Just over one week after lobbing pointed personal criticism at Justice Brett Kavanaugh for his concurring opinion in a decision by the Supreme Court that lifted restrictions on immigration stops that the challenger said are based on racial profiling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her remarks “inappropriate” and indicated that she had apologized to Kavanaugh.

Sotomayor’s comments came during an April 7 appearance at the University of Kansas Law School. She referred to Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which he suggested that even if immigration officers stopped people who were U.S. citizens or were in this country legally, “the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free” once they prove that they are “U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.” Sotomayor did not refer to Kavanaugh by name, but she suggested that the author of the concurring opinion did not understand the actual impact of such stops. In particular, she appeared to imply that Kavanaugh had led a sheltered or privileged life, telling the audience that the opinion had come from “a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

Remarks like Sotomayor’s are unusual, and on Wednesday afternoon Sotomayor apologized for them. In a three-sentence statement released by the court’s Public Information Office that once again did not refer to Kavanaugh by name, she stated: “At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate. I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”

The justices return to the bench for oral arguments on Monday, April 20.

The post Justice Sotomayor apologizes for “inappropriate” remarks about Justice Kavanaugh appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

Updated on April 1 at 10:10 p.m.

On Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would end birthright citizenship – the guarantee of U.S. citizenship to virtually everyone born in this country. Trump’s order has never gone into effect; since then, every federal court that has considered a challenge to the order has struck it down. After just over two hours of oral arguments on Wednesday, before an audience that included (at least for part of the morning) Trump himself, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed likely to do the same.

Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment includes a provision known as the citizenship clause, which confers citizenship on anyone “born … in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The provision was originally added to the Constitution to overrule the Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that Black people whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as enslaved persons were not entitled to any protection from the federal courts because they were not U.S. citizens. But for more than a century, the clause has been understood to confer citizenship on almost everyone born in the United States, subject to only a few narrow exceptions.

Trump floated the prospect of ending birthright citizenship during his first term in office, but he encountered resistance even within his own party. Trump did not give up on the idea, and on the first day of his second term he signed an executive order, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, to do so. The order ended birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, as well as those of immigrants who are in the United States legally but temporarily – for example, on a student or work visa.

Challenges to the executive order followed around the country. The first federal judge to weigh in on the legality of the executive order, Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour of Seattle, called it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Other judges followed Coughenour in blocking the Trump administration from enforcing the order.

That prompted the Trump administration to come to the Supreme Court last year, asking the justices to weigh in on the propriety of so-called universal or nationwide injunctions – orders by federal district judges that bar the government from implementing a policy anywhere in the United States.

By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court in Trump v. CASA limited the ability of lower courts to issue universal injunctions. The challenges to the legality of the executive order then continued to move forward in the lower courts – including in New Hampshire, where a federal judge issued an order that temporarily barred the Trump administration from enforcing the order against a group of babies who are or would be denied U.S. citizenship by the order. U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante wrote “that the Executive Order likely ‘contradicts the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the century-old untouched precedent that interprets it.’”

The Trump administration then came to the Supreme Court in that case, Trump v. Barbara, asking the justices to weigh in on the legality of the president’s order ending birthright citizenship.

Representing the Trump administration, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause was adopted to give newly freed enslaved people and their children citizenship. For decades after the adoption of the clause, he said, commentators recognized that the children of temporary visitors were not citizens. Moreover, he added, most countries do not have birthright citizenship – which, he argued, rewards illegal immigration. And he contended that “birth tourism” – the practice of women coming to the United States specifically to give birth so that their children have U.S. citizenship – is “creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States.”

Cecillia Wang, who represented the challengers on Wednesday, pointed to the longstanding agreement in the United States that “everyone born here is a citizen.” The 14th Amendment, she said, established a “fixed bright-line” rule for citizenship that is “workable” and “prevents manipulation.”

Much of Wednesday’s argument focused on the court’s 1898 decision in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to parents of Chinese descent. When he tried to return to the United States from a visit to China, immigration officials challenged his citizenship.

A majority of the Supreme Court in that case agreed that Wong Kim Ark was a U.S. citizen. Writing for the majority, Justice Horace Gray explained that although the “main purpose” of the 14th Amendment had been to establish the citizenship of Black people, including former enslaved persons born in the United States, the amendment applies more broadly and is not restricted “by color or race.” Instead, he wrote, the amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens.”

Both sides in Trump v. Barbara contend that the court’s decision in Wong Kim Ark’s case supports their position. In a question for Sauer, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that in Wong Kim Ark, there was no question that his parents were domiciled – that is, had a permanent home in or connection with – the United States.

Sauer agreed, noting that the majority in that case had indicated that (unlike the people who would be covered by Trump’s executive order) Wong Kim Ark’s parents were lawful permanent residents in the United States and domiciled there, even if they were not U.S. citizens.

Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed skepticism, telling Sauer that the United States did not have strict immigration laws when the 14th Amendment was ratified. Anyone, he suggested, could show up in the United States in 1868 and establish domicile. Gorsuch later observed that Justice John Marshall Harlan, who dissented in Wong Kim Ark, had indicated that, under that decision, the child of English visitors in the United States would be a U.S. citizen – an interpretation that supported the challengers.

Justice Elena Kagan challenged Sauer’s reliance on Wong Kim Ark’s case, telling him that the case had a “very clear rationale”: The majority indicated, she said, that there was a historical tradition of citizenship by birth that had carried over to the United States. The 14th Amendment, she continued, accepted that tradition without “limitations.”

Wang pointed to what she characterized as a “fatal concession” by the government – the fact that it was not asking the court to overrule its decision in Wong Kim Ark. The sweeping language in that decision, she argued, indicated that the parents’ domicile was not important in determining a child’s citizenship; all that matters is whether the child is born in the United States.

But several justices pressed Wang on whether the concept of “domicile” was truly irrelevant to the court’s ruling in Wong Kim Ark. The word “domicile” appears “20 different times” in the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts observed. “Isn’t it at least something to be concerned about?”

Justice Samuel Alito echoed Roberts’ question. Wong Kim Ark “begins” and “ends” with the question presented, which refers to his parents’ domicile. Why would the court include that, Alito asked, “if it’s irrelevant?”

Wang countered that the court’s opinion in Wong Kim Ark indicates six times that domicile is not relevant.

Alito and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson later offered a possible explanation for the court’s use of the term domicile, which was that Gray had wanted to help the public accept the outcome of the case by emphasizing that Wong Kim Ark’s parents were settled members of society, rather than the single men who came to work on the transcontinental railroad projects.

Toward the end of Wang’s time at the lectern, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested to her that, if the court accepted the challengers’ interpretation of Wong Kim Ark, her clients would prevail, and the court could write a fairly short opinion to resolve the case.

Wang agreed with Kavanaugh’s suggestion. 

In a separate line of questioning, Roberts challenged Sauer’s emphasis on the problem of “birth tourism,” asking him how common it actually is. Sauer acknowledged that “no one knows for sure” how widespread it is. Roberts then asked Sauer whether he agreed that, in any event, any problems that birth tourism might pose would have “no impact on the legal analysis before us.” Birth tourism, Roberts suggested, certainly wasn’t a problem when the 14th Amendment was ratified in the 19th century.

Sauer countered that we are living in a “new world.” But that prompted Roberts to respond that, although we may have a “new world,” we have “the same Constitution.”

In a similar vein, Kavanaugh pushed back against Sauer’s invocation of the practice of other countries, many of which do not have birthright citizenship. Kavanaugh dismissed the issue as “a policy matter,” stressing that “we try to interpret American law with American precedent based on American history.” “[W]hy should we be thinking about,” he asked, the “many other countries in the world [that] don’t have this?”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed concern about the broader implications of a ruling for the government. When the Supreme Court ruled that “Indians could not become citizens,” she noted, the federal government began to de-naturalize even those who had already become citizens. Under the logic of your position, she said to Sauer, Trump (or someone else) could decide to make the order retroactive.

Sauer emphasized that the Trump administration was only seeking to apply the executive order going forward, but he did not indicate that his theory could not also apply retroactively – which may give the justices pause.

Gorsuch also pointed to the similarities in language between the citizenship clause and a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, enacted in 1940 and again in 1952, which provides that anyone “born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a U.S. citizen. He asked Sauer whether, if the court were to look at the plain meaning of that law, it would conclude that anyone born in this country is a U.S. citizen.

Sauer countered that it should not, because the citizenship clause and the law should mean the same thing.

Kavanaugh later asked Wang why the court needed to decide whether the executive order violates the citizenship clause if it could resolve the case based only on the Immigration and Nationality Act, citing the court’s general presumption that it will avoid deciding constitutional questions if possible.

Wang acknowledged that she was “happy to win on either” ground, but she urged the court to “reaffirm” its decision in Wong Kim Ark, calling it “a landmark decision about the definition of national citizenship in this country.”

A decision in the case is expected by late June or early July.

The post Supreme Court appears likely to side against Trump on birthright citizenship appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

Recently received the new 2026 DRONE NOT DRONES t-shirt. According to their site: “ALL PROFITS [GO] TO MINNEAPOLIS legal/rent/resources MUTUAL AID orgs in response to the DHS armed occupation of our city.” That city being Minneapolis and surrounding area. Abolish ICE.

