Pro-choice protesters gather in front of US Supreme Court against the leaked abortion draft

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged Americans to defend access to abortion. His appeal came after a leaked draft opinion of the US Supreme Court showed that majority of the conservative-dominated court was of the opinion to end nationwide right and access to abortion.&nbsp;

Biden warned that if such a verdict was delivered it may lead to widespread changes in American law as "every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question."

Watch | US: Draft leak suggests court to overturn abortion rights

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If the ruling is finalized, abortion laws will depend on individual states and "it will fall on voters to elect" officials who back the right to the procedure, Biden said after the ruling was leaked.

"If this decision holds, it's really quite a radical decision," Biden told reporters in Washington as he departed on a trip to Alabama. "It's a fundamental shift in American jurisprudence."

"I believe that a woman's right to choose is fundamental," Biden said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v Wade that declared abortion a constitutionally protected right.

Biden also called on Congress to enshrine legal abortion in US law. It is the only way of overcoming any Supreme Court ruling that the document apparently shows is set to be issued.

It is clear by now that the leaked Supreme Court draft is authentic. This has been confirmed US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/leaked-draft-shows-us-court-set-to-strike-down-abortion-rights-politico-475914">Leaked draft shows US Supreme Court set to strike down abortion rights: Politico</a>&nbsp; 
 
On Tuesday, Roberts said that draft was authentic, but not the final decision on the matter. He termed draft leak an "egregious breach" of trust.

News outlet Politico late on Monday published a draft opinion that suggested the conservative-dominated high court was poised to shred nearly 50 years of constitutional protections by striking down the nationwide right to abortion in the United States.

(With inputs from agencies)

WATCH WION LIVE HERE

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&nbsp;

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged Americans to defend access to abortion. His appeal came after a leaked draft opinion of the US Supreme Court showed that majority of the conservative-dominated court was of the opinion to end nationwide right and access to abortion.

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged Americans to defend access to abortion. His appeal came after a leaked draft opinion of the US Supreme Court showed that majority of the conservative-dominated court was of the opinion to end nationwide right and access to abortion. Biden warned that if such a verdict was delivered it may lead to widespread changes in American law as "every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question." Watch | US: Draft leak suggests court to overturn abortion rights × If the ruling is finalized, abortion laws will depend on individual states and "it will fall on voters to elect" officials who back the right to the procedure, Biden said after the ruling was leaked. "If this decision holds, it's really quite a radical decision," Biden told reporters in Washington as he departed on a trip to Alabama. "It's a fundamental shift in American jurisprudence." "I believe that a woman's right to choose is fundamental," Biden said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v Wade that declared abortion a constitutionally protected right. Biden also called on Congress to enshrine legal abortion in US law. It is the only way of overcoming any Supreme Court ruling that the document apparently shows is set to be issued. It is clear by now that the leaked Supreme Court draft is authentic. This has been confirmed US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Read | Leaked draft shows US Supreme Court set to strike down abortion rights: Politico On Tuesday, Roberts said that draft was authentic, but not the final decision on the matter. He termed draft leak an "egregious breach" of trust. News outlet Politico late on Monday published a draft opinion that suggested the conservative-dominated high court was poised to shred nearly 50 years of constitutional protections by striking down the nationwide right to abortion in the United States. (With inputs from agencies) WATCH WION LIVE HERE ×

US President Joe Biden urges Americans to oppose possible anti-abortion ruling

The United States of America got its first black woman judge in Supreme Court. Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the Supreme Court by US Senate. This is happening for the first time over 200-year history of US Supreme Court.

5 things about Ketanji Brown Jackson as US Supreme Court gets first black woman judge

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is drawing widespread flak online for inquiring about the faith of Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who is US President Joe Biden's nominee to become a judge in US Supreme Court. Graham's query came during Brown's Senate hearing.

What is especially drawing attention is Graham's follow-up question which many online are deeming inappropriate.

Here's how the conversation went,

Senator Graham: What faith are you by the way?

Brown: Senator I am ... Protestant...non-denominational.

Senator Graham: Could you fairly judge a Catholic?

Ketanji Brown appears a little taken aback but responds smilingly that she has a record of fairly judging everyone.

Here is the video of the interaction posted on Twitter by a journalist.

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It’s 2022 and senator Lindsey Graham asked this question during a senate supreme court hearing. 
 
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In the US, and in most other constitutional democracies, the role of a judge is implicitly free of any religious bias. Graham's line of inquiry is being deemed inappropriate in this light.

Twitter users have reacted disapprovingly at Graham.

"This couldn't legally be asked in any other job interview, right?" says a Twitter user in comment.

"Not surprised Lindsey Graham would ask such an inappropriate irrelevant question. Did he ask Justice Amy Coney Barrett who is an ultra-conservative Catholic if she could judge those of a different faith fairly," asks another Twitter user.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to US Supreme Court by former US president Donald Trump in the run-up to 2020 US Presidential election. This move was seen by many as a Republican effort to boost the number of conservative judges in US Supreme Court.

Republicans, as media reports say, have also been holding Democrats responsible for&nbsp;attack judges based on their faith in past

As quoted by news website The Hill, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein had referred to Amy Coney Barrett's ultra-conservative faith saying&nbsp;'the dogma lives loudly within you and that’s of concern'. Lindsey Graham made an allusion to these words that were reportedly said when Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to a federal appeals court in 2017.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is drawing widespread flak online for inquiring about the faith of Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who is US President Joe Biden's nominee to become a judge in US Supreme Court.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is drawing widespread flak online for inquiring about the faith of Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who is US President Joe Biden's nominee to become a judge in US Supreme Court. Graham's query came during Brown's Senate hearing. What is especially drawing attention is Graham's follow-up question which many online are deeming inappropriate. Here's how the conversation went, Senator Graham: What faith are you by the way? Brown: Senator I am ... Protestant...non-denominational. Senator Graham: Could you fairly judge a Catholic? Ketanji Brown appears a little taken aback but responds smilingly that she has a record of fairly judging everyone. Here is the video of the interaction posted on Twitter by a journalist. It’s 2022 and senator Lindsey Graham asked this question during a senate supreme court hearing. pic.twitter.com/epTgVkKHJa — Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) March 22, 2022 × In the US, and in most other constitutional democracies, the role of a judge is implicitly free of any religious bias. Graham's line of inquiry is being deemed inappropriate in this light. Twitter users have reacted disapprovingly at Graham. "This couldn't legally be asked in any other job interview, right?" says a Twitter user in comment. "Not surprised Lindsey Graham would ask such an inappropriate irrelevant question. Did he ask Justice Amy Coney Barrett who is an ultra-conservative Catholic if she could judge those of a different faith fairly," asks another Twitter user. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to US Supreme Court by former US president Donald Trump in the run-up to 2020 US Presidential election. This move was seen by many as a Republican effort to boost the number of conservative judges in US Supreme Court. Republicans, as media reports say, have also been holding Democrats responsible for attack judges based on their faith in past As quoted by news website The Hill, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein had referred to Amy Coney Barrett's ultra-conservative faith saying 'the dogma lives loudly within you and that’s of concern'. Lindsey Graham made an allusion to these words that were reportedly said when Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to a federal appeals court in 2017.

Republican Lindsey Graham draws flak after asking Ketanji Brown Jackson's religion during Senate hearing

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday emphasized “my duty to be independent” if confirmed as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, as Republican senators almost immediately began previewing attack lines accusing her of being lenient on crime.

On the first day of her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jackson sat mostly in silence listening to 22 senators talk at length about what they wanted in a nominee. Race was not always an unspoken subtext, as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., suggested that tough questioning would be criticized as racism.

“‘We’re all racist if we ask hard questions’ is not going to fly with us,” Graham said.

More than four hours after the hearing began, Jackson, 51, cleared her throat, turned her microphone on and spoke for herself.

“If I am confirmed, I commit to you that I will work productively to support and defend the Constitution and this grand experiment of American democracy that has endured over these past 246 years,” Jackson, who currently serves on the US&nbsp;Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said in opening remarks that lasted about 13 minutes.

“I have been a judge for nearly a decade now, and I take that responsibility and my duty to be independent very seriously,” she said. “I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath.”

As the day began, some Democrats in the room were celebrating her nomination.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who had no formal role in the proceedings, held up her phone to record as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey spoke about the sheer joy he felt at a moment that he called, simply, “not a normal day for America.”

Among the Republicans, there were early flashes of gentility: Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s senior Republican, pulled out a chair for Jackson just before the hearing began.

But that tone quickly receded as Republicans stressed that they would not personally attack Jackson, while in the same breath accusing her of being lenient on child sex abuse defendants and sex offenders. Several also suggested, without evidence, that she was aligned with progressive groups that are interested in adding justices to the Supreme Court.

Democrats saw the offensive coming and tried to preempt the criticism in their prepared remarks.

“These baseless charges are unfair,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s chairman, adding, “They fly in the face of pledges my colleagues made that they would approach your nomination with civility and respect.”

Jackson’s approval by the Senate would not change the ideological balance of the court. She is a former clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer, whose spot she would take in the court’s three-member liberal wing when he retires at the end of the current term. A review of a substantial sample of Jackson’s roughly 500 judicial opinions suggests that she would be about as liberal as Breyer.

With Jackson likely to be confirmed, either with one or two Republican swing votes or with solely Democratic votes, Republicans are expected to use the hearings to direct the public’s attention to cultural issues that are likely to be flashpoints in the midterm elections.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., forecast an effort by her party to use the hearings as a venue to attack Jackson and Democrats on such issues.

At one point, Blackburn spoke of “so-called white privilege” before wondering aloud to Jackson whether it was her hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into the legal system. (There is no evidence to suggest that it is.)

When she was finally able to speak, Jackson seemed to insulate herself from Republican attempts to paint her as a leftist who might overreach.

“I know that my role as a judge is a limited one, that the Constitution empowers me only to decide cases and controversies that are properly presented,” Jackson said, “and I know that my judicial role is further constrained by careful adherence to precedent.”

In an apparent effort to justify tough lines of questioning in the coming days, several Republicans, including Graham, seized on the explosive confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 as an example of unfair treatment of a Supreme Court nominee, asserting that Jackson was already being afforded more respect and could expect a more civil tone in four days of hearings this week.

During his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh was accused by Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist, of sexual assault decades ago, when they were both high school students in the Washington suburbs.

“There won’t be this constant attack on you like Judge Kavanaugh and other conservative judicial appointments,” said Graham, who said that he had supported the nomination of another candidate, Judge J. Michelle Childs, over Jackson.

“You are the beneficiary of Republican nominees having their lives turned upside down, and it didn’t work,” he added.

He made no mention of the fight over President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016. Republicans refused to even grant him a hearing, waiting to see who would win the presidential election.

Garland is now the attorney general.

In their individual statements, the 11 Republicans on the committee also zeroed in on the idea that Jackson’s past work as a public defender shows that she is soft on crime and is evidence of a broader effort by the Biden administration to install judges who favour mediating criminal sentences. Jackson, who if confirmed would be the only justice on the Supreme Court to have experience as a public defender, has been confirmed by the Senate three times before, a record she pointed out Monday.

On Monday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., revived claims in his introductory statement that accused Jackson of giving light sentences to child sexual abuse defendants. It is a criticism that experts say is misleading and ignores a debate within the judicial community about mandatory sentencing policies.

“All of my professional experiences, including my work as a public defender and as a trial judge, have instilled in me the importance of having each litigant know that the judge in their case has heard them, whether or not their arguments prevail in court,” Jackson said.

Jackson told the committee that she was born the pride of two public-school teachers who had given her an African name that meant “lovely one.”

The witness section of the audience sitting behind her was filled with Black supporters, including White House officials, elected officials, family members and a handful of lawyers. Only a few were wearing masks, and the atmosphere was celebratory.

To Jackson’s immediate right sat Dana Remus, the White House counsel, who had led her through near-daily prep sessions, often called murder boards, as the hearings drew closer. Remus sat next to former Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, who has served as Jackson’s navigator through the interview process on Capitol Hill. He is expected to resume working with senators immediately after the hearings conclude, two people familiar with the White House strategy said.

During the hearing, Jackson was flanked by her husband, Dr Patrick Graves Jackson, who wiped away tears as she read her statement, and her daughters, Leila and Talia.

