supreme Court, Friday, Oct. 1, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
John Roberts is no longer the leader of his own court. Who, then, controls it?
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The improvement has had an “enormous impact”, she said, as first reported by CNN.

“I … found that my colleagues are much more sensitive than they were before. You’ll see us, even now, when we’re speaking, a judge will say, ‘I’m sorry, did I interrupt you?’” Sotomayor said, adding: “That did not happen as much before.”

Volkonski wrote: ↑Tue Oct 19, 2021 4:55 pm

Our highest court is facing a legitimacy crisis and is in desperate need of reform. And yet, due to the deadlock that seems to be Congress these days, I too often hear the rebuke to US supreme court reform, “None of these reforms will happen, so what is the point of talking about them?”

This defeatist argument fails to recognize a pivotal audience who surely hears the growing public calls for urgent reform – the supreme court itself.

We need only look to the number of justices who have felt the need recently to speak up on behalf of the court, in an attempt to justify its egregious abuse of judicial norms and processes, to know the justices are listening.

Historically, one of the most common features of supreme court justices is their public silence when away from the court. They generally let their decisions speak for themselves. No longer is that tenable as this court’s conservative supermajority insists on using its power to advance a partisan agenda at the expense of our constitutional rights and democratic legitimacy.

New York judge's gun permit denials trigger big Supreme Court case

- Justice Richard McNally Jr., a New York state trial court judge, knows he has a reputation among gun enthusiasts in the upstate county of Rensselaer where he presides as a tough sell on granting permits for people to carry concealed handguns without restrictions.

McNally insists that in each case he applies the standard as written in a 1913 New York law that limits concealed-carry licenses to people who can show a "proper cause" for having one.

"It's a law that was intended to grant broad discretion to the local licensing officers, and that takes into consideration geography and other factors," McNally said in an interview in his chambers at the county courthouse in Troy, a city near the state capital of Albany. "I think it's worked pretty well for the last 100 years."

That very discretion, wielded by state judges and police officials, could soon disappear. McNally's decisions to deny two county gun owners unrestricted licenses are at the heart of a major gun rights case set to be argued at the U.S. Supreme Court next Wednesday. A ruling is due by the end of next June.

Justice on the Brink: Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court
by Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
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Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the rise of Amy Coney Barrett.
About this event
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a seismic shift in the history of the Supreme Court, cementing a conservative majority on the bench as the country experienced a pandemic, underwent a divisive presidential election, and witnessed the Capitol insurrection. In her new book, Justice on the Brink, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer Linda Greenhouse provides a behind-the-scenes look at the twelve months that reshaped the Supreme Court and the years of conservative activism behind the rise of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

filly wrote: ↑Mon Dec 13, 2021 8:05 pm Interesting that Gorsuch was not joined by Bart O'Kavenaugh and Amy Corny Barrett. Both of them have had COVID.

The Supreme Court on Monday issued a revised transcript of oral arguments over a Biden administration vaccine rule that clarified a statement Justice Neil Gorsuch made about the number of annual flu deaths.

The original, uncorrected transcript quotes Gorsuch as saying he believes the flu kills "hundreds of thousands of people every year."

This erroneous transcription prompted legions of tweets and at least one media report that tut-tutted Gorsuch and pointed out the actual number of annual flu deaths, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate, is between 12,000 and 52,000 - well below the hundreds of thousands the conservative justice purportedly cited.

On Monday, however, the Supreme Court's press office issued a corrected transcript showing that Gorsuch actually said he believes the flu kills "hundreds, thousands of people every year."

p0rtia wrote: ↑Mon Jan 10, 2022 2:40 pm So SCOTUS appears to be editing transcripts to protect its members from looking like idiots.