I’ve played at the 28-hour drone festival a couple times over the years. It’s an extraordinary occurrence featuring dozens of participants taking turns playing a small part of one unbroken performance across two days. Recordings of my own sets from 2014 and 2017 are available in THE ENDLESS COMPENDIUM.

Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

“We decide whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizes the President to impose tariffs.”

That is the first sentence of Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion for the court in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, decided today, Feb. 20, 2026. The case arose from a challenge to broad tariffs that the executive branch imposed pursuant to IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate . . . importation.” The court’s decision on whether the president had the power to do so was unambiguous:

The President asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it. IEEPA’s grant of authority to “regulate . . . importation” falls short. IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties. The Government points to no statute in which Congress used the word “regulate” to authorize taxation. And until now no President has read IEEPA to confer such power. We claim no special competence in matters of economics or foreign affairs. We claim only, as we must, the limited role assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution. Fulfilling that role, we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.

The decision also resolved the companion case, Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, by affirming the lower court judgment in that case, and vacated and remanded the district court judgment in Learning Resources itself for dismissal on jurisdictional grounds. The merits holding, however, is unqualified: IEEPA is not a tariff statute.

The court’s coalition

Roberts announced the judgment and wrote the principal opinion, but that opinion carries two distinct coalitions:

Parts I, II-A-1, and II-B constitute the opinion of the court, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Jackson – a six-justice coalition. These sections focus on the statute: reading the text, examining the constitutional backdrop, and concluding that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs.

Parts II-A-2 and III, which contains discussion of the major questions doctrine, or the idea that “clear congressional authorization” is necessary to authorize presidential actions regarding significant issues, were joined only by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – making those portions a three-justice plurality, not a majority holding.

Beyond Roberts, six separate writings were filed:

• Gorsuch concurred
• Barrett concurred
• Kagan concurred in part and in the judgment, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson
• Jackson concurred in part and in the judgment
• Thomas dissented separately
• Kavanaugh dissented, joined by Thomas and Alito

What each opinion said and how they compare

The Roberts opinion of the court – six justices

The six-justice opinion analyzes the statute. This reads “regulate . . . importation” against its textual neighbors and statutory context, observes that IEEPA contains no reference to tariffs or duties, and notes that the government could not identify a single statute in which Congress used “regulate” to authorize taxation. The opinion draws on the 1824 case of Gibbons v. Ogden for the proposition that tariffs are “a branch of the taxing power,” and concludes that if “regulate . . . exportation” included taxation, IEEPA would authorize what Article I provides to Congress, not the president.  

The Roberts plurality – major questions – three justices

As noted above, the narrower Roberts-Gorsuch-Barrett plurality (Parts II-A-2 and III) focuses on the major questions doctrine. This requires “clear congressional authorization” for the claimed power, holds there is no emergency exception to that requirement here, holds that foreign-affairs implications do not displace the doctrine, and treats as “telling” that in IEEPA’s fifty-year existence no president had invoked it to impose tariffs.

The concurrences

Gorsuch (46 pages) joined Roberts in full and wrote the second-longest opinion to defend the major questions framework and write on the non-delegation doctrine (the principle that Congress cannot grant legislative powers to other branches)

Barrett (4 pages) joined Roberts in full and wrote briefly to challenge Gorsuch’s framing of the major questions doctrine

Kagan (7 pages, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson) joined the six-justice portions but not the major questions plurality. Her core position is stated explicitly: ordinary tools of statutory interpretation are sufficient – meaning she does not need the major questions “thumb on the scale” to reach the same result.

Jackson (5 pages) joined the same portions as Kagan and writes separately to rely on the legislative record – House and Senate Reports – to anchor the congressional intent when IEEPA was enacted. This is the opinion’s primary legislative-history-positive writing, and it stands in direct methodological tension with Gorsuch’s explicit caution against those same materials.

The dissents

Thomas (18 pages) dissented separately to describe historical practice, which in his view supports the president’s ability to levy tariffs under IEEPA

Kavanaugh (63 pages, joined by Thomas and Alito) is the longest opinion in the case and the most comprehensive defense of the government’s position. His dissent:

• Structures the case as the president acting pursuant to congressional authorization
• Argues “regulate . . . importation” and “adjust . . . imports” are not meaningfully distinguishable
• Contends the Nixon-era Trading with the Enemy Act tariff episode (the predecessor to IEEPA) means the claimed authority was not “unheralded”
• Argues the major questions doctrine has never been applied to a foreign affairs statute and should not be applied here
• Warns that applying the majority’s new approach would likely have altered the outcomes in prior decisions

The intra-court methodological conflict across the writings is stark and measurable. The phrase “major questions” and “clear congressional authorization” function as decisive analytical tools for Roberts, Gorsuch, and Barrett. Kagan explicitly states those tools are unnecessary. Jackson relies on legislative history that Gorsuch expressly cautions against. Kavanaugh argues the doctrine should not apply in this domain at all.

Opinions v. briefs: what was adopted, what was rejected

The merits briefs – the government’s opening brief, the state challengers’ brief, and the private challengers’ brief (Learning Resources) – are also telling. Here is what the court adopted and what it rejected from each side.

What the court adopted (from the challengers’ briefs):

• Tariffs as taxing power. The challengers argued that tariffs are “a branch of the taxing power” and therefore categorically different from regulatory tools granted to the president like quotas and embargoes. The Roberts opinion of the court adopted this framing directly.
• Major questions applies; no emergency exception. The challengers argued the claimed authority is “breathtaking” and “unprecedented” and requires clear statutory authorization. The plurality adopted this framing and expressly held there is no emergency-statute carveout.
• No foreign-affairs exception to the major questions doctrine. The challengers argued the foreign-affairs context does not flip the interpretive presumption. The plurality agreed and rejected the government’s proposed carveout here.
• The lack of historical precedent is telling. No president had used IEEPA for tariffs in fifty years. The plurality treated this as an affirmative indicator against the government’s reading.

What the court rejected (from the government’s brief):

• The “poles/spectrum” theory. The government argued “regulate” sits between “compel” and “prohibit,” capturing less extreme tools including tariffs. The majority rejected this directly, finding tariffs “operate directly on domestic importers to raise revenue” and are not simply a milder embargo.
• Both anti-major questions doctrine carveouts. The government argued the major questions doctrine should not apply to emergency statutes and that foreign affairs context flips the interpretive presumption. Again, both were expressly rejected.

Argument volume and opinion length

The argument-to-opinion correlation is strongest for the justices who wrote extensively. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh both asked high volumes of doctrinal-framing and precedent-confrontation questions at argument, and both produced long written opinions anchored in the same frameworks they were probing. Barrett asked the highest volume of questions but produced the shortest concurrence; her argument questions focused on clarifying the scope of precedent and the nature of the major questions doctrine, and her brief writing addresses exactly those questions. Kagan and Thomas asked the fewest questions; Kagan’s concurrence is brief and methodologically focused, consistent with having entered argument already confident in her path.

In other words, what the justice asked at argument reflected the case’s final outcome.

How well did my prior prediction hold up?

In a Legalytics piece, “The $133 Billion Question: Inside the IEEPA Tariff Case,”  I made a series of empirical predictions:

The bottom line: my core predictions held. The vote count and Kavanaugh’s position were both secondary possibilities, and the length of the opinion correlation with why it took longer than expected seems correct as well.

What comes next: refunds and remaining uncertainty

The court’s holding resolves the question of whether the president has statutory authority to impose tariffs under IEEPA. It does not resolve the refund question; the opinion does not set out a refund mechanism, does not order restitution, and does not address the administrative processes by which duties already paid might be recovered.

Indeed, the only explicit discussion of refunds in the slip opinion appears in Kavanaugh’s dissent. He warns that the United States “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA tariffs,” and describes the refund process as likely to be a “mess” — citing the oral argument transcript for that characterization. He also flags the pass-through problem: whether importers who passed tariff costs to consumers can recover at all.

That the refund discussion is concentrated entirely in the dissent, rather than anywhere in the majority’s rule statement, is itself a meaningful feature of the opinion: the court resolved the legal question of authority and left the remedial mechanics entirely to future proceedings.

The post A breakdown of the court’s tariff decision appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

More processing power requires more data centers, and for better or worse, they are going up across the country. Using data from a variety of sources, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory mapped data center infrastructure.

The yellow circles represent operating data centers, orange is construction, and white is proposed. The data centers are connected through transmission and fiber optic lines.

Keep this for when the bots take over and we need to cut the cords in the right places.

Tags: data center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

The rapid response networks people organized to defend their communities against federal agents seeking to kidnap, brutalize, and terrorize them have undergone a whirlwind evolution to keep up with ever-shifting Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics. Over the past month and a half of occupation, volunteers in the Twin Cities have continuously updated their rapid response model, arriving at a dynamic and resilient system. In the following report, we explore the details of that system for the benefit of others around the country who may soon be facing similar pressures.

On December 2, 100 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were deployed to the Twin Cities as part of a multi-city surge in detentions and deportations. Since then, the Twin Cities have become cities under siege, unrecognizable to many residents. The number of federal officers occupying them has jumped 30-fold to nearly 3000. For comparison, the Minneapolis Police Department has roughly 600 officers. The murder of Renee Nicole Good, a member of the rapid response network, on January 7, followed a week later by the shooting of another person on January 14, has caught the attention of the nation.