“I fully admit that I did not always get the balance right,” she told her daughters, referring to balancing her life as a mother with her work as a jurist. “But I hope that you’ve seen that with hard work, determination and love, it can be done.”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday emphasized “my duty to be independent” if confirmed as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, as Republican senators almost immediately began previewing attack lines accusing her of being lenient on crime.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday emphasized “my duty to be independent” if confirmed as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, as Republican senators almost immediately began previewing attack lines accusing her of being lenient on crime. On the first day of her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jackson sat mostly in silence listening to 22 senators talk at length about what they wanted in a nominee. Race was not always an unspoken subtext, as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., suggested that tough questioning would be criticized as racism. “‘We’re all racist if we ask hard questions’ is not going to fly with us,” Graham said. More than four hours after the hearing began, Jackson, 51, cleared her throat, turned her microphone on and spoke for herself. “If I am confirmed, I commit to you that I will work productively to support and defend the Constitution and this grand experiment of American democracy that has endured over these past 246 years,” Jackson, who currently serves on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said in opening remarks that lasted about 13 minutes. “I have been a judge for nearly a decade now, and I take that responsibility and my duty to be independent very seriously,” she said. “I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath.” As the day began, some Democrats in the room were celebrating her nomination. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who had no formal role in the proceedings, held up her phone to record as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey spoke about the sheer joy he felt at a moment that he called, simply, “not a normal day for America.” Among the Republicans, there were early flashes of gentility: Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s senior Republican, pulled out a chair for Jackson just before the hearing began. But that tone quickly receded as Republicans stressed that they would not personally attack Jackson, while in the same breath accusing her of being lenient on child sex abuse defendants and sex offenders. Several also suggested, without evidence, that she was aligned with progressive groups that are interested in adding justices to the Supreme Court. Democrats saw the offensive coming and tried to preempt the criticism in their prepared remarks. “These baseless charges are unfair,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s chairman, adding, “They fly in the face of pledges my colleagues made that they would approach your nomination with civility and respect.” Jackson’s approval by the Senate would not change the ideological balance of the court. She is a former clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer, whose spot she would take in the court’s three-member liberal wing when he retires at the end of the current term. A review of a substantial sample of Jackson’s roughly 500 judicial opinions suggests that she would be about as liberal as Breyer. With Jackson likely to be confirmed, either with one or two Republican swing votes or with solely Democratic votes, Republicans are expected to use the hearings to direct the public’s attention to cultural issues that are likely to be flashpoints in the midterm elections. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., forecast an effort by her party to use the hearings as a venue to attack Jackson and Democrats on such issues. At one point, Blackburn spoke of “so-called white privilege” before wondering aloud to Jackson whether it was her hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into the legal system. (There is no evidence to suggest that it is.) When she was finally able to speak, Jackson seemed to insulate herself from Republican attempts to paint her as a leftist who might overreach. “I know that my role as a judge is a limited one, that the Constitution empowers me only to decide cases and controversies that are properly presented,” Jackson said, “and I know that my judicial role is further constrained by careful adherence to precedent.” In an apparent effort to justify tough lines of questioning in the coming days, several Republicans, including Graham, seized on the explosive confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 as an example of unfair treatment of a Supreme Court nominee, asserting that Jackson was already being afforded more respect and could expect a more civil tone in four days of hearings this week. During his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh was accused by Christine Blasey Ford, a research psychologist, of sexual assault decades ago, when they were both high school students in the Washington suburbs. “There won’t be this constant attack on you like Judge Kavanaugh and other conservative judicial appointments,” said Graham, who said that he had supported the nomination of another candidate, Judge J. Michelle Childs, over Jackson. “You are the beneficiary of Republican nominees having their lives turned upside down, and it didn’t work,” he added. He made no mention of the fight over President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016. Republicans refused to even grant him a hearing, waiting to see who would win the presidential election. Garland is now the attorney general. In their individual statements, the 11 Republicans on the committee also zeroed in on the idea that Jackson’s past work as a public defender shows that she is soft on crime and is evidence of a broader effort by the Biden administration to install judges who favour mediating criminal sentences. Jackson, who if confirmed would be the only justice on the Supreme Court to have experience as a public defender, has been confirmed by the Senate three times before, a record she pointed out Monday. On Monday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., revived claims in his introductory statement that accused Jackson of giving light sentences to child sexual abuse defendants. It is a criticism that experts say is misleading and ignores a debate within the judicial community about mandatory sentencing policies. “All of my professional experiences, including my work as a public defender and as a trial judge, have instilled in me the importance of having each litigant know that the judge in their case has heard them, whether or not their arguments prevail in court,” Jackson said. Jackson told the committee that she was born the pride of two public-school teachers who had given her an African name that meant “lovely one.” The witness section of the audience sitting behind her was filled with Black supporters, including White House officials, elected officials, family members and a handful of lawyers. Only a few were wearing masks, and the atmosphere was celebratory. To Jackson’s immediate right sat Dana Remus, the White House counsel, who had led her through near-daily prep sessions, often called murder boards, as the hearings drew closer. Remus sat next to former Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, who has served as Jackson’s navigator through the interview process on Capitol Hill. He is expected to resume working with senators immediately after the hearings conclude, two people familiar with the White House strategy said. During the hearing, Jackson was flanked by her husband, Dr Patrick Graves Jackson, who wiped away tears as she read her statement, and her daughters, Leila and Talia. “I fully admit that I did not always get the balance right,” she told her daughters, referring to balancing her life as a mother with her work as a jurist. “But I hope that you’ve seen that with hard work, determination and love, it can be done.”

First black woman eyed for US supreme court vows to uphold democracy, be independent, if confirmed

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed congressional maps that had been approved by state courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to stand, giving Democrats a leg up in this year’s election in two key states.

In issuing the orders, the Supreme Court rejected requests by Republicans to restore maps approved by GOP-controlled state legislatures. Those district lines were thrown out and replaced by courts in both states after challenges by Democrats.

Under the new court-imposed maps in both states, Democrats are likely to gain more seats than they would have under the legislature-approved versions.

But in the North Carolina case, there were signs that at least four of the court’s more conservative justices could later rule that state courts are powerless to change congressional maps adopted by state legislatures.

Such a ruling would fundamentally alter how congressional elections are conducted and amplify partisan gerrymandering, allowing the party that controls the legislature to draw voting districts favoring its candidates.

But that will not happen before this fall’s election.

Stanton Jones, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs who had challenged the North Carolina map, said the Supreme Court’s order meant that “North Carolina voters will now be able to vote in free and fair congressional elections this year.”

He said that for now, the order signaled an end to “a decade of extreme Republican gerrymanders.”

Still, the court’s three most conservative members — Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — said they would have blocked the North Carolina map because it was likely that the state Supreme Court had violated the Constitution in overriding the state Legislature.

“There must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections,” Alito wrote.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a short concurring opinion agreeing that the question posed by the case was a substantial one. But he said the court should address it in the ordinary course rather than in response to an emergency application.

Taken together, the two opinions suggested that there are four justices ready to add a case on the question to the court’s docket when it is next presented in a petition seeking the court’s review rather than on what critics call the court’s shadow docket. It takes four votes to grant such review.

But it takes five votes to prevail. The swing vote would almost certainly belong to Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

In a second order in the Pennsylvania case, the court provisionally turned down a similar application on technical grounds without noted dissent.

The North Carolina Supreme Court had rejected a map drawn by Republican lawmakers that effectively gave their party at least 10 of the state’s 14 House seats, notwithstanding that voters statewide are roughly equally divided between the two parties.

A three-judge panel of the state Superior Court in Raleigh instead adopted a new map drawn by a nonpartisan panel of redistricting experts that appeared to split North Carolina’s congressional districts roughly equally between Republicans and Democrats. It gave each party six relatively safe House seats and made the other two competitive.

After the state Supreme Court refused to block that ruling, Republican state officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.

In the Pennsylvania case, the state Supreme Court adopted a map that appears to give Republicans nine fairly safe seats and Democrats eight, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. Each party currently holds nine House seats, but Pennsylvania will lose a seat next year because of reapportionment after the 2020 census.

Voters and a Republican candidate for the House sued state officials in federal court to challenge the new map. When they did not receive immediate relief, they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

Both emergency applications relied on the Elections Clause of the Constitution, which says “the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” That meant, the challengers argued, that the state legislature has sole responsibility for drawing congressional districts and that state courts have no role to play.

“The question presented here,” North Carolina Republicans wrote in their application, “goes to the very core of this nation’s democratic republic: what entity has the constitutional authority to set the rules of the road for federal elections.”

The North Carolina Supreme Court rejected that argument, sometimes called the independent state legislature doctrine, saying it was “repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions and the independence of state courts, and would produce absurd and dangerous consequences.”

But four justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have suggested that they are sympathetic to the doctrine. Three opinions issued in October 2020 seemed to endorse it.

“The provisions of the federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election,” Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, wrote in a statement when the court refused to fast-track review of whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court could alter deadlines for mail ballots set by the legislature.

Along the same lines, Gorsuch, joined by Kavanaugh, wrote in a concurring opinion that “the Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”

Kavanaugh, in another concurring opinion, wrote that “under the U.S. Constitution, the state courts do not have a blank check to rewrite state election laws for federal elections.”

Several Supreme Court decisions cut in the opposite direction.

In 2019, for instance, when the Supreme Court closed the doors of federal courts to claims of partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the five most conservative members of the court, said state courts could continue to hear such cases — including in the context of congressional redistricting.

“Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering,” he wrote. “Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void. The states, for example, are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts.”

He gave an example: “In 2015, the Supreme Court of Florida struck down that state’s congressional districting plan as a violation of the Fair Districts Amendment to the Florida Constitution,” adding that “provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply.”

In 2015, in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, the court ruled that Arizona’s voters were entitled to try to make the process of drawing congressional district lines less partisan by creating an independent redistricting commission notwithstanding the Elections Clause.

“Nothing in that clause instructs, nor has this court ever held, that a state legislature may prescribe regulations on the time, place and manner of holding federal elections in defiance of provisions of the state’s constitution,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, wrote in the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision. 
&nbsp;

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed congressional maps that had been approved by state courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to stand, giving Democrats a leg up in this year’s election in two key states.

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed congressional maps that had been approved by state courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to stand, giving Democrats a leg up in this year’s election in two key states. In issuing the orders, the Supreme Court rejected requests by Republicans to restore maps approved by GOP-controlled state legislatures. Those district lines were thrown out and replaced by courts in both states after challenges by Democrats. Under the new court-imposed maps in both states, Democrats are likely to gain more seats than they would have under the legislature-approved versions. But in the North Carolina case, there were signs that at least four of the court’s more conservative justices could later rule that state courts are powerless to change congressional maps adopted by state legislatures. Such a ruling would fundamentally alter how congressional elections are conducted and amplify partisan gerrymandering, allowing the party that controls the legislature to draw voting districts favoring its candidates. But that will not happen before this fall’s election. Stanton Jones, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs who had challenged the North Carolina map, said the Supreme Court’s order meant that “North Carolina voters will now be able to vote in free and fair congressional elections this year.” He said that for now, the order signaled an end to “a decade of extreme Republican gerrymanders.” Still, the court’s three most conservative members — Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — said they would have blocked the North Carolina map because it was likely that the state Supreme Court had violated the Constitution in overriding the state Legislature. “There must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections,” Alito wrote. Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a short concurring opinion agreeing that the question posed by the case was a substantial one. But he said the court should address it in the ordinary course rather than in response to an emergency application. Taken together, the two opinions suggested that there are four justices ready to add a case on the question to the court’s docket when it is next presented in a petition seeking the court’s review rather than on what critics call the court’s shadow docket. It takes four votes to grant such review. But it takes five votes to prevail. The swing vote would almost certainly belong to Justice Amy Coney Barrett. In a second order in the Pennsylvania case, the court provisionally turned down a similar application on technical grounds without noted dissent. The North Carolina Supreme Court had rejected a map drawn by Republican lawmakers that effectively gave their party at least 10 of the state’s 14 House seats, notwithstanding that voters statewide are roughly equally divided between the two parties. A three-judge panel of the state Superior Court in Raleigh instead adopted a new map drawn by a nonpartisan panel of redistricting experts that appeared to split North Carolina’s congressional districts roughly equally between Republicans and Democrats. It gave each party six relatively safe House seats and made the other two competitive. After the state Supreme Court refused to block that ruling, Republican state officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in. In the Pennsylvania case, the state Supreme Court adopted a map that appears to give Republicans nine fairly safe seats and Democrats eight, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. Each party currently holds nine House seats, but Pennsylvania will lose a seat next year because of reapportionment after the 2020 census. Voters and a Republican candidate for the House sued state officials in federal court to challenge the new map. When they did not receive immediate relief, they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Both emergency applications relied on the Elections Clause of the Constitution, which says “the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” That meant, the challengers argued, that the state legislature has sole responsibility for drawing congressional districts and that state courts have no role to play. “The question presented here,” North Carolina Republicans wrote in their application, “goes to the very core of this nation’s democratic republic: what entity has the constitutional authority to set the rules of the road for federal elections.” The North Carolina Supreme Court rejected that argument, sometimes called the independent state legislature doctrine, saying it was “repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions and the independence of state courts, and would produce absurd and dangerous consequences.” But four justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have suggested that they are sympathetic to the doctrine. Three opinions issued in October 2020 seemed to endorse it. “The provisions of the federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election,” Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, wrote in a statement when the court refused to fast-track review of whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court could alter deadlines for mail ballots set by the legislature. Along the same lines, Gorsuch, joined by Kavanaugh, wrote in a concurring opinion that “the Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.” Kavanaugh, in another concurring opinion, wrote that “under the U.S. Constitution, the state courts do not have a blank check to rewrite state election laws for federal elections.” Several Supreme Court decisions cut in the opposite direction. In 2019, for instance, when the Supreme Court closed the doors of federal courts to claims of partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the five most conservative members of the court, said state courts could continue to hear such cases — including in the context of congressional redistricting. “Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering,” he wrote. “Nor does our conclusion condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void. The states, for example, are actively addressing the issue on a number of fronts.” He gave an example: “In 2015, the Supreme Court of Florida struck down that state’s congressional districting plan as a violation of the Fair Districts Amendment to the Florida Constitution,” adding that “provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply.” In 2015, in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, the court ruled that Arizona’s voters were entitled to try to make the process of drawing congressional district lines less partisan by creating an independent redistricting commission notwithstanding the Elections Clause. “Nothing in that clause instructs, nor has this court ever held, that a state legislature may prescribe regulations on the time, place and manner of holding federal elections in defiance of provisions of the state’s constitution,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020, wrote in the majority opinion in the 5-4 decision.