Nonetheless, most people assume that what is happening in the Twin Cities looks like ICE enforcement and resistance in other parts of the country. On the contrary, the scale of detentions, deportations, and clashes is without precedent.

To learn about the earlier iteration of the rapid response model, developed in Los Angeles and refined in Chicago and elsewhere over the fall, start here. To learn how to set up admin-only Signal loops, start here.

The Surge

During the months preceding the surge of ICE agents to the Twin Cities, local people and organizations created a relatively centralized rapid response network, in which observers would submit sightings with varying levels of substantiation to an admin on a mass text system. As soon as admins could intake, reformat, and verify the reports, they would blast it out on the system and people nearby would converge. This seemed to work for turning people out to major operations, like a raid on an apartment complex, but began to falter as ICE experimented with faster, more lightweight operations.

Then, around December 1, the raids essentially stopped, and the influx of agents began a campaign of door knocks and snatch-and-grabs. The previous model was immediately rendered obsolete, because the window of time to intervene shrank to a matter of minutes. Community members who were wanting something more confrontational than the existing legal-observer-style bottle-necked system started to build out a parallel system to fill the gaps and move more nimbly.

This new system began with a large-scale chat for Southside reports, where anyone can drop an alert of any kind. As ICE operations accelerated in volume and speed, the open, more nimble chat grew in members and became a space that attracted those who wanted to do more than simply record ICE operations. People integrated the existing whistle program to alert targeted people about ICE’s arrival and to harass the agents, then increasingly got in the way—blocking ICE vehicles with personal cars, using their bodies to block agents, using crowds and car patrols to intimidate small groups of agents into withdrawing.

As the chats got larger, more chats were made to break the city up into smaller and smaller segments—some of which have gotten as small as a four-block radius. This allows people to see reports directly relevant to them and respond to nearby sightings quickly and effectively.

Counter-Surveillance

These networks have benefited greatly from a program of counter-surveillance at the local ICE headquarters. The Whipple, a federal building in Fort Snelling on the outskirts of the Minneapolis and St. Paul, has long been a regional headquarters for ICE, having previously housed other federal agencies. The complex is located across the street from a National Guard base, down the road from a military base, and next to the preserved fort itself. The fort sits on the sacred site of the convergence of two rivers. It was one of the earliest sites of colonization in the area; at one time, it was a concentration camp holding native Dakota people.

The Whipple includes offices, processing and detention facilities in the basement, and a sprawling parking lot. Community members identified this complex as a key location over the summer; they have maintained a presence there since August.

The building is hemmed in by two state highways, two rivers, and an airport. With only two vehicle exits, tracking ICE vehicles entering and exiting the facility is easy. Whipple Watch, as it’s called, has involved protesters and observers stationed there for months, gathering intel on the convoys headed into the city or taking detainees to the airport, identifying patterns of operations such as surge days and times, and carefully cataloging the plates of vehicles going in and out. This database of plates gets near constant daily use, enabling rapid responders on foot and in cars to confirm known ICE vehicles in real time. ICE has begun swapping out cars and plates throughout the day to undermine this counter-surveillance, but the volume of submissions pouring in is only growing.

Whipple Watch describe their goals as threefold:

• to provide an early warning system about surges and convoys to the local rapid response networks,
• to gather data with a special focus on the license plate database, and
• to ensure that ICE knows they are being watched, even on their own turf.

Whipple Watch has undeniably succeeded in achieving these particular goals, even in the face of a hostile militarized force.

How It Works

Each chunk of the city (Southside, Uptown, Whittier, and so on) has rotating shifts of dispatchers, who admin a running Signal call throughout operational hours. Sometimes, multiple dispatchers overlap to split up the extra tasks of watching the chat, relaying reports to other channels, and checking license plates. Dispatch also helps people evenly distribute patrols across an area, takes notes, and assists people through confrontations. All patrollers in cars and on foot and stay on the call throughout their patrol. There is a constant flow of information, allowing other cars to decide whether they are well-positioned to join in, take over tailing the car, or continue searching for additional vehicles.

Since the structure has divided up into more granular neighborhood-based zones, people in many areas have also developed a daily chat system, with chats that are re-made and deleted each day to keep them clear and not maxed out of participants (as the maximum number of members of a Signal group is capped at 1000). Various areas of the cities and the suburbs have replicated the basic structure of this system but with slightly different models, chat structures, vetting systems, and data collection.

A data collection team collects anonymized data submitted from Whipple Watch and many of the local rapid response chats, aggregating them into consumable formats, such as interactive maps of hotspots. This team also admins the searchable database of license plates sorted by “confirmed ICE,” “suspected ICE,” “confirmed not ICE,” and other categories.

Additional place-based chats have emerged around school systems, faith communities, mutual aid grocery deliveries, and the like. Another development was the Neighborhood Networks intake chat, which acts as a clearinghouse for incoming volunteers. New people from anywhere in the city—or anywhere in the state of Minnesota—can be added and oriented to a list of chat options, and admins will add them to the open chats or connect them to the vetting and training processes for the more closed chats.

Most recently, dispatchers have experimented with a relay system in which patrollers who tail vehicles to the edge of their zone can communicate through dispatch across chats to pass off the vehicle to a patroller in the next region. This allows the patrollers to remain in tighter and tighter routes, which they can swiftly come to know intimately well in order to navigate them better than any ICE agents.

Finally, Spanish language relayers copy ICE alerts from dispatch calls and local chats, translate them, then send to large Spanish-language Signal and WhatsApp networks.

What might look from the outside like an over-formalization of chats for different kinds of information, or else like too little structure in the completely open calls that all patrollers for a given zone join in simultaneously, coheres into a highly effective, self-organized, and well-maintained communication ecosystem. Information moves reliably across scale through the chats and dispatchers, and patrollers quickly adopt cultural practices that enable them to avoid talking over each other and to relay information in a clear and organized manner. Volunteers self-select into shifts of varying lengths, deciding what routes to run based on their knowledge, skill, interest, and availability.

This system is constantly shifting, highly adaptable, somewhat difficult to explain to outsiders, and surprisingly easy to integrate into—once you get over the shock of receiving over 1500 new messages per day.

“You Don’t Know How Crazy It Is Here”

The response from ICE has been measurable. They have changed their tactics. They have been chased out of neighborhoods during operations. They have been caught discussing how scared they are and the fact that many of them have left.

They’ve also continuously and aggressively escalated their violence against observers. Patrollers who follow ICE too closely or for too long will often be boxed in so that between four and ten officers can surround the car, beat on the doors, yell, film, and threaten them with arrest. Patrollers who have blocked ICE with their cars have been rammed, have had their windows busted in, have been pulled out to be detained or arrested. People have been put into ICE vehicles, driven miles away, then thrown out of the car. Agents have taken people out of their cars, then driven their cars several blocks away and left them running in the street. Recently, agents have been pepper spraying cars—sometimes trying to fill the interior of the vehicle in order to force people out of it, other times just using the chemical weapon to brightly mark the cars for further harassment and targeting.

Recently, ICE agents threw a tear gas canister out of their vehicle while driving on the highway to try to deter someone from following them. Agents have not only followed patrollers home, but have identified the driver or vehicle following them and led drivers to their own home addresses as a form of intimidation. Patrollers shared with us that agents have beaten them, have tried to run them over, have driven directly at their vehicles head on, held them at gunpoint, shot out their tires, and dragged them out of moving vehicles. While the murder of Renee Nicole Good shocked the nation, it came as no surprise to those who have been on the streets of the Twin Cities over the past six weeks.

The Twin Cities Model: Don’t Copy It, Learn from It

What sets apart the Twin Cities rapid response network and its surrounding ecosystem is not strict adherence to a particular structure. It is a clear analysis of their conditions, a willingness to adapt, and the courage to fight back as the violence increases.

The people of the Twin Cities have paid close attention to their opponents. They know how ICE agents deploy, where ICE agents stage, how ICE agents dress, drive, and react. They live in a relatively small and densely populated urban area, walkable in many parts, gridded for easy navigation by car. People are connected to their neighbors, building on the connections that remain from past movements and uprisings. The mayor of Minneapolis is trying to maintain the liberal veneer of his administration; police are unlikely to deploy as reinforcements for ICE operations. These are concrete and observable conditions that have directly defined the design and implementation of resistance here.

Those embedded in the model are committed to agility and adaptability as conditions change. The city has neighborhoods with distinct demographics and characteristics, so the expansion of the model was built to vary from one neighborhood to the next. After the raids stopped, ICE deployed almost exclusively from one main location with limited entrances and exits, so organizers invested heavily in counter-surveillance there. When ICE operations switched to fast, random street abductions and door knocks, the only possible way to predict where they would act was to identify ICE vehicles as they approached, so people shifted focus to identifying ICE vehicles on the roads and staying on them. ICE needed to rely on surprise and ambush tactics, so responders employed noise—whistles and honking—to quickly give warning across distance. ICE officers don’t like to operate when outnumbered and don’t like to be surrounded, so patrollers amass cars and form impromptu traffic jam blockades.

Few of these conditions could have been predicted in advance. The only way to adapt effectively was to nurture an open, invitational culture that encourages taking initiative and welcomes self-organization.

We cannot overstate the importance of the courage pouring into the streets of the Twin Cities. It can be easy to write off rapid response networks, because we know that simply filming and observing this accelerating campaign of violence is not enough. Many networks across the country have demobilized themselves before they even got going by trying to rigidly control what their participants could do, despite widespread willingness to escalate. Trainers often preach non-interference; some rapid responders police each other in the streets for throwing projectiles or even for yelling. In some cases, this comes from a self-preservationist fear about repression targeting the NGOs involved in rapid response. In other cases, it shows up as a well-meaning but misguided focus on “safety” that is simply paternalism, deciding what risk levels are appropriate for other people.

Such overcautiousness can be found in the Twin Cities, too. There are trainers and dispatchers who, by default, tell people to disengage rather than supporting them in whatever they feel called to do. There are bystanders who get in the way of those who are taking action rather than in the way of ICE.

But the fight here is defined by those who push the envelope. People use their cars and bodies to block agents and de-arrest targeted people. They throw snowballs and rocks; they kick back canisters of tear gas. They cover cars and agents with paint and break the windows of their cars. They don’t stop screaming in the faces of abductors when they are hit, pepper sprayed, or shot with rubber bullets. They are witnessing the masked abductions, undisclosed disappearances, and record-breaking deaths of this new emboldened ICE, and they are willing to take real risks to stop them. They are experiencing the retaliative violence, and they are more, stronger, and braver in spite of it.

Being ready for the incoming surge of ICE enforcement in your city—and mark these words, it is coming—means studying the terrain you are fighting on and getting creative. What works best for your city likely won’t look exactly like these daily observation units at their headquarters and mobile patrols of rapid responders. It will require a thorough analysis of how best to use your strengths and exploit their weaknesses in your specific circumstances. Start studying, planning, connecting, and experimenting now.

We look to the Twin Cities, not to replicate the details, but for their clarity of analysis, swift and decisive action, agile experimentation, deep care for each other, and infectious courage.

This report was submitted by visitors to the Twin Cities, who were kindly welcomed into the network for a few short days. Thank you to all those who showed us your city, talked us through the systems, and brought us along on patrols. Love and rage.

Resources

• Eight Things You Can Do to Stop ICE
• Seven Steps to Stop ICE
• When the Feds Come to Your City: Standing Up to ICE—A Guide from Chicago Organizers

Further Reading

• The Noise Demonstrations Keeping ICE Agents Awake at Their Hotels: A Model from the Twin Cities
• Minneapolis Responds to the Murder of Alex Pretti: An Eyewitness Account
• Protesters Blockade ICE Headquarters in Fort Snelling, Minnesota: Report from an Action during the General Strike in the Twin Cities
• From Rapid Response to Revolutionary Social Change: The Potential of the Rapid Response Networks
• Rapid Response Networks in the Twin Cities: A Guide to an Updated Model
• North Minneapolis Chases Out ICE: A Firsthand Account of the Response to Another ICE Shooting
• Minneapolis Responds to ICE Committing Murder: An Account from the Streets
• Protesters Clash with ICE Agents Again in the Twin Cities: A Firsthand Report
• Minneapolis to Feds: “Get the Fuck Out”: How People in the Twin Cities Responded to a Federal Raid

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Empirical SCOTUS is a recurring series by Adam Feldman that looks at Supreme Court data, primarily in the form of opinions and oral arguments, to provide insights into the justices’ decision making and what we can expect from the court in the future.

Sarah Sloan, a Columbia Law School graduate who clerked for Justices John Paul Stevens and Elena Kagan, told her law school’s alumni magazine that she never thought she’d wind up at the Supreme Court until she was encouraged by professors and federal judges who knew the path well. Reid Coleman, who graduated from the University of Texas School of Law, had an early White House stint, two appellate clerkships with prominent judges (on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th and District of Columbia Circuits), faculty-backed clinics, and then spent his capstone year with Justice Clarence Thomas – before landing at Kirkland & Ellis.

Both former clerks’ stories serve as a case study in how modern pipelines run: mentors and repeat-player judges smooth the way, district and appellate feeder judges (judges who commonly send clerks to the court) credential the résumé, and an elite firm scoops the clerk up. Texas Law’s climb in federal placements and, with Coleman, its 40th Supreme Court clerk, show the center of gravity widening beyond the usual Ivy duopoly (that is, Yale and Harvard). But the architecture remains the same: tight networks, long apprenticeships, and a hiring market that channels new court alumni into a handful of powerful institutions poised to shape litigation for years to come.

The clerkship universe

One former Roberts clerk described his clerkship simply: “It’s not just a credential—it’s an entire professional universe.” That universe is why firms now pay signing bonuses of up to $450,000 to attract clerks fresh out of One First Street, a practice so entrenched that it has reshaped lateral hiring at the country’s most profitable law firms.

The exclusivity of the system has long been recognized by scholars and commentators, though not always in a positive light. One Columbia Law Review article, for example, noted how Supreme Court clerkships concentrate opportunity in a handful of schools and chambers. The result is a cycle: the same institutions that dominate clerk hiring replicate their influence generation after generation.

The clerkship universe has not remained stagnant, however. From Justice Clarence Thomas’ first term in 1991 to the newer chambers of Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the clerkship market has retained its familiar concentration in a handful of schools and feeder judges. But this continuity is paired with real shifts – longer timelines to the court, new district-level pipelines, and widening gaps in cross-party hiring. If anything, however, this reveals how the clerkship system is steadily hardening into even more defined networks of power.

Time to the court

One of the more notable shifts is how long it now takes between graduating from law school and a Supreme Court clerkship. This timeline has lengthened considerably. In the mid-2000s, new Supreme Court clerks typically arrived about 2.5 years after law school; 20 years later, the average is closer to 3.8 years. This pattern reflects two shifts: candidates increasingly add a second clerkship or a year in the solicitor general’s office or at the DOJ before applying for a Supreme Court clerkship, and the feeder system rewards deeper résumés.

Clerks are not assistants so much as extensions of the chambers’ work – screening petitions, drafting opinions, and debating strategy – so it’s unsurprising that justices and feeders alike prize additional seasoning.

The differences by justice are also striking. Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito most often hire on the traditional cadence – one year with a repeat appellate feeder judge, then straight to the court – yielding compact timelines. In Chief Justice John Roberts’ chambers, there are two lanes: a fast track for those who clerked for certain judges on the D.C. Circuit and a longer path that includes a year with district court feeder judges in D.C. or the Southern District of New York before the court of appeals. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s hiring mirrors that mix. On the left, Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor show wider spreads; hires worked for the DOJ or solicitor general’s office between clerkships. Justice Neil Gorsuch often has the longest conservative-side tail, reflecting two prominent lower-court stops prior to the Supreme Court.

Gatekeeping by professors, feeder judges, and former Supreme Court clerks – often the same people writing recommendations and informally screening applicants – adds steps and time, and it tends to channel candidates within existing ideological and institutional networks. The result is credential stacking: two lower-court clerkships are common; short stints in the solicitor general’s office or DOJ appellate units signal readiness; and elite fellowships serve as holding patterns while recommendations are lined up.

As evidenced above, among the top law schools, patterns diverge. Yale is the steadiest: most clerks arrive in two to three years through a small circle of dominant feeders. Chicago is just as fast and tight, reflecting deep ties to conservative appellate judges who hire and recommend on a predictable cadence. Harvard hits a similar mean but with a wider spread; graduates fan across circuits and into government roles, producing both fast tracks and “seasoned” four- to five-year paths. Stanford skews a bit longer, often adding an extra lower-court year or appellate-shop stint en route to D.C. from the West Coast. Virginia looks closer to Chicago: durable relationships with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th and 6th Circuits keep many UVA clerks in the two- to three-year band.

Cross-party hiring

The easiest way to see how polarized the pipeline has become is to look at who hires clerks who previously worked for judges of the opposite party; the pattern today is concentrated in a few chambers and nearly absent in others. Roberts, Kagan, and Sotomayor still reach across the aisle with some regularity – Roberts at 25% of his clerks with known prior-judge affiliations, Kagan at 26%, and Sotomayor at 21%. By contrast, the conservative supermajority’s core shows very little cross-party movement: Kavanaugh is at 9%, Gorsuch is at 3%, and Alito and Thomas are at 0%. Barrett and Jackson also show no cross-party clerks to date, though their totals are small.

The mechanics behind these numbers are visible in the rest of the pipeline. First, feeder networks are ideologically sorted to a degree that wasn’t as pronounced two decades ago. Repeat-player chambers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C., 6th, and 11th Circuits –and, more recently, district courts in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan – tend to recruit and recommend within like-minded circles. Second, the value of former-clerk and repeat-feeder endorsements compounds over time, amplifying the same networks. And because the overall time to the court has lengthened, candidates now spend more time inside a single ecosystem before reaching the Supreme Court – extra years that, in practice, seem to reduce rather than increase cross-party movement.

Where they went next

Former Supreme Court clerks don’t just go far; they go fast. A detailed CNN reconstruction of the 2002–03 class shows how quickly clerkship cohorts move to the center of high-stakes litigation and government power. Just some examples: Adam Mortara became a lead architect of the lawsuit that ended affirmative action in college admissions; Jonathan Mitchell engineered Texas’ SB 8 abortion law; David Stras now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit; Robert Hur served as special counsel in the Biden documents investigation; Toby Heytens is on the 4th Circuit; and Jesse Furman is a Southern District of New York judge.