US Supreme Court allows court-imposed voting maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania

Bill Cosby avoided renewed legal jeopardy on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a bid by prosecutors to undo last year`s ruling in Pennsylvania that overturned the 84-year-old actor and comedian's 2018 sexual assault conviction. 
 
The justices let stand the decision by a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court that Cosby should never have faced the charges because a previous local district attorney had publicly promised in 2005 not to prosecute him, turning away an appeal by prosecutors. The state court`s ruling freed Cosby after he spent nearly three years in state prison, angering sexual assault victims and their advocates. 
 
Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison following his conviction on three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, a former employee of his alma mater Temple University, at his home in 2004.

<a href="http://13.235.153.162/entertainment/hollywood/news-sundance-film-festival-to-include-documentaries-on-bill-cosby-princess-diana-kanye-west-436088" hreflang="en">Sundance Film Festival to include documentaries on Bill Cosby, Princess Diana, Kanye West</a> 
 
He was the first celebrity to be convicted of sexual abuse since the #MeToo movement began exposing sexual misconduct among powerful men in Hollywood and beyond. 
 
Cosby is best known for his role as the lovable husband and father in the classic 1980s television comedy series 'The Cosby Show.'&nbsp;He also was an influential stand-up comedian. 
 
His family-friendly reputation was shattered after more than 50 women accused him of sexual assaults spanning nearly five decades. Constand`s allegations were the only ones against Cosby that were not too old to allow for criminal charges.

<a href="http://13.235.153.162/entertainment/hollywood/news-bill-cosby-slams-%E2%80%9Cmetoo-mob%E2%80%9D-on-wanting-to-overturn-rape-conviction-432939" hreflang="en">Bill Cosby slams “#MeToo mob” on wanting to overturn rape conviction</a> 
 
His lawyers argued on appeal that Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele should not have charged Cosby in 2015 in the Constand case because Bruce Castor, who previously held the job, had declined to file criminal charges and issued a press release announcing his decision. 
 
The refusal to prosecute meant Cosby could not avoid testifying in a civil case Constand had brought against him, which led to a multimillion-dollar settlement. That testimony, in which Cosby acknowledged giving sedatives to women, played a role in Steele`s criminal case against Cosby. 
 
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in June 2021 ruled that the prosecution was fundamentally unfair because Cosby had relied on Castor`s promise to his detriment, in violation of Cosby`s right to due process of law under the U.S. Constitution.

<a href="http://13.235.153.162/photos/johnny-depp-kevin-spacey-other-actors-whove-been-replaced-from-a-project-after-serious-allegations-341426" hreflang="en">Johnny Depp, Kevin Spacey &amp; other actors who've been replaced from a project after serious allegations</a> 
 
In appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, Steele said the state court`s "dangerous precedent" wrongly transformed a bare press release into an effective immunity that has "paved the road for thousands of other defendants to raise this issue and to seek similar windfalls." 
 
Cosby's first trial ended with a hung jury in 2017 when jurors could not reach a unanimous decision on his culpability. He was convicted at a second trial after the judge let prosecutors call as witnesses five prior accusers - four more than in the first trial. 
 
Prosecutors argued that Cosby`s assault of Constand was a well-rehearsed offence he had honed over decades: befriending younger women and acting as a mentor, only to sexually assault them, often with the assistance of drugs.

Bill Cosby avoided renewed legal jeopardy on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a bid by prosecutors to undo last year`s ruling in Pennsylvania that overturned the 84-year-old actor and comedian's 2018 sexual assault conviction.

Bill Cosby avoided renewed legal jeopardy on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a bid by prosecutors to undo last year`s ruling in Pennsylvania that overturned the 84-year-old actor and comedian's 2018 sexual assault conviction. The justices let stand the decision by a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court that Cosby should never have faced the charges because a previous local district attorney had publicly promised in 2005 not to prosecute him, turning away an appeal by prosecutors. The state court`s ruling freed Cosby after he spent nearly three years in state prison, angering sexual assault victims and their advocates. Cosby was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison following his conviction on three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, a former employee of his alma mater Temple University, at his home in 2004. Sundance Film Festival to include documentaries on Bill Cosby, Princess Diana, Kanye West He was the first celebrity to be convicted of sexual abuse since the #MeToo movement began exposing sexual misconduct among powerful men in Hollywood and beyond. Cosby is best known for his role as the lovable husband and father in the classic 1980s television comedy series 'The Cosby Show.' He also was an influential stand-up comedian. His family-friendly reputation was shattered after more than 50 women accused him of sexual assaults spanning nearly five decades. Constand`s allegations were the only ones against Cosby that were not too old to allow for criminal charges. Bill Cosby slams “#MeToo mob” on wanting to overturn rape conviction His lawyers argued on appeal that Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele should not have charged Cosby in 2015 in the Constand case because Bruce Castor, who previously held the job, had declined to file criminal charges and issued a press release announcing his decision. The refusal to prosecute meant Cosby could not avoid testifying in a civil case Constand had brought against him, which led to a multimillion-dollar settlement. That testimony, in which Cosby acknowledged giving sedatives to women, played a role in Steele`s criminal case against Cosby. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in June 2021 ruled that the prosecution was fundamentally unfair because Cosby had relied on Castor`s promise to his detriment, in violation of Cosby`s right to due process of law under the U.S. Constitution. Johnny Depp, Kevin Spacey & other actors who've been replaced from a project after serious allegations In appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, Steele said the state court`s "dangerous precedent" wrongly transformed a bare press release into an effective immunity that has "paved the road for thousands of other defendants to raise this issue and to seek similar windfalls." Cosby's first trial ended with a hung jury in 2017 when jurors could not reach a unanimous decision on his culpability. He was convicted at a second trial after the judge let prosecutors call as witnesses five prior accusers - four more than in the first trial. Prosecutors argued that Cosby`s assault of Constand was a well-rehearsed offence he had honed over decades: befriending younger women and acting as a mentor, only to sexually assault them, often with the assistance of drugs.

Bill Cosby is a free man as US Supreme Court declines to review his case

The US Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of killing three people and injuring hundreds of others with homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

A court of appeals had vacated Tsarnaev's death sentence but it was reimposed by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote.

Federal executions resumed under former president Donald Trump but were halted after Democrat Joe Biden took office in January 2021.

Tsarnaev was 19 when he and his older brother Tamerlan planted two explosive devices near the finish line of the April 15, 2013, race, killing three people and injuring 264.

On the run, the two also killed a policeman. Tamerlan was killed in a gunfight with police.

Tsarnaev's 2015 conviction over the deadly bombing earned him sentences of both life imprisonment and capital punishment.

But his lawyers won an appeal of the death sentence on grounds that jurors had not sufficiently heard arguments about how Tsarnaev was deeply under his brother's influence in committing the crime.

The Justice Department under Trump rejected those arguments and appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty in the high-profile case.

Despite the moratorium on federal executions, Biden's attorney general Merrick Garland allowed the Justice Department's appeal to reinstate the original sentence to go ahead in the high court.

The six conservatives on the court agreed on Friday that the death sentence should be reinstated for the now 28-year-old Tsarnaev, who is incarcerated at Colorado's Supermax prison.

"Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes," Justice Clarence Thomas said in the majority opinion.&nbsp;

"The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one.

"The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is reversed."

The US Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of killing three people and injuring hundreds of others with homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

The US Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of killing three people and injuring hundreds of others with homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013. A court of appeals had vacated Tsarnaev's death sentence but it was reimposed by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote. Federal executions resumed under former president Donald Trump but were halted after Democrat Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Tsarnaev was 19 when he and his older brother Tamerlan planted two explosive devices near the finish line of the April 15, 2013, race, killing three people and injuring 264. On the run, the two also killed a policeman. Tamerlan was killed in a gunfight with police. Tsarnaev's 2015 conviction over the deadly bombing earned him sentences of both life imprisonment and capital punishment. But his lawyers won an appeal of the death sentence on grounds that jurors had not sufficiently heard arguments about how Tsarnaev was deeply under his brother's influence in committing the crime. The Justice Department under Trump rejected those arguments and appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty in the high-profile case. Despite the moratorium on federal executions, Biden's attorney general Merrick Garland allowed the Justice Department's appeal to reinstate the original sentence to go ahead in the high court. The six conservatives on the court agreed on Friday that the death sentence should be reinstated for the now 28-year-old Tsarnaev, who is incarcerated at Colorado's Supermax prison. "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes," Justice Clarence Thomas said in the majority opinion. "The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one. "The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is reversed."

US Supreme Court reinstates death penalty for Boston bomber

Alisia Adamson Profit, a Black woman who has practiced law for more than a dozen years in central Florida, walked into a courtroom one morning in June for a pretrial hearing, just as she had done countless times.

But this time was different. A court deputy asked Profit — and none of the other lawyers in the courtroom, all of whom were white — for her identification.

It wasn’t the first time she felt singled out as part of a tiny universe of Black women judges and lawyers.

“It’s the idea that somehow I don’t belong here,” said Profit, a former public defender who founded a criminal defense firm based in Orlando, Florida.

As President Joe Biden prepares to nominate the first Black woman to the nation’s highest court, members of the small, elite group of Black women lawyers and judges are reflecting about their place in their profession and watching with complicated emotions.

By some estimates, they represent perhaps just 2% of the nation’s 1.3 million lawyers.

Many say they have experienced discrimination or been second-guessed. At times, they have felt dismissed by others in the legal world.

Knowing how isolating that can be, older Black women, many of whom were the first in their families to go to law school, described an instinctive urge to mentor younger Black women. And despite the challenges, they described still loving the law and doing what they considered their dream jobs.

Now, for the first time in their lives, someone who looks like them — and probably experienced similar career challenges — could ascend to the Supreme Court and rule on issues foundational to American lives, from voting and abortion rights to health care and affirmative action.

“Finally. We now have the possibility of a Supreme Court that would look more like America,” said Kara Beverly, 39, an employment lawyer who now works as an equity compliance investigator at Johns Hopkins University.

Biden’s vow to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court has launched conversations across the country about what that would mean. Many see the president’s promise as a significant step toward overdue representation, closely following the victorious ascent of another Black woman lawyer, Kamala Harris, to the vice presidency.

But along with that excitement is frustration that it has taken more than two centuries for this moment to arrive. And Black women in the legal community are bracing for the possibility that the yet-to-be-named nominee will be judged unfairly as an affirmative action appointment.

“People are going to say she only got this because she was a Black woman, and that could not be further from the truth. She would not even be considered if she wasn’t qualified, prepared and ready,” said Profit, 38. “There will be a segment that will discredit her ability to serve.”

On Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said in a radio interview that the nominee would be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action. In a statement Saturday, a White House spokesperson, Andrew Bates, rebuked the senator, noting that President Ronald Reagan had announced that he would appoint a woman before he named the court’s first, Sandra Day O’Connor.

“President Biden’s promise that he would nominate and confirm the first Black woman to the Supreme Court is in line with the best traditions of both parties and our nation,” the statement said.

The expected appointment will become a historic moment in the court’s lumbering progress toward diversity. Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, was appointed in 1916. Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, ascended to the court in 1967. Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman, joined 14 years later in 1981. And Sonia Sotomayor took the bench in 2009, becoming the first Hispanic jurist. With each nomination, the court got closer to representing America.

In the hours after the announcement that Justice Stephen Breyer would be retiring, Angela Groves, a civil rights attorney in Washington, D.C., and her mother, Emanuella Groves, an appellate judge in Ohio, feverishly exchanged text messages about the Supreme Court opening.

Although the two hadn’t had time to speak at length — they were planning to have a long discussion this weekend — they sent each other links to articles about potential nominees.

“When Barack Hussein Obama was elected, that seemed impossible,” said Emanuella Groves, 63. “I think it will be someone probably in their late 40s who hopefully will have a track record of revealing a problem, educating others, have the courage to say no and be able to do it artfully, so we can begin to shift the needle to improve the administration of justice.”

The younger Groves, 32, credited her parents, both of whom were lawyers, with teaching her about social justice and planting the seed that she could follow in their career footsteps. She attended law school at New York University, where she was one of about 60 Black students.

That experience was in stark contrast to that of her mother, who was elected to the 8th District Court of Appeals in Ohio in 2020 after serving as a trial judge in the Cleveland Municipal Court for 18 years. When she was studying at Case Western Reserve School of Law in Cleveland in the late 1970s, she was one of fewer than a dozen Black students, and among only a handful of Black women. She hadn’t grown up around any lawyers and never imagined she would become a judge.

“I didn’t think it was within my reach,” she said, adding that her husband, whom she met in law school, had championed her throughout her career. During law school, she was neighbors with Sara Harper, a former prosecutor and appellate judge who was the first African American woman to graduate from Case Western’s law school. But if only she had known more Black women practicing law, Groves said of her university days.

The younger Groves said that it was important to her that the new justice, as a Democratic appointee, would be liberal.

“It is important that we have representation, but that alone is not going to be enough to bring about a more just society,” she said. “It’s important not only that there is a Black woman, but that there’s someone who has a track record of doing work that uplifts and supports Black communities and underserved communities.”

Biden made the promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court at a debate in early 2020 as his candidacy was sputtering. At the time, he was days away from the Democratic primary in South Carolina where he needed a big win among African American voters.

“I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented,” Biden said that night.

The pledge helped bolster both the support of Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and Black voters, which make up a large portion of the party electorate. Biden ultimately won the South Carolina primary, marking the turning point in his campaign. In turn, during his presidential victory speech, Biden explicitly thanked Black voters for revitalizing his campaign, declaring, “you’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”

And although the inclusion of a Black woman to the court would not shift the conservative majority, said Elise Boddie, a law professor at Rutgers University who last year was appointed to Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, it would mark the first time that a large segment of Americans would feel represented by those in power. That visibility alone could go a long way in influencing career choices.

Christopher Kang, chief counsel and co-founder of Demand Justice, a progressive advocacy group pushing for judges of different backgrounds and professional experiences, said he regularly interviewed potential judicial nominees when he worked for the White House during the Obama administration. His first question was always why they had applied at that moment in their careers.

Women, people of color and LGBTQ lawyers typically said they had been encouraged because they had not grown up seeing anyone who looked like them in those roles.

Latosha Lewis Payne, 47, presiding judge of the 55th Civil District Court in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, said that unlike many of her peers, she had a diverse group of mentors that included Black women and men when she began her career.

“There needs to be a support system for us because we’re all going to experience things that some of our other colleagues may not ever have experienced,” Payne said. “And because there are more African American women in this space now, there are more opportunities for support and connection.”

Black women account for an overwhelming majority of all Black law students and are entering the field in greater numbers than ever before, according to the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, which surveyed Black alumni and tracked the careers of Black women lawyers.

Today, younger law students are finding much of their support online. When Stephanie Goggans, 36, decided to pivot from her 13-year career in the military to the legal profession, she turned to “Black Girls Do Law,” an Instagram account with 30,000 followers, where she found many who looked like her and harbored the same ambitions.

In addition to sharing celebratory photos of graduations and acceptances to law schools and new jobs, the account offers practice tests, study tips and resources to connect with other Black women lawyers and students.

Goggans, who met a Black lawyer for the first time in her life when she was in the U.S. Army, is now in her second year at Cleveland State University’s law school and interning for Emanuella Groves.

“This is hard no matter who you are, but my peers — half of their parents are lawyers so they’ve always known they can do this,” she said of her white counterparts. “When it comes to mentorship: Black women. I have not had an experience where a Black woman made me feel that I couldn’t do this. It’s always been support.”

Alisia Adamson Profit, a Black woman who has practiced law for more than a dozen years in central Florida, walked into a courtroom one morning in June for a pretrial hearing, just as she had done countless times.

Alisia Adamson Profit, a Black woman who has practiced law for more than a dozen years in central Florida, walked into a courtroom one morning in June for a pretrial hearing, just as she had done countless times. But this time was different. A court deputy asked Profit — and none of the other lawyers in the courtroom, all of whom were white — for her identification. It wasn’t the first time she felt singled out as part of a tiny universe of Black women judges and lawyers. “It’s the idea that somehow I don’t belong here,” said Profit, a former public defender who founded a criminal defense firm based in Orlando, Florida. As President Joe Biden prepares to nominate the first Black woman to the nation’s highest court, members of the small, elite group of Black women lawyers and judges are reflecting about their place in their profession and watching with complicated emotions. By some estimates, they represent perhaps just 2% of the nation’s 1.3 million lawyers. Many say they have experienced discrimination or been second-guessed. At times, they have felt dismissed by others in the legal world. Knowing how isolating that can be, older Black women, many of whom were the first in their families to go to law school, described an instinctive urge to mentor younger Black women. And despite the challenges, they described still loving the law and doing what they considered their dream jobs. Now, for the first time in their lives, someone who looks like them — and probably experienced similar career challenges — could ascend to the Supreme Court and rule on issues foundational to American lives, from voting and abortion rights to health care and affirmative action. “Finally. We now have the possibility of a Supreme Court that would look more like America,” said Kara Beverly, 39, an employment lawyer who now works as an equity compliance investigator at Johns Hopkins University. Biden’s vow to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court has launched conversations across the country about what that would mean. Many see the president’s promise as a significant step toward overdue representation, closely following the victorious ascent of another Black woman lawyer, Kamala Harris, to the vice presidency. But along with that excitement is frustration that it has taken more than two centuries for this moment to arrive. And Black women in the legal community are bracing for the possibility that the yet-to-be-named nominee will be judged unfairly as an affirmative action appointment. “People are going to say she only got this because she was a Black woman, and that could not be further from the truth. She would not even be considered if she wasn’t qualified, prepared and ready,” said Profit, 38. “There will be a segment that will discredit her ability to serve.” On Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said in a radio interview that the nominee would be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action. In a statement Saturday, a White House spokesperson, Andrew Bates, rebuked the senator, noting that President Ronald Reagan had announced that he would appoint a woman before he named the court’s first, Sandra Day O’Connor. “President Biden’s promise that he would nominate and confirm the first Black woman to the Supreme Court is in line with the best traditions of both parties and our nation,” the statement said. The expected appointment will become a historic moment in the court’s lumbering progress toward diversity. Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, was appointed in 1916. Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, ascended to the court in 1967. Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman, joined 14 years later in 1981. And Sonia Sotomayor took the bench in 2009, becoming the first Hispanic jurist. With each nomination, the court got closer to representing America. In the hours after the announcement that Justice Stephen Breyer would be retiring, Angela Groves, a civil rights attorney in Washington, D.C., and her mother, Emanuella Groves, an appellate judge in Ohio, feverishly exchanged text messages about the Supreme Court opening. Although the two hadn’t had time to speak at length — they were planning to have a long discussion this weekend — they sent each other links to articles about potential nominees. “When Barack Hussein Obama was elected, that seemed impossible,” said Emanuella Groves, 63. “I think it will be someone probably in their late 40s who hopefully will have a track record of revealing a problem, educating others, have the courage to say no and be able to do it artfully, so we can begin to shift the needle to improve the administration of justice.” The younger Groves, 32, credited her parents, both of whom were lawyers, with teaching her about social justice and planting the seed that she could follow in their career footsteps. She attended law school at New York University, where she was one of about 60 Black students. That experience was in stark contrast to that of her mother, who was elected to the 8th District Court of Appeals in Ohio in 2020 after serving as a trial judge in the Cleveland Municipal Court for 18 years. When she was studying at Case Western Reserve School of Law in Cleveland in the late 1970s, she was one of fewer than a dozen Black students, and among only a handful of Black women. She hadn’t grown up around any lawyers and never imagined she would become a judge. “I didn’t think it was within my reach,” she said, adding that her husband, whom she met in law school, had championed her throughout her career. During law school, she was neighbors with Sara Harper, a former prosecutor and appellate judge who was the first African American woman to graduate from Case Western’s law school. But if only she had known more Black women practicing law, Groves said of her university days. The younger Groves said that it was important to her that the new justice, as a Democratic appointee, would be liberal. “It is important that we have representation, but that alone is not going to be enough to bring about a more just society,” she said. “It’s important not only that there is a Black woman, but that there’s someone who has a track record of doing work that uplifts and supports Black communities and underserved communities.” Biden made the promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court at a debate in early 2020 as his candidacy was sputtering. At the time, he was days away from the Democratic primary in South Carolina where he needed a big win among African American voters. “I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented,” Biden said that night. The pledge helped bolster both the support of Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and Black voters, which make up a large portion of the party electorate. Biden ultimately won the South Carolina primary, marking the turning point in his campaign. In turn, during his presidential victory speech, Biden explicitly thanked Black voters for revitalizing his campaign, declaring, “you’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.” And although the inclusion of a Black woman to the court would not shift the conservative majority, said Elise Boddie, a law professor at Rutgers University who last year was appointed to Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, it would mark the first time that a large segment of Americans would feel represented by those in power. That visibility alone could go a long way in influencing career choices. Christopher Kang, chief counsel and co-founder of Demand Justice, a progressive advocacy group pushing for judges of different backgrounds and professional experiences, said he regularly interviewed potential judicial nominees when he worked for the White House during the Obama administration. His first question was always why they had applied at that moment in their careers. Women, people of color and LGBTQ lawyers typically said they had been encouraged because they had not grown up seeing anyone who looked like them in those roles. Latosha Lewis Payne, 47, presiding judge of the 55th Civil District Court in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, said that unlike many of her peers, she had a diverse group of mentors that included Black women and men when she began her career. “There needs to be a support system for us because we’re all going to experience things that some of our other colleagues may not ever have experienced,” Payne said. “And because there are more African American women in this space now, there are more opportunities for support and connection.” Black women account for an overwhelming majority of all Black law students and are entering the field in greater numbers than ever before, according to the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, which surveyed Black alumni and tracked the careers of Black women lawyers. Today, younger law students are finding much of their support online. When Stephanie Goggans, 36, decided to pivot from her 13-year career in the military to the legal profession, she turned to “Black Girls Do Law,” an Instagram account with 30,000 followers, where she found many who looked like her and harbored the same ambitions. In addition to sharing celebratory photos of graduations and acceptances to law schools and new jobs, the account offers practice tests, study tips and resources to connect with other Black women lawyers and students. Goggans, who met a Black lawyer for the first time in her life when she was in the U.S. Army, is now in her second year at Cleveland State University’s law school and interning for Emanuella Groves. “This is hard no matter who you are, but my peers — half of their parents are lawyers so they’ve always known they can do this,” she said of her white counterparts. “When it comes to mentorship: Black women. I have not had an experience where a Black woman made me feel that I couldn’t do this. It’s always been support.”

Black women in law feel pride and frustration ahead of court nominee

President Joe Biden and his legal team have spent a year preparing for this moment: the chance to make good on his pledge to name the first Black woman to the Supreme Court at a time of continuing racial reckoning for the country.

The decision by Justice Stephen G. Breyer to retire will give Biden his most high-profile opportunity since taking office to reshape the federal judiciary, having already nominated dozens of district and appeals court judges from a range of racial, ethnic and legal backgrounds.

His promise also underscores how much Black women have struggled to become part of a very small pool of elite judges in the nation’s higher federal courts. Speculation on Wednesday focused on a rarefied group of well-credentialed Black women who have elite educations and experience on the bench.

The short list included Ketanji Brown Jackson, a 51-year-old judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit who graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Breyer, and Leondra R. Kruger, a 45-year-old justice on the California Supreme Court who graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for former Justice John Paul Stevens.

J. Michelle Childs, 55, a little-known U.S. District Court judge in South Carolina whom Biden recently nominated for an appeals court, is also seen as a potential contender. One of Biden’s top congressional allies, Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, told Biden during the presidential campaign that he believed she should be appointed, in part because she came from a blue-collar background, another underrepresented group among federal judges.

Jackson and Kruger attended Ivy League law schools, unlike Childs, who attended the University of South Carolina. And while there are some differences in the women’s backgrounds and experience, they are united in being among a relative handful of Black women who have the kind of credentials normally considered qualifications for the Supreme Court.

The first Black woman to serve as a federal appeals court judge — an experience that in the modern era is usually a key credential in becoming a justice — was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1975. By the time Biden took office more than 40 years later, only seven more had served in such a position.

“If you just look at the raw numbers, it’s a telling and a sobering statistic,” said Leslie D. Davis, the chief executive of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. “That makes it clear that we must do better.”

Biden has said he hopes the diversity he has brought to the high ranks of the federal government will be a centerpiece of his legacy. In addition to his record on judgeships, his decision to pick Kamala Harris as his running mate during the 2020 campaign led to her becoming the first Black woman to serve as vice president.

Half of Biden’s first 16 nominees for federal appeals courts have been Black women — as many as all previous presidents combined had appointed. That emphasis has attracted scrutiny from across the ideological spectrum. For Davis, the important point of comparison is how few Black women had previously been appointed to the federal bench.

“It’s a story that Black women’s voices have not been appreciated,” she said, “that their perspectives have not been valued, and their voices have not been heard.”

But conservatives like the National Review legal commentator Ed Whelan have pointed out that the number of Black women Biden has nominated is strikingly disproportionate to the available pool of Black women with law degrees.

According to a 2021 profile of the legal profession by the American Bar Association, just 4.7% of American lawyers are Black and 37% of lawyers are female. The report did not break out Black women in particular, but the implication is that roughly 2% of American lawyers are both Black and female.