Looking at clerks from the 2019-20 to 2023-24 terms, Big Law accounts for 70% of placements, with litigation boutiques at 11%, government at 6%, and academia at 5%. A handful of firms dominate first jobs. Jones Day leads with 19% of placements, followed by Gibson Dunn and Kirkland & Ellis. Roughly one in five clerks starts at a single firm, and nearly half land at just three firms.

The immediate market signal is a blunt one: law firms pay signing bonuses approaching $450,000 to recruit Supreme Court alumni, a figure that now significantly exceeds a justice’s annual salary. Empirical work underscores the downstream effect: cases argued or filed by former Supreme Court clerks receive a measurably different reception at the court, and those alumni are overrepresented among federal judges and top government lawyers. And because the modern path increasingly runs through ideologically aligned feeder judges, the careers that follow often carry that alignment into the federal judiciary and the executive branch.

What it means

The numbers tell a simple story with outsized consequences: clerkships are pipelines. The path is longer than it was two decades ago and increasingly routed through a narrow set of schools, feeder judges, and ideologically sorted networks. Cross-party hiring is now the exception, largely concentrated in three chambers, while most others pull almost exclusively from their own side. On the back end, a small cluster of firms absorb the bulk of new alumni – sweetened by six-figure bonuses – while a thinner stream moves into government, academia, and the bench, carrying those same networks into the institutions that argue, interpret, and enforce the law.

What comes next follows from the machinery already in motion. District-court pipelines and rising feeder judges could harden into permanent lanes; new chambers may either replicate today’s polarization or build bridges that have mostly disappeared. However the lanes settle, the stakes are structural: who gets hired today will shape which cases get filed, which arguments are heard, and which rules govern a decade from now.

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In 2015, shortly after the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, a local county clerk from Kentucky made national headlines when she refused on religious grounds to issue a marriage license to a gay couple, David Moore and David Ermold. That clerk, Kim Davis, is back in the news again this summer, this time because she has asked the justices to overturn their 2015 decision. Although, as a statistical matter, Davis may face tough odds on convincing the Supreme Court to grant review, the real question is whether there are four votes to revisit Obergefell (and five to overrule it).

In 2015, Davis was the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky. Her job description included issuing licenses – such as marriage licenses – to county residents. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell, Kentucky’s governor at the time, Steve Beshear, sent a letter to the clerks in all of the state’s counties, directing them to “license and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples.”

Although a county attorney told Davis that she would be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Davis opted instead to stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone – gay or straight. While this moratorium was in effect, Davis refused to issue a marriage license to Moore and Ermold. She told the couple that she was acting “under God’s authority” and that they could get a marriage license in a different county.

Moore and Ermold filed a lawsuit against Davis, alleging that she had violated their constitutional right to marry. In a separate case regarding her refusal to issue any marriage licenses, U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Davis to issue the licenses to both gay and straight couples. But when Moore and Ermold returned to the Rowan County Clerk’s office, seeking a marriage license in light of Bunning’s order, Davis and her deputies once more refused to issue them one.

Davis’ office began to issue licenses again in 2016, after the Kentucky Legislature passed a law that sought to accommodate clerks opposed to same-sex marriage by removing their names and signatures from the licensing forms. Moore and Ermold’s case continued, and in 2023 a jury awarded them damages of $50,000 apiece.

Davis appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, where she argued (among other things) that she could not be held liable because issuing Moore and Ermold a marriage license would have violated her right to freely exercise her religion.

Earlier this year, the 6th Circuit rejected Davis’ appeal. It reasoned that Davis is protected by the First Amendment when she is a private citizen, but she was acting on behalf of the government when she denied Moore and Ermold’s marriage license – an action that was not protected by the First Amendment. The court of appeals acknowledged that in Obergefell the Supreme Court observed that “many people ‘deem same-sex marriage to be wrong’ based on ‘religious or philosophical premises.’” “But those opposed to same-sex marriage,” the court of appeals wrote, “do not have a right to transform their ‘personal opposition’ into ‘enacted law and public policy.’” “The Bill of Rights,” the court stated, “would serve little purpose if it could be freely ignored whenever an official’s conscience so dictates.”

Davis came to the Supreme Court last month, asking the justices to review the 6th Circuit’s decision. She also asked the justices to overrule their decision in Obergefell, arguing that a right to same-sex marriage “had no basis in the Constitution” and left her “with a choice between her religious beliefs and her job.”

After Davis filed her petition for review, Moore and Ermold had two options. They could file a response to the petition, or they could forgo their right to respond – known as a waiver. There are any number of reasons why litigants may decide to waive the opportunity to respond to a petition, ranging from a desire to signal that they do not deem the case worthy of their (or the justices’) time to considerations of timing or finances. But litigants are only required to submit a brief form memorializing their decision to waive, so there is no way to know why Moore and Ermold ultimately chose in early August to waive their right to respond. Two days later, Davis’ petition was distributed to the justices for their consideration.

Seven of the nine justices participate in a labor-saving activity known as the “cert pool,” in which one clerk from one of the seven justices’ chambers analyzes a petition and drafts a memorandum that makes recommendations about whether to grant review. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch do not participate in the cert pool and screen petitions on their own.

When the litigants who won in the lower court waive their right to respond, the Supreme Court normally takes one of two steps: It can deny review based solely on the petition, without ever hearing from the other side. In this scenario, the justices never discuss the case at their private conference. Alternatively, the justices can direct the litigants to file a response to the petition – a process known as a “CFR,” or “call for a response.” (The justices virtually never grant review without hearing from both sides of a case.) Any single justice can call for a response, and it indicates that at least one justice wants to see the other side’s arguments before the court decides whether to grant or deny review.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court directed Moore and Ermold to file a response to Davis’ petition. Their response is currently due on Sept. 8, but Moore and Ermold on Tuesday requested an extension to Oct. 8. With its move on Thursday, the court essentially took Davis’ case out of the group of cases facing virtually automatic denial (without a call for a response) into the group of cases that could theoretically be granted.

In deciding whether to grant a particular petition for review, the justices take a variety of factors into account. One major criterion that they often consider is whether the lower courts are divided on the question that they are being asked to decide – a factor sometimes referred to as a “circuit split.” Davis does not argue that the courts of appeals are divided on same-sex marriage or on whether Obergefell should be overturned. Instead, she merely contends that it “was wrong when it was decided and it is wrong today.”

Whether the court will grant review really boils down to whether there are four votes to take up the question. Moreover, even if there are four justices who might be inclined to do so, they won’t want to grant review unless they are confident that there is a fifth vote to overturn Obergefell.

Although we don’t know whether Davis has the votes, it remains possible. After Moore and Ermold’s waiver, the court could have simply let Davis’ case move forward without calling for a response and then denied review in the fall. Instead, at least one justice – potentially Justice Samuel Alito or Neil Gorsuch, because the justices who participate in the cert pool would not yet have received a memorandum describing the case – at least wanted to think about it. 

Alito dissented in Obergefell, contending that the Constitution leaves the same-sex marriage “question to be decided by the people of each state,” and two of the other dissenters – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas – are still on the court. (Thomas, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, wrote a concurring opinion suggesting that Obergefell, among several other precedents, should be “reconsider[ed].”) During his first term in office, President Donald Trump appointed Gorsuch (to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, the fourth dissenter) and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Whether at least five of these six justices would vote to overturn Obergefell remains to be seen.

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The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon put on hold an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that would have required the Department of Education to reinstate more than $65 million in grants that it terminated in February because they funded programs that included diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

In an unsigned three-page opinion, a majority of the court explained that the government likely would not be able to get the funds back once they were disbursed. Moreover, the majority added, the recipients of the funds would not be permanently harmed if the funds are withheld while the litigation continues.

The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts indicating that he would have denied the government’s request. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, calling the court’s ruling a “mistake.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also dissented, writing that it was “beyond puzzling that a majority of the Justices conceive of the Government’s application as an emergency.”

At issue in the case are two grant programs intended to address a nationwide shortage of teachers. The Department of Education canceled all but five of the 109 grants after reviews found “objectionable” diversity and equity training material in the recipient programs.

Eight states, led by California, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts in early March. They contended that universities and nonprofits in their states had received grants through the programs, and that the Department of Education had violated the federal law governing administrative agencies when it ended those grants.

A federal district judge issued a temporary order that required the government to reinstate the grants that it had terminated in the states bringing the lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun also prohibited the government from implementing other terminations in those states.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit declined to put the district court’s order on hold while the government appealed, but it fast-tracked the appeal itself.

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on March 24, asking the justices to step in. Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris asserted that unless the justices intervened, federal courts around the country will continue to exceed their powers “by ordering the Executive Branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the Executive Branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back.” Harris appealed to the justices to “put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive Branch funding and grant-disbursement decisions.”

California and the other states urged the court to stay out of the dispute. Joun, they said, “acted responsibly — entering a narrow and time-limited restraining order to preserve the status quo while moving rapidly to adjudicate” the state’s request for a preliminary injunction. The government cannot appeal the district court’s order, in any event the government’s appeal will be moot (that is, no longer a live controversy) by early April, they concluded.

In its order granting the Trump administration’s request on Friday, the majority first noted that although temporary orders like the one entered by Joun in this case are not normally appealable, it could nonetheless weigh in here because the order “carries many of the hallmarks of a preliminary injunction,” which can be appealed.