“By Biden’s declared standard of demographic diversity, his first year of judicial nominations has clearly been a remarkable success,” Whelan wrote this month, calling Biden’s record on appointing Black women “extraordinary” while also taking “some delight in noting” that liberal white males, with just two appellate nomination slots so far, were “the big losers.”

Biden made his promise to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court at a debate in February 2020, just days before facing his Democratic rivals in the South Carolina primary, where Black people make up a large portion of the party’s voters. At the time, his campaign was struggling amid losses in two of the early presidential contests.

“I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented,” Biden said that night.

The promise helped Biden secure the support of Clyburn just days before the party’s contest in South Carolina.

“I have three daughters,” Clyburn told Bloomberg. “I think I would be less than a good dad if I did not say to the president-to-be, this is an issue that is simmering in the African American community, that Black women think they have as much right to sit on the Supreme Court as any other women, and up to that point none had been considered.”

Biden went on to win the South Carolina primary, proving the durability of his support among Black voters and setting in motion a string of victories on Super Tuesday a short time later.

Biden's Supreme Court selection will take place in a country still feeling the reverberations of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 and subsequent mass protests over racial justice.

It also would come as the conservative-dominated court agreed this week to hear cases challenging race-conscious college admissions programs, raising the possibility that it may ban affirmative action policies aimed at maintaining racial diversity.

Biden’s political support has been especially strong among Black women. New York Times exit polling data from the 2020 election showed that while they made up just 8% of the electorate, they were Biden’s most lopsided supporters: 90% of Black female voters cast their ballots for him.

And in Georgia, Biden’s win was followed by Democrats sweeping a pair of crucial runoff elections for Senate seats that gave the party razor-thin control of the Senate — and with it the ability to confirm judges without needing any Republican support.

Several factors went into those narrow wins that flipped the state blue, but one was that a group of Black female organizers — most famously Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor who founded a voter registration group called the New Georgia Project — had been working to register hundreds of thousands new voters and encourage them to turn out.

For Democrats, maintaining enthusiastic support among Black voters, and especially Black women, may be critical in November’s midterm elections. Democratic activists urged Biden on Wednesday not to back down from his promise.

“There would be little to no rationale for President Biden to miss this opportunity,” Aimee Allison, the president of She the People, a liberal advocacy group, said in a statement. “It is and could be a defining moment for his presidency.”

Polls show Democrats trailing in their efforts to keep control of the House and the Senate, and Biden has had a rocky first year, in part because the Senate filibuster rule means Republicans can block much of his agenda, like passage of a social spending bill and an expansion of federal protections for voting rights.

But since the Senate abolished the filibuster for judges — Democrats did so for lower and appellate court judges in 2013, and Republicans did so for Supreme Court justices in 2017 — a party that controls both the White House and the Senate by any margin can appoint life-tenured federal judges, including to fill any vacancies among the 179 federal appellate seats.

In April, when Biden announced his first three appeals court nominees, all three were Black women with Ivy League educations, including Jackson. Two more of the next 10 appellate judges he appointed are also Black women. And of his six appellate nominees still pending before the Senate, three are Black women.

Biden’s decision to use his power to place numerous Black women on the bench — as well as in district court judgeships and high-profile roles in the executive branch — is transformative considering the many decades during which they have rarely exercised power in the legal system.

The history of Black female judges mirrors the larger story of African Americans since the Civil War, according to a 2010 article in the Howard Law Journal by Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, who is the chief judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

“Black women judges came to the ‘judicial’ table much later than Black men (by more than 80 years) and also much later than white women (by almost 60 years),” she wrote in the article, “Black Women Judges: The Historical Journey of Black Women to the Nation’s Highest Courts.”

New York City did not have its first Black female judge until 1939, when Jane Matilda Bolin was appointed to the Domestic Relations Court, Blackburne-Rigsby wrote, adding that when the city’s mayor, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, appointed Bolin, he first consulted her husband — a sign of the times and of the limits placed on Black women in the court system.

Blackburne-Rigsby declined to comment Wednesday. But in her article, she sounded a note of caution about viewing that demographic’s slow rise to judicial power as a matter of numbers alone.

“Being both Black and female brings an important additional voice to the deliberative process,” she wrote, “but that voice is varied because there is no singular ‘Black woman’ perspective.”

Even after the civil rights movement in the 1960s, which included President Lyndon B. Johnson’s appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice in 1967, Black women’s access to the levers of judicial power remained limited.

In 1966, Johnson had also appointed the first Black female federal judge — Constance Baker Motley, whom he placed in the Southern District of New York.

And in the years that followed, Motley was sometimes mentioned as a potential future Supreme Court justice, said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a Harvard legal historian who published a biography of the judge this week, “Civil Rights Queen.”

But Brown-Nagin, who is also the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, said that while Motley was “eminently qualified” for elevation, her political window closed: As a former civil rights lawyer, she was seen as a liberal, and from 1969 until 1993, there was no Supreme Court vacancy while a Democrat was president.

“This appointment has been a long time coming,” Brown-Nagin said.

President Joe Biden and his legal team have spent a year preparing for this moment: the chance to make good on his pledge to name the first Black woman to the Supreme Court at a time of continuing racial reckoning for the country.

President Joe Biden and his legal team have spent a year preparing for this moment: the chance to make good on his pledge to name the first Black woman to the Supreme Court at a time of continuing racial reckoning for the country. The decision by Justice Stephen G. Breyer to retire will give Biden his most high-profile opportunity since taking office to reshape the federal judiciary, having already nominated dozens of district and appeals court judges from a range of racial, ethnic and legal backgrounds. His promise also underscores how much Black women have struggled to become part of a very small pool of elite judges in the nation’s higher federal courts. Speculation on Wednesday focused on a rarefied group of well-credentialed Black women who have elite educations and experience on the bench. The short list included Ketanji Brown Jackson, a 51-year-old judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit who graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Breyer, and Leondra R. Kruger, a 45-year-old justice on the California Supreme Court who graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for former Justice John Paul Stevens. J. Michelle Childs, 55, a little-known U.S. District Court judge in South Carolina whom Biden recently nominated for an appeals court, is also seen as a potential contender. One of Biden’s top congressional allies, Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, told Biden during the presidential campaign that he believed she should be appointed, in part because she came from a blue-collar background, another underrepresented group among federal judges. Jackson and Kruger attended Ivy League law schools, unlike Childs, who attended the University of South Carolina. And while there are some differences in the women’s backgrounds and experience, they are united in being among a relative handful of Black women who have the kind of credentials normally considered qualifications for the Supreme Court. The first Black woman to serve as a federal appeals court judge — an experience that in the modern era is usually a key credential in becoming a justice — was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford in 1975. By the time Biden took office more than 40 years later, only seven more had served in such a position. “If you just look at the raw numbers, it’s a telling and a sobering statistic,” said Leslie D. Davis, the chief executive of the National Association of Minority and Women Owned Law Firms. “That makes it clear that we must do better.” Biden has said he hopes the diversity he has brought to the high ranks of the federal government will be a centerpiece of his legacy. In addition to his record on judgeships, his decision to pick Kamala Harris as his running mate during the 2020 campaign led to her becoming the first Black woman to serve as vice president. Half of Biden’s first 16 nominees for federal appeals courts have been Black women — as many as all previous presidents combined had appointed. That emphasis has attracted scrutiny from across the ideological spectrum. For Davis, the important point of comparison is how few Black women had previously been appointed to the federal bench. “It’s a story that Black women’s voices have not been appreciated,” she said, “that their perspectives have not been valued, and their voices have not been heard.” But conservatives like the National Review legal commentator Ed Whelan have pointed out that the number of Black women Biden has nominated is strikingly disproportionate to the available pool of Black women with law degrees. According to a 2021 profile of the legal profession by the American Bar Association, just 4.7% of American lawyers are Black and 37% of lawyers are female. The report did not break out Black women in particular, but the implication is that roughly 2% of American lawyers are both Black and female. “By Biden’s declared standard of demographic diversity, his first year of judicial nominations has clearly been a remarkable success,” Whelan wrote this month, calling Biden’s record on appointing Black women “extraordinary” while also taking “some delight in noting” that liberal white males, with just two appellate nomination slots so far, were “the big losers.” Biden made his promise to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court at a debate in February 2020, just days before facing his Democratic rivals in the South Carolina primary, where Black people make up a large portion of the party’s voters. At the time, his campaign was struggling amid losses in two of the early presidential contests. “I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented,” Biden said that night. The promise helped Biden secure the support of Clyburn just days before the party’s contest in South Carolina. “I have three daughters,” Clyburn told Bloomberg. “I think I would be less than a good dad if I did not say to the president-to-be, this is an issue that is simmering in the African American community, that Black women think they have as much right to sit on the Supreme Court as any other women, and up to that point none had been considered.” Biden went on to win the South Carolina primary, proving the durability of his support among Black voters and setting in motion a string of victories on Super Tuesday a short time later. Biden's Supreme Court selection will take place in a country still feeling the reverberations of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 and subsequent mass protests over racial justice. It also would come as the conservative-dominated court agreed this week to hear cases challenging race-conscious college admissions programs, raising the possibility that it may ban affirmative action policies aimed at maintaining racial diversity. Biden’s political support has been especially strong among Black women. New York Times exit polling data from the 2020 election showed that while they made up just 8% of the electorate, they were Biden’s most lopsided supporters: 90% of Black female voters cast their ballots for him. And in Georgia, Biden’s win was followed by Democrats sweeping a pair of crucial runoff elections for Senate seats that gave the party razor-thin control of the Senate — and with it the ability to confirm judges without needing any Republican support. Several factors went into those narrow wins that flipped the state blue, but one was that a group of Black female organizers — most famously Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor who founded a voter registration group called the New Georgia Project — had been working to register hundreds of thousands new voters and encourage them to turn out. For Democrats, maintaining enthusiastic support among Black voters, and especially Black women, may be critical in November’s midterm elections. Democratic activists urged Biden on Wednesday not to back down from his promise. “There would be little to no rationale for President Biden to miss this opportunity,” Aimee Allison, the president of She the People, a liberal advocacy group, said in a statement. “It is and could be a defining moment for his presidency.” Polls show Democrats trailing in their efforts to keep control of the House and the Senate, and Biden has had a rocky first year, in part because the Senate filibuster rule means Republicans can block much of his agenda, like passage of a social spending bill and an expansion of federal protections for voting rights. But since the Senate abolished the filibuster for judges — Democrats did so for lower and appellate court judges in 2013, and Republicans did so for Supreme Court justices in 2017 — a party that controls both the White House and the Senate by any margin can appoint life-tenured federal judges, including to fill any vacancies among the 179 federal appellate seats. In April, when Biden announced his first three appeals court nominees, all three were Black women with Ivy League educations, including Jackson. Two more of the next 10 appellate judges he appointed are also Black women. And of his six appellate nominees still pending before the Senate, three are Black women. Biden’s decision to use his power to place numerous Black women on the bench — as well as in district court judgeships and high-profile roles in the executive branch — is transformative considering the many decades during which they have rarely exercised power in the legal system. The history of Black female judges mirrors the larger story of African Americans since the Civil War, according to a 2010 article in the Howard Law Journal by Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, who is the chief judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. “Black women judges came to the ‘judicial’ table much later than Black men (by more than 80 years) and also much later than white women (by almost 60 years),” she wrote in the article, “Black Women Judges: The Historical Journey of Black Women to the Nation’s Highest Courts.” New York City did not have its first Black female judge until 1939, when Jane Matilda Bolin was appointed to the Domestic Relations Court, Blackburne-Rigsby wrote, adding that when the city’s mayor, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, appointed Bolin, he first consulted her husband — a sign of the times and of the limits placed on Black women in the court system. Blackburne-Rigsby declined to comment Wednesday. But in her article, she sounded a note of caution about viewing that demographic’s slow rise to judicial power as a matter of numbers alone. “Being both Black and female brings an important additional voice to the deliberative process,” she wrote, “but that voice is varied because there is no singular ‘Black woman’ perspective.” Even after the civil rights movement in the 1960s, which included President Lyndon B. Johnson’s appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice in 1967, Black women’s access to the levers of judicial power remained limited. In 1966, Johnson had also appointed the first Black female federal judge — Constance Baker Motley, whom he placed in the Southern District of New York. And in the years that followed, Motley was sometimes mentioned as a potential future Supreme Court justice, said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a Harvard legal historian who published a biography of the judge this week, “Civil Rights Queen.” But Brown-Nagin, who is also the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, said that while Motley was “eminently qualified” for elevation, her political window closed: As a former civil rights lawyer, she was seen as a liberal, and from 1969 until 1993, there was no Supreme Court vacancy while a Democrat was president. “This appointment has been a long time coming,” Brown-Nagin said.

Biden expected to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for large businesses delivering a blow to the US government.

The Biden administration had mandated that coronavirus vaccinations or weekly testing should be made compulsory&nbsp;in companies that employ&nbsp;over 100 workers. However, the Supreme Court judges disagreed with President Biden's vaccine guideline.