And the government is likely to show, the majority continued, that Joun lacked the power to order the government to make the payments under the federal law governing administrative agencies. Although that law waives the federal government’s general immunity from lawsuits, the majority explained, the waiver is a limited one that does not apply to court orders that would require the government to pay money for a contractual obligation. Instead, the majority continued, another federal law – the Tucker Act – gives another court, the Court of Federal Claims, the power to hear lawsuits arising from contracts with the United States.

Other considerations also weigh in favor of granting the government’s request, the majority wrote. On the one hand, the government contended (and the states do not dispute) that, once the funds are disbursed, it likely will not be able to recover them. By contrast, the majority stressed, the states have indicated that they have enough money to be able to continue their programs without the federal funding while the litigation moves forward.

Kagan complained that the government had not defended “the legality of canceling the education grants at issue” in this case. Moreover, she continued, the states challenging the termination of the grants do say that the termination of the grant “will force them—indeed, has already forced them—to curtail teacher training programs.” And the court’s conclusion that the dispute belongs in the Court of Federal Claims, rather than a federal district court, she suggested, is “at the very least under-developed, and very possibly wrong.”

More broadly, she wrote, the chance that the justices will make such a mistake increases when, as in this case, the justices act quickly, outside the normal briefing and argument schedule. She acknowledged that such fast action is sometimes necessary “despite the risk.” But for Kagan, “nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention. Rather than make new law on our emergency docket,” she concluded, “we should have allowed the dispute to proceed in the ordinary way.”

Jackson called what she characterized as the majority’s “eagerness to insert itself into this early stage of ongoing litigation over the lawfulness” of the Department of Education’s actions “equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate.” Noting that Joun’s order will expire in just three days, she emphasized that it only bars the government from implementing a “mass termination” of grants; it does not prohibit the government from deciding, under its normal review process, to terminate individual grants.

Moreover, she continued, “there is no evidence that grantees have rushed to draw down the remaining $65 million in grant funds” in the 25 days since the order was entered. But if they did, she added, the government does have mechanisms to recover those funds.

Jackson criticized both the government’s decision to seek emergency relief without addressing the merits of the challenge and her colleagues’ decision to grant it, “If the emergency docket has now become a vehicle for certain defendants to obtain this Court’s real-time opinion about lower court rulings on various auxiliary matters, we should announce that new policy and be prepared to shift how we think about, and address, these kinds of applications.”

Finally, she insisted that the harm to the states challenging the grant terminations is – contrary to the majority’s suggestion – real. “In Massachusetts,” for example, she wrote, “Boston Public Schools has already had to fire multiple full-time employees due to this loss of grant-funding.”

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.

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The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a pair of orders by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that had barred the government from removing noncitizens who are designated as members of a Venezuelan gang under a March 15 executive order issued by President Donald Trump.

By a vote of 5-4, the justices declined to address the challengers’ contention that they are not covered by the 18th-century law on which Trump relied in issuing the order. Instead, the challengers’ lawsuit must be brought in Texas, where they are being held, rather than in Washington, D.C., the court explained.

The unsigned four-page opinion emphasized that although courts have a limited role in reviewing claims under that law, the plaintiffs and others detained under the law are entitled to “notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a 17-page dissent joined in full by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson and in part by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She contended that her colleagues’ “decision to intervene in this litigation is as inexplicable as it is dangerous.”

Jackson wrote her own two-page dissent in which she lamented that the majority’s “fly-by-night approach to the work of the Supreme Court is not only misguided. It is also dangerous.”

The 1798 law at the center of the case is the Alien Enemies Act, which allows the president to detain or deport citizens of an enemy nation without a hearing or any other review by a court if either of two things occurs: Congress declares war, or there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.” The law has been invoked only three times – during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II.

Trump’s executive order focuses on a large Venezuelan gang named Tren de Aragua, which began in Venezuela’s prisons and then spread into other parts of Latin America and, eventually, the United States. In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated it as a “foreign terrorist organization.”

Trump found in his order that TdA “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” Therefore, he concluded, “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”

Even before Trump issued the order, a group of Venezuelan nationals in immigration custody went to federal court in Washington. They said that they feared that they would be removed, and they challenged Trump’s attempt to rely on the Alien Enemies Act.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg quickly prohibited the federal government from removing any of the individual plaintiffs for 14 days. In a separate order issued later that day, Boasberg barred the government from removing anyone else under the Alien Enemies Act. During a hearing, Boasberg also ordered any flights to remove noncitizens that had already taken off to return to the United States.

The five individual plaintiffs named in the complaint are still in immigration detention in the United States. However, news reports indicated that more than 200 other noncitizens were taken from the United States on March 15, with their planes landing in El Salvador after Boasberg issued his written order.

The migrants were taken in shackles to a maximum-security “mega” prison in El Salvador, where their heads were shaved. The country’s president, Nayib Bukele, posted a video of the prisoners on social media that Rubio later reposted. The caption of the video read “Ooopsie … too late.”

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to pause Boasberg’s order. The D.C. Circuit fast-tracked the government’s appeal, but on March 26 it rejected that request by a vote of 2-1.

Sarah Harris, then the acting U.S. solicitor general, came to the Supreme Court on March 28, asking the justices to allow the Trump administration to enforce the March 15 order. The dispute, she contended, “presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security operations in this country – the President … or the Judiciary.” Harris told the justices that the “Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President.”

Lawyers for the Venezuelan nationals urged the court to leave Boasberg’s order in place. They noted that “many (perhaps most) of the men” sent to the El Salvadoran prison in March “were not actually members of” TdA. Boasberg’s order, they told the justices, is therefore “essential to ensure that more individuals who have no affiliation with the gang will not be sent to a notorious foreign prison.”

In an unsigned opinion on Monday evening, five of the court’s conservative justices – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh – indicated that they would “not reach” the plaintiffs’ arguments regarding the application of the AEA to them. Instead, the majority explained, because the relief that they are seeking “necessarily” suggests that their confinement in immigration custody and removal under the AEA is invalid, they must bring their claims as habeas corpus claims – that is, a challenge to the legality of their detention.

The only place that such claims can be brought, the majority continued, is the judicial district where a prisoner is being detained. Because the plaintiffs in this case are now in Texas, rather than in Washington, D.C., the majority concluded, their case cannot be brought in Washington.

The court made clear that – as the government agrees – the plaintiffs, as well as others who may be detained or removed under the AEA, are entitled to be notified “that they are subject to removal under the Act.” Moreover, the court added, addressing an argument made by lawyers for the plaintiffs during oral arguments in the lower courts, the government must provide that notice “within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurring opinion in which he emphasized that “the Court’s disagreement is not over whether the detainees receive judicial review of their transfers—all nine Members of the Court agree that judicial review is available. The only question,” he concluded “is where that judicial review should occur.”

Sotomayor called the court’s conclusions “suspect.” She wrote that the removal of noncitizens to the prison in El Salvador “presented a risk of extraordinary harm to these” plaintiffs. Referring to the case (also pending at the Supreme Court) of a Maryland man whom the government admits was sent to El Salvador as a result of an administrative error, she observed that the government has contended that “even when it makes a mistake, it cannot retrieve individuals from” the prison in El Salvador.

“The implications of the Government’s position,” Sotomayor stressed, “is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this Nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.”

Sotomayor concluded by calling the majority’s decision on Monday “indefensible.” “We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this,” she wrote.

In her separate dissent, Jackson explained that she agreed with Sotomayor but also wrote a separate dissent in which she questioned the majority’s decision to step into the dispute now, immediately before Boasberg had scheduled a hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.

Jackson criticized the majority for addressing these issues on their emergency docket and reaching a “rushed conclusion.” Normally, she said, when the justices weigh in on “complex and monumental issues,” they give the lower courts an opportunity to “address those matters first.” Then, she continued, the court “receives full briefing, hears oral argument, deliberates internally, and, finally, issues a reasoned opinion.” When the court departs from that normal practice, she said, “the risk of error always substantially increases” and it does so without “a record so posterity [may] see how it went wrong.”

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.

The post Supreme Court requires noncitizens to challenge detention and removal in Texas appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Biden-era rule regulating so-called “ghost guns” – untraceable weapons without serial numbers, assembled from components or kits that can be bought online. By a vote of 7-2, the justices held that the Gun Control Act of 1968 allows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to regulate at least some ghost guns, although they left open the possibility that the rule might not apply in individual challenges to particular ghost guns.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision, complaining that it had agreed to “rewrite statutory text.” Justice Samuel Alito wrote his own dissent in which he contended that his colleagues had resolved the dispute based on an issue that the lower court had not reached and the parties had not really addressed.

The ATF adopted the rule in 2022 to address what it characterizes as an “exponential” increase in ghost guns. The Gun Control Act defines a “firearm” as “any weapon … which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” including “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.”

The ATF contended that the 2022 rule was consistent with the language of the law because it defines “firearm” to include products, such as gun kits, that can be converted into an operational gun or a functional frame (the basic structure of the gun) or receiver (the part of the gun that houses the firing mechanism). The rule also clarified that the terms “frame” and “receiver” include partially complete or disassembled frames or receivers that can be “readily” completed or converted to work as a frame or receiver.

But a group that included two individual gun owners and a gun-rights advocacy group went to federal court in Texas to challenge the rule. A federal district judge in Fort Worth prohibited the agency from applying the rule anywhere in the United States.