The judges however allowed the vaccine mandate for health workers in facilities which receive US government funds.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/astrazeneca-trials-show-its-vaxzevria-vaccine-causes-high-immune-response-against-omicron-444458">Also Read:&nbsp;AstraZeneca trials show its Vaxzevria vaccine causes high immune response against Omicron</a>

The US president expressed his disappointment with the verdict, saying: "I am disappointed that the Supreme Court has chosen to block common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law."

Biden urged employers to do the "right thing" as the country continues to battle against the virus.

Watch:&nbsp;US hospitalisations increase

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-hospitalization-witness-an-increase-by-33-and-deaths-by-40-444474/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The United States is the worst-hit country due to the virus with over 63 million coronavirus cases and more than 847,660 fatalities.

President Biden declared that his administration will deploy additional military healthcare workers in six US states as the country combats the Omicron wave.

The military healthcare workers would be sent to Rhode Island, Ohio, New York, New Mexico, New Jersey and Michigan which have been hit hard due to the virus surge in the past month.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/watch-chinese-covid-19-patients-forced-to-live-in-metal-boxes-444421">Also Read:&nbsp;Watch: Chinese COVID-19 patients forced to live in metal boxes</a>

The US government has also ramped up testing even as hospitalisation reached record levels this week.

Several hospitals have already been overwhelmed due to a large number of incoming patients hit with the virus as several US states have declared an emergency&nbsp;to ensure funding to tackle the health crisis.

(With inputs from Agencies)

The US Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for large businesses delivering a blow to the US government. The Biden administration had mandated that coronavirus vaccinations or weekly testing should be made compulsory in companies that employ over 100 workers.

The US Supreme Court blocked President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for large businesses delivering a blow to the US government. The Biden administration had mandated that coronavirus vaccinations or weekly testing should be made compulsory in companies that employ over 100 workers. However, the Supreme Court judges disagreed with President Biden's vaccine guideline. The judges however allowed the vaccine mandate for health workers in facilities which receive US government funds. Also Read: AstraZeneca trials show its Vaxzevria vaccine causes high immune response against Omicron The US president expressed his disappointment with the verdict, saying: "I am disappointed that the Supreme Court has chosen to block common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law." Biden urged employers to do the "right thing" as the country continues to battle against the virus. Watch: US hospitalisations increase The United States is the worst-hit country due to the virus with over 63 million coronavirus cases and more than 847,660 fatalities. President Biden declared that his administration will deploy additional military healthcare workers in six US states as the country combats the Omicron wave. The military healthcare workers would be sent to Rhode Island, Ohio, New York, New Mexico, New Jersey and Michigan which have been hit hard due to the virus surge in the past month. Also Read: Watch: Chinese COVID-19 patients forced to live in metal boxes The US government has also ramped up testing even as hospitalisation reached record levels this week. Several hospitals have already been overwhelmed due to a large number of incoming patients hit with the virus as several US states have declared an emergency to ensure funding to tackle the health crisis. (With inputs from Agencies)

'Disappointed': US Supreme Court blocks Biden's vaccine mandate for businesses

Amid a drop in public confidence in the Supreme Court and calls for increasing its membership, Chief Justice John Roberts devoted his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary Friday to a plea for judicial independence.

“The judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and coequal branch of government,” he wrote.

The report comes less than a month after a bipartisan commission appointed by President Joe Biden finished its work studying changes to the federal judiciary. While that panel analyzed proposals like imposing 18-year term limits on justices and expanding, or “packing,” the court with additional justices, much of Roberts' report was focused on thwarting less contentious efforts by Congress to address financial conflicts and workplace misconduct in the judicial system. Both issues are the subject of proposed legislation that has drawn bipartisan support.

Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit group that has called for stricter ethics rules for the Supreme Court, said Roberts faced an uphill battle.

“Chief Justice Roberts is taking a page from his old playbook: acknowledging institutional challenges in the judiciary but telling the public that only we judges can fix them,” Roth said. “Yet the problems of overlooked financial conflicts and sexual harassment are serious and endemic, and there’s no indication they’re going away. So Congress has every right to step in and, via legislation, hold the third branch to account, which I expect to happen in 2022.”

Roberts addressed at some length a recent series of articles in The Wall Street Journal that found that 131 federal judges had violated a federal law by hearing 685 lawsuits between 2010 and 2018 that involved companies in which they or their families owned shares of stock.

“Let me be crystal clear: The judiciary takes this matter seriously,” Roberts wrote. “We expect judges to adhere to the highest standards, and those judges violated an ethics rule. But I do want to put these lapses in context.”

In the scheme of things, he wrote, the number of violations was vanishingly small.

“According to The Wall Street Journal’s own data,” he wrote, “the 685 instances identified amount to a very small fraction — less than three-hundredths of 1% — of the 2.5 million civil cases filed in the district courts in the nine years included in the study. That’s a 99.97% compliance rate.”

“Still,” he wrote, “this context is not excuse. We are duty-bound to strive for 100% compliance because public trust is essential, not incidental, to our function.”

Although Roberts did not mention it, the Supreme Court has not been immune from similar lapses. In 2017, for instance, after participating in the oral arguments in a patent case, the Supreme Court announced that Roberts “has concluded that he should not continue to participate in this case.”

He had discovered, the court said, that he owned 1,212 shares of the parent company of one of the parties in the case. The shares were worth more than $100,000, according to a financial disclosure report.

“The ordinary conflict check conducted in the chief justice’s chambers inadvertently failed to find this potential conflict,” a letter from a court official to lawyers in the patent case said.

In the report issued on Friday, Roberts called for more rigorous ethics training and better systems of conflict checks. He did not address a solution urged by many ethics experts: barring judges from investing in individual stocks.

Roberts also touched on what he called “the continuing concern over inappropriate behavior in the judicial workplace.”

The issue had been a topic in several of the chief justice’s reports since 2017, when Judge Alex Kozinski, who had served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit for more than three decades, announced his retirement after The Washington Post reported that some 15 women had accused him of sexual harassment.

The women, many of whom had served as his law clerks, said Kozinski had touched them inappropriately, made unwanted sexual comments and made them watch sexual materials on his computer.

Roberts wrote Friday that the federal judiciary had taken many steps to make its workplaces safe, including revising its procedures to “provide robust mechanisms for reporting and addressing instances of misconduct.”

As is his custom, the chief justice began his report with a historical sketch. This year, it was of William H. Taft, who was appointed to be chief justice a century ago, after having served as president. Taft, a large man, was an energetic administrator.

“Taft sought to supplant the prevailing culture of isolation in which each judge was — in his words — left to ‘paddle his own canoe,’” Roberts wrote.

“Once you get past the image of ‘Big Bill’ paddling a canoe, consider that he knew well how to navigate the halls of Congress,” Roberts wrote, adding, “He threw his considerable political heft into creating the mechanisms of self-governance for federal courts across the country.”

Although Roberts did not address proposals to increase the size of his court or to impose terms limits on its members, he described with approval Taft’s efforts to preserve judicial independence.

“He understood that criticism of the courts is inevitable,” Roberts wrote, “and he lived through an era when federal courts faced strident calls for reform, some warranted and some not.”

The proper response, Roberts said Taft once observed, was “to remove, as far as possible, grounds for just criticism of our judicial system.”

Amid a drop in public confidence in the Supreme Court and calls for increasing its membership, Chief Justice John Roberts devoted his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary Friday to a plea for judicial independence.

Amid a drop in public confidence in the Supreme Court and calls for increasing its membership, Chief Justice John Roberts devoted his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary Friday to a plea for judicial independence. “The judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and coequal branch of government,” he wrote. The report comes less than a month after a bipartisan commission appointed by President Joe Biden finished its work studying changes to the federal judiciary. While that panel analyzed proposals like imposing 18-year term limits on justices and expanding, or “packing,” the court with additional justices, much of Roberts' report was focused on thwarting less contentious efforts by Congress to address financial conflicts and workplace misconduct in the judicial system. Both issues are the subject of proposed legislation that has drawn bipartisan support. Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonprofit group that has called for stricter ethics rules for the Supreme Court, said Roberts faced an uphill battle. “Chief Justice Roberts is taking a page from his old playbook: acknowledging institutional challenges in the judiciary but telling the public that only we judges can fix them,” Roth said. “Yet the problems of overlooked financial conflicts and sexual harassment are serious and endemic, and there’s no indication they’re going away. So Congress has every right to step in and, via legislation, hold the third branch to account, which I expect to happen in 2022.” Roberts addressed at some length a recent series of articles in The Wall Street Journal that found that 131 federal judges had violated a federal law by hearing 685 lawsuits between 2010 and 2018 that involved companies in which they or their families owned shares of stock. “Let me be crystal clear: The judiciary takes this matter seriously,” Roberts wrote. “We expect judges to adhere to the highest standards, and those judges violated an ethics rule. But I do want to put these lapses in context.” In the scheme of things, he wrote, the number of violations was vanishingly small. “According to The Wall Street Journal’s own data,” he wrote, “the 685 instances identified amount to a very small fraction — less than three-hundredths of 1% — of the 2.5 million civil cases filed in the district courts in the nine years included in the study. That’s a 99.97% compliance rate.” “Still,” he wrote, “this context is not excuse. We are duty-bound to strive for 100% compliance because public trust is essential, not incidental, to our function.” Although Roberts did not mention it, the Supreme Court has not been immune from similar lapses. In 2017, for instance, after participating in the oral arguments in a patent case, the Supreme Court announced that Roberts “has concluded that he should not continue to participate in this case.” He had discovered, the court said, that he owned 1,212 shares of the parent company of one of the parties in the case. The shares were worth more than $100,000, according to a financial disclosure report. “The ordinary conflict check conducted in the chief justice’s chambers inadvertently failed to find this potential conflict,” a letter from a court official to lawyers in the patent case said. In the report issued on Friday, Roberts called for more rigorous ethics training and better systems of conflict checks. He did not address a solution urged by many ethics experts: barring judges from investing in individual stocks. Roberts also touched on what he called “the continuing concern over inappropriate behavior in the judicial workplace.” The issue had been a topic in several of the chief justice’s reports since 2017, when Judge Alex Kozinski, who had served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit for more than three decades, announced his retirement after The Washington Post reported that some 15 women had accused him of sexual harassment. The women, many of whom had served as his law clerks, said Kozinski had touched them inappropriately, made unwanted sexual comments and made them watch sexual materials on his computer. Roberts wrote Friday that the federal judiciary had taken many steps to make its workplaces safe, including revising its procedures to “provide robust mechanisms for reporting and addressing instances of misconduct.” As is his custom, the chief justice began his report with a historical sketch. This year, it was of William H. Taft, who was appointed to be chief justice a century ago, after having served as president. Taft, a large man, was an energetic administrator. “Taft sought to supplant the prevailing culture of isolation in which each judge was — in his words — left to ‘paddle his own canoe,’” Roberts wrote. “Once you get past the image of ‘Big Bill’ paddling a canoe, consider that he knew well how to navigate the halls of Congress,” Roberts wrote, adding, “He threw his considerable political heft into creating the mechanisms of self-governance for federal courts across the country.” Although Roberts did not address proposals to increase the size of his court or to impose terms limits on its members, he described with approval Taft’s efforts to preserve judicial independence. “He understood that criticism of the courts is inevitable,” Roberts wrote, “and he lived through an era when federal courts faced strident calls for reform, some warranted and some not.” The proper response, Roberts said Taft once observed, was “to remove, as far as possible, grounds for just criticism of our judicial system.”

Chief Justice Roberts reflects on conflicts, harassment and judicial independence

Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to prevent the release of White House documents to a congressional committee reviewing the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on January 6.

The former president asked the nation's highest court to stay a decision this month by a federal appeals court that rejected his request for the documents and records to be kept secret.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/meadows-and-the-band-of-loyalists-how-they-fought-to-keep-trump-in-power-437505">Meadows and the band of loyalists: How they fought to keep Trump in power</a>

Trump, who has been accused of fomenting the assault on Congress, is attempting to maintain the secrecy of White House records related to the attack as a former president.

An appeals court this month agreed with a lower court that President Joe Biden could waive executive privilege on the records. This would enable them to be handed over to the panel investigating the violence committed by Trump supporters.

Lawyers for Donald Trump argued in a filing with the Supreme Court that, even after the term, former presidents have the right to invoke executive privilege.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/judge-sentences-us-capitol-rioter-qanon-shaman-to-over-three-years-in-prison-430240">Judge sentences US Capitol rioter 'QAnon Shaman' to over three years in prison</a>

They condemned the congressional records request as "strikingly broad" and accused the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives committee of looking into a "political foe."

"Congress may not rifle through the confidential, presidential papers of a former President to meet political objectives," Trump's lawyers said.

"In an increasingly partisan political climate, such records requests will become the norm regardless of what party is in power," they said.

Arguing in defence of executive privilege, Trump's lawyers say it affects "the ability of presidents and their advisers to reliably make and receive full and frank advice, without concern that communications will be publicly released to meet a political objective."

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trumps-ex-adviser-steve-bannon-surrenders-to-face-capitol-riots-probe-429615">Trump's ex-adviser Steve Bannon surrenders to face Capitol riots probe</a>

It was decided by the US Court of Appeals to delay the release of the White House records until the lawyers of the former Republican president could file their appeal with the Supreme Court.

Trump's lawyers requested that the conservative majority Supreme Court schedule a hearing about whether the probe request is constitutional and to block the release of the documents in the meantime.

In its ruling, the appeals court noted that the right of a former president carries no more weight than the right of an incumbent.

"In this case, President Biden, as the head of the Executive Branch, has specifically found that Congress has demonstrated a compelling need for these very documents and that disclosure is in the best interests of the nation," the court said.

Regarding the records, which are held by the National Archives, the court said that the public interest is greater than Trump's.

Emails, phone records, briefing materials, and other records are among the documents Trump hopes to block.

The Representatives of the House Select Committee investigate the attempt by hundreds of Trump supporters to block the certification of the victory of President Biden in November 2020 are seeking these records.

Watch |&nbsp;Gravitas: 'Pure Harassment', Trump slams Lawsuit against him

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-pure-harassment-trump-slams-lawsuit-against-him-422149/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

It also includes records of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, his former senior advisor Stephen Miller, and his former deputy counsel Patrick Philbin.

In addition, Trump has opposed the release of the White House Daily Diary, -- records of his activities, trips, briefings, and phone calls.

Another pile of documents Trump refuses to share with Congress includes memos he wrote to his former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, a handwritten note about the events of January 6 and the text of his speech at the "Save America" rally, which preceded the attack.

(With inputs from agencies)

Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to prevent the release of White House documents to a congressional committee reviewing the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on January 6.

Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to prevent the release of White House documents to a congressional committee reviewing the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on January 6. The former president asked the nation's highest court to stay a decision this month by a federal appeals court that rejected his request for the documents and records to be kept secret. Also read | Meadows and the band of loyalists: How they fought to keep Trump in power Trump, who has been accused of fomenting the assault on Congress, is attempting to maintain the secrecy of White House records related to the attack as a former president. An appeals court this month agreed with a lower court that President Joe Biden could waive executive privilege on the records. This would enable them to be handed over to the panel investigating the violence committed by Trump supporters. Lawyers for Donald Trump argued in a filing with the Supreme Court that, even after the term, former presidents have the right to invoke executive privilege. Also read | Judge sentences US Capitol rioter 'QAnon Shaman' to over three years in prison They condemned the congressional records request as "strikingly broad" and accused the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives committee of looking into a "political foe." "Congress may not rifle through the confidential, presidential papers of a former President to meet political objectives," Trump's lawyers said. "In an increasingly partisan political climate, such records requests will become the norm regardless of what party is in power," they said. Arguing in defence of executive privilege, Trump's lawyers say it affects "the ability of presidents and their advisers to reliably make and receive full and frank advice, without concern that communications will be publicly released to meet a political objective." Also read | Trump's ex-adviser Steve Bannon surrenders to face Capitol riots probe It was decided by the US Court of Appeals to delay the release of the White House records until the lawyers of the former Republican president could file their appeal with the Supreme Court. Trump's lawyers requested that the conservative majority Supreme Court schedule a hearing about whether the probe request is constitutional and to block the release of the documents in the meantime. In its ruling, the appeals court noted that the right of a former president carries no more weight than the right of an incumbent. "In this case, President Biden, as the head of the Executive Branch, has specifically found that Congress has demonstrated a compelling need for these very documents and that disclosure is in the best interests of the nation," the court said. Regarding the records, which are held by the National Archives, the court said that the public interest is greater than Trump's. Emails, phone records, briefing materials, and other records are among the documents Trump hopes to block. The Representatives of the House Select Committee investigate the attempt by hundreds of Trump supporters to block the certification of the victory of President Biden in November 2020 are seeking these records. Watch | Gravitas: 'Pure Harassment', Trump slams Lawsuit against him It also includes records of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, his former senior advisor Stephen Miller, and his former deputy counsel Patrick Philbin. In addition, Trump has opposed the release of the White House Daily Diary, -- records of his activities, trips, briefings, and phone calls. Another pile of documents Trump refuses to share with Congress includes memos he wrote to his former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, a handwritten note about the events of January 6 and the text of his speech at the "Save America" rally, which preceded the attack. (With inputs from agencies)

Donald Trump asks SC to block release of documents relating to Capitol riot probe

The United States Supreme Court on Friday (December 10) has ruled on the Texas abortion law, now allowing the abortion providers to challenge the ban in federal court.

The United States Supreme Court on Friday (December 10) has ruled on the Texas abortion law, now allowing the abortion providers to challenge the ban in federal court. However, it let the controversial law remain in effect for now. The controversial law, known as SB8, prohibits the procedure after around six weeks of pregnancy - a phase before most women even know they are pregnant. An exception can be made if there is any medical emergency, however, not in the case of rape or incest. ALSO READ | US blacklists Chinese firm, sanctions political leaders over human rights violations in Uyghur The controversial law remained one of the highly-debated topics in US politics this year as this emerged as a restrictive law in the country, passed since abortion was made a constitutional right five decades ago. Today's ruling gives a window that the law might get suspended as the case will return to a district court for further proceedings, CNN reported. The law came into effect on September 1 and was heavily criticised by women's rights groups, especially by the Biden administration. Eight out of nine justices agreed that lawsuits filed by abortion providers against the Texas law may proceed, but they divided 5-4 on whether other officials could be sued. ALSO READ | United States wins appeal over extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Here's what the court said: Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion, said that "given the ongoing chilling effect of the state law, the District Court should resolve this litigation and enter appropriate relief without delay." "The Court concludes that the petitioners may pursue a pre-enforcement challenge against certain of the named defendants but not others," the court, led by Justice Neil Gorsuch, said as quoted by FOX News. "The petitioners then filed a request for injunctive relief with the Court, seeking emergency resolution of their application ahead of [the law's] approaching effective date," the court said. "In the abbreviated time available for review, the Court concluded that the petitioners’ filings failed to identify a basis in existing law that could justify disturbing the Fifth Circuit’s decision to deny injunctive relief," it added. ×

US Supreme Court allows abortion providers to challenge Texas law in federal court

If gun safety activists want their agenda to survive, they will have to stop trying to ban guns — and focus instead on reducing the violence those guns bring.

The gun safety movement finds itself on the precipice of disaster.

With new grass-roots and advocacy organisations, better financing, and stronger support from the Democratic Party, it has, arguably, never been stronger. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court will&nbsp;hear a case&nbsp;that is likely to call into question many of the reforms at the top of the movement’s agenda.

The justices are considering the constitutionality of a New York law that makes it hard for residents to obtain a permit to carry concealed firearms in public. The court, with three conservative pro-gun justices appointed by former President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>, will almost certainly say New York’s law is too restrictive under the Second Amendment — which will lead, predictably, to more guns on city streets and more violent crime.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-wants-us-congress-to-reform-american-gun-laws-363630">Biden wants US Congress to reform American gun laws</a>

The New York case could also signal the beginning of a new era of judicial hostility to gun laws, especially to the bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines that the reinvigorated gun safety movement has fought so hard to get enacted. With a single decision, the Supreme Court majority could transform life in many American cities — and stymie the growing political movement for gun reform.

Advocates and activists need an agenda that can survive the Supreme Court’s new interpretation of the Second Amendment. Fighting to restrict the quantity and kinds of guns owned by citizens will be a losing battle. Instead, it is time to focus on policies that will reduce the violence all those guns in America bring.

A good place to start would be community-based intervention programs like Operation Ceasefire, an initiative launched in Boston in 1996.&nbsp;Studies&nbsp;show&nbsp;that a small percentage of the population, such as gang members and hardened criminals, commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. By bringing together community leaders, former gang members and the police for outreach to those most likely to use firearms, gun violence intervention programs have a proven track record of reducing gun crime.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/supporters-of-gun-control-assail-biden-over-delay-on-action-373719">Supporters of gun control assail Biden over delay on action</a>

Such programs, however, require resources and personnel at a time when social services and law enforcement are already stretched thin, and the political will to fund them adequately has never really materialized. That’s where the new strength of the gun safety movement can be a boon. Instead of spending political capital on a national ban on assault rifles that the justices are likely to overturn, the movement could use its muscle to push for federal and state legislation to fund vibrant and effective gun violence intervention programs in every major and midsize city across America.

The gun safety reform movement should also prioritize strengthening federal efforts to crack down on gun trafficking. While the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or A.T.F., has federal gun law enforcement authority, the National Rifle Association and its allies&nbsp;have shackled it&nbsp;with outdated technology, insufficient funds, and absurd restrictions. With an ever-increasing number of guns in the United States, A.T.F.’s intentional impotence comes at a deadly cost.

By law, A.T.F. is prohibited from using electronic databases to trace guns found at crime scenes and barred from electronically searching the records it does have. So when a gun is found at a crime scene, agents have to travel to individual gun stores and sort through boxes of documents to find out who bought it. A.T.F. is also prohibited by law from making more than one unannounced, warrantless inspection per year of any licensed gun dealer. And A.T.F. is still operating with roughly the same number of employees it had in 2001, and about 20 percent fewer inspectors, even though the number of guns in the United States has skyrocketed, and we now average at least 30 million gun sales a year. In a country where there are now&nbsp;more licensed&nbsp;gun dealers&nbsp;than branches of Starbucks and McDonald’s combined, these artificial restraints on A.T.F. should be lifted.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/bidens-order-to-target-ghost-guns-in-reforms-against-increasing-gun-violence-375987">Biden's order to target 'ghost guns' in reforms against increasing gun violence</a>

The gun safety movement should also launch a renewed push for universal — and better — background checks to make it harder for criminals and abusers to obtain firearms. There is broad public support for universal background checks, even among gun owners, and the court is unlikely to declare them unconstitutional.

Background checks, however, are only as good as the underlying databases. In 2015, a background check error allowed Dylann Roof to buy a handgun, weeks before he shot and killed 9 people in the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C. In 2017, more than two dozen churchgoers were killed by another shooter whose domestic violence conviction&nbsp;wasn’t&nbsp;reported to the F.B.I. The current system has significant gaps, especially when it comes to disqualifying mental health records. The federal database is missing hundreds of thousands of mental health records, and state reporting is shockingly uneven.

Gun safety advocates have long recognized these problems — and have been among the lone voices pushing for exactly these reforms. Yet proposals with more obvious popular appeal, like banning assault rifles, have taken center stage over the past decade. An expansive new interpretation of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court warrants a reordering of priorities.

An agenda that focuses on intervention, beefing up gun law enforcement, and better background checks would not only be more likely to survive in the court, it might also do more to reduce gun violence. While assault rifles look menacing, they are responsible for only a fraction of gun deaths in America each year. While these weapons have been used in some of the most notorious massacres, most mass shootings are actually committed with handguns.

The same principle applies to large-capacity magazine bans. Though good in theory, they’re consistently ignored in practice. Advocates convinced lawmakers in New Jersey to&nbsp;ban&nbsp;them in 2018, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that gun owners have turned in or thrown away their now illegal magazines.

For decades now, the N.R.A. has&nbsp;said&nbsp;we don’t need more gun laws, just better enforcement of existing gun laws. It’s time for the gun safety movement to take the N.R.A. up on its challenge. By dropping the excessive focus on banning certain types of weapons, and instead prioritizing reforms that do more to crack down on gun violence, gun safety advocates may be able avoid the harsh scrutiny of the new Supreme Court — and, in the end, save more lives.

If gun safety activists want their agenda to survive, they will have to stop trying to ban guns — and focus instead on reducing the violence those guns bring. The gun safety movement finds itself on the precipice of disaster.