Although the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit largely upheld that decision, a divided Supreme Court put the district judge’s order on hold, allowing the Biden administration to enforce the rule while it appealed. Four justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh – indicated that they would have denied the government’s request then.

In a 24-page opinion by Gorsuch on Wednesday, the court upheld the rule.

Congress enacted the Gun Control Act, Gorsuch explained, because it found that then-current “gun control measures … allowed criminals to acquire largely untraceable guns too easily.” The act requires manufacturers to put a serial number on guns and regulates commercial gun sales by (among other things) requiring gun manufacturers and dealers to conduct background checks and keep records of gun sales.

Advances in technology, Gorsuch noted, such as 3D printing and reinforced polymers, have changed the way in which guns are manufactured and sold. And in particular, “companies are able to make and sell weapon parts kits that individuals can assemble into functional firearms in their own homes.” These kits are popular among hobbyists, Gorsuch wrote, but also among criminals, because some manufacturers and sellers do not regard them as “firearms” subject to the Gun Control Act and therefore do not comply with the act’s requirements – leading to “an explosion of crimes” around the country.

Gorsuch emphasized that the challengers in this case were not asking the Supreme Court to decide whether the rule regulating ghost guns could be applied to specific kinds of ghost guns – that is, to “particular weapons parts kits or unfinished frames or receivers.” Instead, he stressed, the challengers had asked the courts to hold that the rule could not be applied to any ghost guns. But the Supreme Court declined to do so.

First, Gorsuch explained, the Gun Control Act allows the ATF to regulate weapons parts kits. The text of the act, he reasoned, imposes two criteria. First, there must be a “weapon.” And the “weapon” must “be able to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” be “designed to do so,” or be “susceptible of ready conversion to operate that way.”

In contrast with the 5th Circuit, Gorsuch concluded that “at least some kits will satisfy both” of these requirements. He used as an example a kit named the “Buy Build Shoot” kit, by a company called Polymer80, that allows the buyer to quickly and easily build a “Glock-variant semiautomatic pistol.” An “ordinary speaker might well describe the ‘Buy Build Shoot’ kit as a ‘weapon,’” Gorsuch posited, even if “perhaps a half hour of work is required before anyone can fire a shot.” He noted that “even as sold, the kit comes with all necessary components, and its intended function as instrument of combat is obvious. Really, the kit’s name says it all: ‘Buy Build Shoot.’”  

And the “Buy Build Shoot” kit also meets the second criterion, because it can be “readily converted” into a firearm, “for it requires no more time, effort, expertise, or specialized tools to complete” than a starter gun, which is explicitly mentioned in the Gun Control Act.

Gorsuch acknowledged that “[w]eapons parts kits vary widely” and “may require more time, expertise, or specialized tools to finish.” But the Supreme Court does not need to decide in this case when “a kit may be so incomplete or cumbersome to assemble that” the ATF can no longer regulate it under the Gun Control Act, he determined.

Gorsuch concluded, again in contrast to the 5th Circuit, that the Gun Control Act also allows the ATF to regulate partially finished frames and receivers. Gorsuch’s opinion offered a picture of a “complete frame of a Glock-variant firearm” above a picture of a “partially complete frame” sold by Polymer80, highlighting what he described as the “main differences” between the two – a pair of plastic tabs that the buyer would need to remove, and then add pins. Here too he observed that “an ordinary speaker might well call Polymer80’s product a firearm ‘frame’ even though a little work is required to complete. Just look again at the second photo,” Gorsuch pleaded. “What else would you call it?”

Gorsuch added that the ATF has in the past “consistently interpreted” the Gun Control Act to apply to at least some unfinished frames and receivers, “including ones no more finished than Polymer80’s product.” These “contemporary and consistent views” “can provide evidence of the law’s meaning,” he noted. And indeed, he continued, the challengers say that that they do not dispute the ATF’s “prior practice” – “a concession that all but gives the game away.” Although the challengers contend that the new rule regulating “ghost guns” goes too far, he said, “for our purposes, what matters is that even the plaintiffs do not really insist that” the rule “reaches only finished frames and receivers.”

As with weapons parts kits, Gorsuch conceded that the court’s “reasoning has its limits.” “Some products,” he wrote, “may be so far from a finished frame or receiver that they cannot fairly be described using those terms. But this case,” he concluded, “requires us to explore none of that.”

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court. 

The post Supreme Court upholds regulation on “ghost guns” appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down a request by the Trump administration to lift an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that had directed the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to pay nearly $2 billion in foreign-aid reimbursements for work that has already been done.

In a brief unsigned opinion, the court noted that the Feb. 26 deadline for the government to make the payments had already passed. It instructed U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to “clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance” with the temporary restraining order that Ali has entered in the case, paying attention to how feasible it is for the government to comply with those timelines.

Ali is expected to hold a hearing on the aid groups’ motion for a preliminary injunction – which, if granted, would suspend the freeze on foreign-assistance funding going forward – on Thursday, March 6. This means that the dispute could return to the Supreme Court as an emergency appeal again soon.

Four of the court’s conservative justices would have granted the government’s request to put the order on hold. Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, described himself as “stunned” by the ruling, calling it “a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.”

The brief unsigned order came six days after Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily paused Ali’s Feb. 25 order, which had ordered the agencies to pay contractors and grant recipients by 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 26 for work that had already been done before he issued a Feb. 13 temporary restraining order that prohibited the State Department and USAID from suspending foreign-aid payments.

In an executive order last month, President Donald Trump ordered a halt to the distribution of foreign-aid funds so that federal agencies can ensure that those funds are only disbursed in ways that are “fully aligned with” Trump’s foreign policy. Following that order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered a freeze on all foreign-aid programs funded by the State Department and the USAID.

Several groups that receive or have members that receive foreign-aid funds challenged the pause in federal court in Washington, D.C. They argued that the funding freeze violated both the federal law governing administrative agencies and the Constitution.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris came to the Supreme Court on Wednesday night, asking the justices to quickly put Ali’s Feb. 25 order on hold before the deadline for the State Department and USAID to make the payments and then ultimately to lift it. She argued that Ali’s order infringed on the executive branch’s power to make decisions about foreign aid and “stands on the brink of placing USAID into a court-run receivership.” And although she agreed that the government “is committed to paying legitimate claims for work that was properly completed,” the government could not “pay arbitrarily determined demands on an arbitrary timeline of” Ali’s choosing.

A few hours later, Roberts – who handles emergency appeals from Washington, D.C. – granted Harris’s request to temporarily pause Ali’s order before the midnight deadline.  

Foreign-aid recipients on Friday urged the Supreme Court to quickly lift the Roberts order. In a 21-page brief, they told the justices that “the government’s actions bring their very existence—and the existence of fellow foreign-aid partners—to the brink.” Their work, they said, “advances U.S. interests abroad and improves—and, in many cases, literally saves—the lives of millions of people across the globe.”

The foreign-aid recipients emphasized that, as a general rule, temporary restraining orders like the one Ali issued on Feb. 13 are not appealable. But the government has not even asked the Supreme Court to lift the TRO, they observed. Instead, it has asked the justices to lift Ali’s Feb. 25 order directing the government to comply with the TRO and pay for work that had already been completed – something that is even less amenable to an appeal than a TRO. Moreover, they noted, because the government has not appealed the temporary restraining order, it would still have to comply with it even if the court were to lift the Feb. 25 order. 

In a one-paragraph order on Wednesday, the court emphasized that Harris’s request to lift the Feb. 25 order “does not challenge the Government’s obligation to follow” the Feb. 13 temporary restraining order.

Alito’s dissent acknowledged Ali’s “frustration with the Government,” and that the aid groups had broached “serious concerns about nonpayment for completed work.” But the court’s denial of the Trump administration’s request to lift Ali’s Feb. 25 order, he contended, “is, quite simply, too extreme a response. A federal court,” he suggested, “has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.”

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court. 

The post Supreme Court denies Trump request to block $2 billion foreign-aid payment appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

We’re all living in a post-Brent-Hinds-in-Mastodon world now, so things with the band have been up in the air as of late. Sure, we’ve seen them play a full show with YouTuber Ben Eller filling in earlier this month, but the band’s got tour dates and a new album on the horizon. What does that mean for whoever’s coming in to replace Hinds full-time?

During a recent interview with Radical Metal, Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher said the band’s already put in a lot of work on their follow up to Hushed and Grim. And while we know Hinds will have nothing to do with the new record, Kelliher said he wants whoever joins the band full-time to be ready to contribute to the new record.

“I’m always writing. For the past three years since Hushed And Grim, even though we had a lot of songs leftover from that, I started just writing new shit. We’re like, 65-percent of the way. We have a ton of stuff. Whoever steps into the band, we kinda wanna get their input on some stuff too. We wanna make it as best as we possibly can. People are gonna expect it’s not gonna be as good because we’re missing a member, but… we wanna take our time.

“Loma Vista, our new record company, they’re totally cool with that. They’re like ‘it’ll be done when it’s done.’ So we’re aiming for the end of this year to have it out, or at least have it recorded. I wanna do a lot of demoing on the road, like backstage. Which never really clicked for us, but in this new era, it may be a little bit better for us.”

Starting this May, Mastodon will be joining Coheed and Cambria and Periphery for a U.S. tour that will run from May 10 to June 8. You can find the full list of dates below and get your tickets today.

Mastodon 2025 tour dates

5/8-5/11 – Columbus, OH @ Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival
5/10 – Salem, VA @ Salem Civic Center*
5/11 – Knoxville, TN @ Knoxville Civic Coliseum*
5/13 – Raleigh, NC @ Red Hat Amphitheater* 
5/15 – Wilmington, NC @ Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park*
5/16 – Charleston, SC @ Firefly Distillery* 
5/15-5/18 – Daytona Beach, FL @ Welcome to Rockville
5/19 – Estero, FL @ Hertz Arena* 
5/21 – Huntsville, AL @ Orion Amphitheater*
5/22 – Lexington, KY  @Rupp Arena* 
5/24 @ Virginia Beach, VA @ The Dome*
5/25 – Bridgeport, CT @ Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater*
5/26 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Broadview Stage at SPAC*
5/28 – Portland, ME @ Cross Insurance Arena* 
5/30 – Syracuse, NY @ Empower Federal Credit Union Amphitheater at Lakeview* 
5/31 – Scranton, PA @ The Pavilion at Montage Mountain* 
6/1 – Youngstown, OH @ Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre*
6/3 – Fort Wayne, IN @ Allen County War Memorial Coliseum* 
6/4 – Peoria, IL @ Peoria Civic Center Arena* 
6/6 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Van Andel Arena* 
6/7 – Green Bay, WI @ Resch Center*
6/8 –  Waukee, IA @ Vibrant Music Hall*

7/3 – Cardiff, UK @ Blackweir Fields
7/3-7/13 – Quebec City, QC – Festival Dete De Quebec
7/5 – Birmingham, UK @ Villa Park %$ 
7/6 – London, UK @ Finsbury Park %
7/30-8/3 – Rasnov, Romania @ Rockstadt Extreme Fest
7/31 – Szekesfhervar, Hungary @ Fezen Festival
8/7-8/10 – Walton-On-Trent @ Bloodstock Open Air
8/8-8/10 – Kortrijk, Belgium @ Alcatraz Festival
8/15-8/17 – Vallamand, Switzerland @ Rock The Lakes
8/15-8/17 – Eindhoven, Netherlands @ Dynamo Metal Fest

*w/ Coheed and Cambria
% w/ Slayer
$ w/ Ozzy Osbourne

The post Bill Kelliher: Mastodon Wants Whoever Joins the Band to “Get Their Input” Into the New Album appeared first on MetalSucks.

theremina:

Dear kindred,

Your politics are determined by how you show up in relationship, day-to-day, with the people in your life.

Family. Friends. Employees. Neighbors. Dependents.

Yanno… community.

Your politics aren’t determined by how famous you are *for* them, or how well-liked by “the right people”.

Your politics are determined by how you behave, not what you say you believe.

DEATH TO FASCISM.

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Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• Disabled Maple Grove teen takes school district discrimination case to U.S. Supreme Court (James Walsh, The Minnesota Star Tribune)
• Trump administration touts deportations under Alien Enemies Act after a judge temporarily blocked its use (Megan Lebowitz, Julia Ainsley, Gary Grumbach. & Nnamdi Egwuonwu, NBC News)
• Louisiana’s nitrogen gas execution back on for next week, federal appeals court rules (Andrea Gallo, Meghan Friedmann, John Simerman, & Joseph Cranney, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans)
• How Amy Coney Barrett’s close friendship could affect the future of this major supreme court case (Linda Jacobson, The Guardian) 
• Legal experts pan Trump’s Supreme Court appeal on birthright citizenship (David G. Savage, The Los Angeles Times)

The post The morning read for Monday, March 17 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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This article was updated on March 14 at 2:34 p.m.

The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to enforce an executive order signed by President Donald Trump ending birthright citizenship – the guarantee of citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States. In a trio of near-identical filings by Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris, the administration urged the justices to partially block preliminary injunctions, issued by federal district judges in Seattle, Maryland, and Massachusetts, that bar the government from implementing Trump’s executive order anywhere in the country.

The court on Friday called for the challengers to respond by April 4. 

Harris contended that the kind of nationwide (sometimes described as “universal”) injunctions issued in the three cases “transgress constitutional limits on courts’ powers” and “compromise the Executive Branch’s ability to carry out its functions.” “This Court,” she wrote, “should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”

Harris instead urged the justices to strictly limit the district judges’ orders to block the enforcement of the order only to a much smaller group: the individual plaintiffs in the three cases, the specific members of the groups challenging the order who are identified in a complaint, and – if the court agrees that states have a legal right to challenge the order – residents of those states. At the very least, she added, the federal government should be able to take “internal steps to implement” the executive order while the litigation continues, even if it cannot enforce it.

Birthright citizenship was explicitly added to the Constitution in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted following the Civil War. That amendment provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The United States is one of roughly 30 countries, including neighboring Canada and Mexico, that offer automatic citizenship to everyone born there.

Under Trump’s executive order, which was originally slated to go into effect 30 days after he signed it, children born in the United States are not automatically entitled to citizenship if their parents are in this country either illegally or temporarily.

In a hearing in late January, Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington, a Ronald Reagan appointee, called the executive order “blatantly unconstitutional” and temporarily barred the government from implementing the order for 14 days. At a hearing on Feb. 6, Coughenour extended that ban, calling birthright citizenship a “fundamental constitutional right.”

A federal appeals court in San Francisco turned down Trump’s plea to put Coughenour’s injunction on hold except with regard to the individual plaintiffs while its appeal moves forward.

Judge Danielle Forrest, a Trump appointee, explained in a six-page concurring opinion that although the case had properly been fast-tracked, the Trump administration had not shown that this was the kind of “emergency that requires an immediate answer.” It was not enough, Forrest indicated, that Coughenour’s injunction temporarily prevents the government from implementing the executive order. “It is routine,” she wrote, “for both executive and legislative policies to be challenged in court, particularly where a new policy is a significant shift from prior understanding and practice.”

Echoing some of the criticism of the Supreme Court’s use of its emergency docket, Forrest also suggested that the highly expedited schedule cautioned against granting the government’s request right now. She contended that “quick decision-making risks eroding public confidence. Judges are charged to reach their decisions apart from ideology or political preference. When we decide issues of significant public importance and political controversy hours after we finish reading the final brief, we should not be surprised if the public questions whether we are politicians in disguise.”

In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a separate order on Feb. 5 that prohibited the Trump administration from enforcing the Jan. 20 executive order while a lawsuit brought there by immigrants’ rights groups and several pregnant women moves forward. Boardman, a Biden appointee, observed at the end of a hearing that “no court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation. This court will not be the first.”

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected the government’s request to partly block Boardman’s ruling. Judge Paul Niemeyer dissented from that decision, calling the Trump administration’s plea a “modest motion.”

And in Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin issued a nationwide injunction in a case brought by a group of 18 states, the District of Columbia, and San Francisco. Sorokin reasoned that a more limited injunction, applying only to the states challenging the executive order, would be “inadequate” because of the prospect that pregnant women living in one state could cross state lines to give birth in another. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit declined to partially pause Sorokin’s ruling.

In three largely identical filings submitted on Thursday, Harris urged the justices to “correct the district court’s massive remedial foul.” During the last few years, several justices – including Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh – have criticized nationwide or universal injunctions and urged their colleagues to weigh in on their legality.

In January, the Biden administration asked the justices to weigh in on the propriety of nationwide injunctions as part of an emergency appeal seeking permission to enforce a federal anti-money-laundering law while the government’s appeal moves forward. The justices agreed to block a ruling by a federal district judge that had barred the government from enforcing the law throughout the United States, but they did not address the question of nationwide injunctions.

In that case, Gorsuch wrote a separate opinion in which he indicated that he would have resolved the injunction question “definitively.”

Harris also contended that the states challenging the executive order do not have a legal right, known as standing, to bring their lawsuits. The states, she argued, “simply cannot assert citizenship rights on behalf of individuals,” and they themselves are not harmed by the order, which “does not require” them “to do or refrain from anything, much less” expose them to any punishments.

Harris characterized the district courts’ orders in the three birthright citizenship cases as “part of a broader trend.” Since Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, she complained, “district courts have repeatedly issued orders that superintend the internal operations of the Executive Branch by prohibiting the formulation of new policies.” But “[y]ears of experience have shown that the Executive Branch cannot properly perform its functions if any judge anywhere can enjoin every presidential action everywhere. The sooner universal injunctions are ‘eliminated root and branch,’” she concluded, “the better.”

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court. 

The post Trump asks Supreme Court to step in on birthright citizenship appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

spontaneousmusicalnumber:

yanderepuck:

So with Joann going under and as a Fashion/Costume Designer and a cosplayer I need a place to get fabric and notions, and I know many others feel lost as well

So I made a short simple list of online fabric stores as well as notions .

Please share with anyone you would like. If you have recommendations of things to add please let me know.

Fabric sources

There’s only a few right now of ones I know and have used

I may add a few niche ones like Silk Baron but I am mainly adding ones with many options and maybe add a niche section later

More places with trims would be nice, or even patterns, historical, cosplay, or everyday.

I’ll also share this for those who prefer to shop in person:

r/Sewing Fabric Shop Map - Google My Maps

The subreddit r/sewing has been making a master list of non-Joann or Hobby Lobby fabric stores!

If you know any to add to either list, please do so.