If gun safety activists want their agenda to survive, they will have to stop trying to ban guns — and focus instead on reducing the violence those guns bring. The gun safety movement finds itself on the precipice of disaster. With new grass-roots and advocacy organisations, better financing, and stronger support from the Democratic Party, it has, arguably, never been stronger. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a case that is likely to call into question many of the reforms at the top of the movement’s agenda. The justices are considering the constitutionality of a New York law that makes it hard for residents to obtain a permit to carry concealed firearms in public. The court, with three conservative pro-gun justices appointed by former President Donald Trump, will almost certainly say New York’s law is too restrictive under the Second Amendment — which will lead, predictably, to more guns on city streets and more violent crime. Also read | Biden wants US Congress to reform American gun laws The New York case could also signal the beginning of a new era of judicial hostility to gun laws, especially to the bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines that the reinvigorated gun safety movement has fought so hard to get enacted. With a single decision, the Supreme Court majority could transform life in many American cities — and stymie the growing political movement for gun reform. Advocates and activists need an agenda that can survive the Supreme Court’s new interpretation of the Second Amendment. Fighting to restrict the quantity and kinds of guns owned by citizens will be a losing battle. Instead, it is time to focus on policies that will reduce the violence all those guns in America bring. A good place to start would be community-based intervention programs like Operation Ceasefire, an initiative launched in Boston in 1996. Studies show that a small percentage of the population, such as gang members and hardened criminals, commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime. By bringing together community leaders, former gang members and the police for outreach to those most likely to use firearms, gun violence intervention programs have a proven track record of reducing gun crime. Also read | Supporters of gun control assail Biden over delay on action Such programs, however, require resources and personnel at a time when social services and law enforcement are already stretched thin, and the political will to fund them adequately has never really materialized. That’s where the new strength of the gun safety movement can be a boon. Instead of spending political capital on a national ban on assault rifles that the justices are likely to overturn, the movement could use its muscle to push for federal and state legislation to fund vibrant and effective gun violence intervention programs in every major and midsize city across America. The gun safety reform movement should also prioritize strengthening federal efforts to crack down on gun trafficking. While the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or A.T.F., has federal gun law enforcement authority, the National Rifle Association and its allies have shackled it with outdated technology, insufficient funds, and absurd restrictions. With an ever-increasing number of guns in the United States, A.T.F.’s intentional impotence comes at a deadly cost. By law, A.T.F. is prohibited from using electronic databases to trace guns found at crime scenes and barred from electronically searching the records it does have. So when a gun is found at a crime scene, agents have to travel to individual gun stores and sort through boxes of documents to find out who bought it. A.T.F. is also prohibited by law from making more than one unannounced, warrantless inspection per year of any licensed gun dealer. And A.T.F. is still operating with roughly the same number of employees it had in 2001, and about 20 percent fewer inspectors, even though the number of guns in the United States has skyrocketed, and we now average at least 30 million gun sales a year. In a country where there are now more licensed gun dealers than branches of Starbucks and McDonald’s combined, these artificial restraints on A.T.F. should be lifted. Also read | Biden's order to target 'ghost guns' in reforms against increasing gun violence The gun safety movement should also launch a renewed push for universal — and better — background checks to make it harder for criminals and abusers to obtain firearms. There is broad public support for universal background checks, even among gun owners, and the court is unlikely to declare them unconstitutional. Background checks, however, are only as good as the underlying databases. In 2015, a background check error allowed Dylann Roof to buy a handgun, weeks before he shot and killed 9 people in the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C. In 2017, more than two dozen churchgoers were killed by another shooter whose domestic violence conviction wasn’t reported to the F.B.I. The current system has significant gaps, especially when it comes to disqualifying mental health records. The federal database is missing hundreds of thousands of mental health records, and state reporting is shockingly uneven. Gun safety advocates have long recognized these problems — and have been among the lone voices pushing for exactly these reforms. Yet proposals with more obvious popular appeal, like banning assault rifles, have taken center stage over the past decade. An expansive new interpretation of the Second Amendment by the Supreme Court warrants a reordering of priorities. An agenda that focuses on intervention, beefing up gun law enforcement, and better background checks would not only be more likely to survive in the court, it might also do more to reduce gun violence. While assault rifles look menacing, they are responsible for only a fraction of gun deaths in America each year. While these weapons have been used in some of the most notorious massacres, most mass shootings are actually committed with handguns. The same principle applies to large-capacity magazine bans. Though good in theory, they’re consistently ignored in practice. Advocates convinced lawmakers in New Jersey to ban them in 2018, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that gun owners have turned in or thrown away their now illegal magazines. For decades now, the N.R.A. has said we don’t need more gun laws, just better enforcement of existing gun laws. It’s time for the gun safety movement to take the N.R.A. up on its challenge. By dropping the excessive focus on banning certain types of weapons, and instead prioritizing reforms that do more to crack down on gun violence, gun safety advocates may be able avoid the harsh scrutiny of the new Supreme Court — and, in the end, save more lives.

If the new Supreme Court stymies gun safety laws, what comes next?

The US Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on November 1 legal challenges to a restrictive abortion law passed in Texas, but meanwhile declined to block the controversial law. President Joe Biden's administration and abortion providers have been asked the court to reverse this Texas law.

US' Supreme Court refuses to block Texas' controversial abortion law

In the ongoing fight over reproductive rights in the United States, now President Joe Biden's administration has asked the US Supreme Court to strike down a Texas abortion law.

In a statement, the Justice Department said Texas' law violated the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which enshrined a woman's right to an abortion.

The department said in its request to the nation's highest court that keeping the Texas law in effect would "perpetuate the ongoing irreparable harm" caused to thousands of Texas women who are being denied their constitutional rights.

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/justice-dept-to-ask-supreme-court-to-block-texas-near-total-abortion-ban-421139" hreflang="en">Justice dept to ask Supreme Court to block Texas’ near-total abortion ban</a>

This latest legal move is part of the fight against Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8) or the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', which bans abortions after six weeks.

According to the Texas Heartbeat Act, members of the public can sue any doctor who performs abortions, or anyone who assists in their facilitation, once a heartbeat is detected in the womb, usually about six weeks after conception.&nbsp;

In essence, the law provides a bounty, as someone who reports a crime can be rewarded with 10,000 dollars for initiating a prosecution. Some have argued the bounty allows for and encourages vigilantism.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-judge-blocks-abortion-law-in-texas-418771">US judge blocks abortion law in Texas</a>

Calling the law "flagrantly unconstitutional", on September 1, federal district court judge Robert Pitman issued a preliminary injunction halting the enforcement of the Texas law.

"This court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right," Pitman said in his blistering decision.

However, a few days later, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reinstated the Texas law pending a full hearing in December.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-appeals-court-allows-texas-to-resume-ban-on-abortions-419315">US appeals court allows Texas to resume ban on abortions</a>

The Justice Department said in its filing on Monday that the Supreme Court should reverse the appeals court's decision.

Last month, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court declined to intervene to block the Texas law that makes no exceptions for rape or incest, citing procedural issues.

Watch&nbsp;|&nbsp;Rallies held across the US against abortion ban

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/rallies-held-across-the-us-against-abortion-ban-417809/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The Texas law is seen as part of a sweeping conservative movement to restrict abortions throughout the country, and this has prompted a backlash in the public.

In other Republican-led states, abortion restrictions have been passed, but have been struck down by the courts due to Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, which is typically between 22 and 24 weeks.

In the ongoing fight over reproductive rights in the United States, now President Joe Biden's administration has asked the US Supreme Court to strike down a Texas abortion law.

In the ongoing fight over reproductive rights in the United States, now President Joe Biden's administration has asked the US Supreme Court to strike down a Texas abortion law. In a statement, the Justice Department said Texas' law violated the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which enshrined a woman's right to an abortion. The department said in its request to the nation's highest court that keeping the Texas law in effect would "perpetuate the ongoing irreparable harm" caused to thousands of Texas women who are being denied their constitutional rights. Also Read: Justice dept to ask Supreme Court to block Texas’ near-total abortion ban This latest legal move is part of the fight against Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8) or the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', which bans abortions after six weeks. According to the Texas Heartbeat Act, members of the public can sue any doctor who performs abortions, or anyone who assists in their facilitation, once a heartbeat is detected in the womb, usually about six weeks after conception. In essence, the law provides a bounty, as someone who reports a crime can be rewarded with 10,000 dollars for initiating a prosecution. Some have argued the bounty allows for and encourages vigilantism. Also read | US judge blocks abortion law in Texas Calling the law "flagrantly unconstitutional", on September 1, federal district court judge Robert Pitman issued a preliminary injunction halting the enforcement of the Texas law. "This court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right," Pitman said in his blistering decision. However, a few days later, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reinstated the Texas law pending a full hearing in December. Also read | US appeals court allows Texas to resume ban on abortions The Justice Department said in its filing on Monday that the Supreme Court should reverse the appeals court's decision. Last month, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court declined to intervene to block the Texas law that makes no exceptions for rape or incest, citing procedural issues. Watch | Rallies held across the US against abortion ban The Texas law is seen as part of a sweeping conservative movement to restrict abortions throughout the country, and this has prompted a backlash in the public. In other Republican-led states, abortion restrictions have been passed, but have been struck down by the courts due to Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, which is typically between 22 and 24 weeks.

Texas abortion law 'perpetuates the ongoing irreparable harm', US Justice dept asks SC to strike it down

The Supreme Court of the United States has refused to block the Texas law prohibiting the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and other groups filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Monday asking it to stop the Texas law from taking effect.

Known as the "Texas Heartbeat Act,'' the strictest anti-abortion law in the US will now go into effect.

It comes after US President Joe Biden said the Texas law violated the right to abortion access established by the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

"My administration is deeply committed to the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade nearly five decades ago and will protect and defend that right," Biden had said in a statement.

Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of Planned Parenthood called it "an incredibly dark day."

Senate Bill 8, or SB8, signed in May by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is usually in the sixth week of pregnancy.

The law gives private citizens the power to sue anyone who provides or "aids or abets" an abortion after six weeks. Citizens who win such lawsuits would be entitled to at least $10,000.

(With inputs from agencies)

The Supreme Court of the United States has refused to block the Texas law prohibiting the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and other groups filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Monday asking it to stop the Texas law from taking effect.

The Supreme Court of the United States has refused to block the Texas law prohibiting the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and other groups filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Monday asking it to stop the Texas law from taking effect. Known as the "Texas Heartbeat Act,'' the strictest anti-abortion law in the US will now go into effect. It comes after US President Joe Biden said the Texas law violated the right to abortion access established by the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. "My administration is deeply committed to the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade nearly five decades ago and will protect and defend that right," Biden had said in a statement. Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of Planned Parenthood called it "an incredibly dark day." Senate Bill 8, or SB8, signed in May by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is usually in the sixth week of pregnancy. The law gives private citizens the power to sue anyone who provides or "aids or abets" an abortion after six weeks. Citizens who win such lawsuits would be entitled to at least $10,000. (With inputs from agencies)

US Supreme Court refuses to block Texas law banning most abortions

The Supreme Court verdict refused to revoke Donald Trump's migration protection protocols which forced asylum seekers to stay in Mexico awaiting US hearings.

US Supreme Court requires Biden to revive Trump-era 'remain in Mexico' policy

The US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, rejecting the Republican challenge to the medicare programme.

The top court came to a decision with a 7-2 margin ruling out the challenge by&nbsp;Republican ruled states. Former President Donald Trump had vowed to do away with the healthcare initiative. However, it was stalled by the court.

Two judges appointed by Trump - Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch -&nbsp; voted against it. However, conservative justices including two appointed by Trump including Chief Justice John Roberts voted to uphold the initiative.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, also voted in favour of the act.

Obamacare was passed by Congress in 2010. The health insurance policy has withstood challenges earlier in 2012 and 2015.&nbsp;

The act proposed access to Medicare programme for poor adults which was normally open for retired people over 65 years of age and included young people under 26 to be covered by their parents.

However, the Republican-led states had challenged the programme arguing that it was unconstitutional since it originally required Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a financial penalty under the "individual mandate".

Biden after taking office had requested the Supreme Court to uphold Obamacare. The Trump administration had failed to produce an alternative to the policy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while hailing the verdict said: "Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a landmark victory for Democrats’ work to defend protections for people with pre-existing conditions against Republicans’ relentless efforts to dismantle them."&nbsp;

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Thanks to the tireless advocacy of Americans across the country and the work of Democrats in Congress, the Affordable Care Act endures as a pillar of American health and economic security alongside Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1405530332925890569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 17, 2021</a></blockquote>
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"On this anniversary, we should remember just how close we have come to losing that act we fought so hard for," US President Biden said, adding, "just 50 days into my administration, we've delivered on that promise with the American Rescue Plan."

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A big win for the American people. 
 
There’s no better day than today to sign up for quality, affordable health care at <a href="https://t.co/gRX1fGFEzj">https://t.co/gRX1fGFEzj</a>. 
 
With millions of people relying on the Affordable Care Act for coverage, it remains, as ever, a BFD. And it’s here to stay. <a href="https://t.co/5GPl9aR8uB">https://t.co/5GPl9aR8uB</a>
— President Biden (@POTUS) <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1405551328877744129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 17, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The US president said the act ensures healthcare will be more affordable and Americans will pay lower premiums.

(With inputs from Agencies)

The US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, rejecting the Republican challenge to the medicare programme. The top court came to a decision with a 7-2 margin ruling out the challenge by Republican ruled states.

The US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, rejecting the Republican challenge to the medicare programme. The top court came to a decision with a 7-2 margin ruling out the challenge by Republican ruled states. Former President Donald Trump had vowed to do away with the healthcare initiative. However, it was stalled by the court. Two judges appointed by Trump - Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch - voted against it. However, conservative justices including two appointed by Trump including Chief Justice John Roberts voted to uphold the initiative. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, also voted in favour of the act. Obamacare was passed by Congress in 2010. The health insurance policy has withstood challenges earlier in 2012 and 2015. The act proposed access to Medicare programme for poor adults which was normally open for retired people over 65 years of age and included young people under 26 to be covered by their parents. However, the Republican-led states had challenged the programme arguing that it was unconstitutional since it originally required Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a financial penalty under the "individual mandate". Biden after taking office had requested the Supreme Court to uphold Obamacare. The Trump administration had failed to produce an alternative to the policy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while hailing the verdict said: "Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a landmark victory for Democrats’ work to defend protections for people with pre-existing conditions against Republicans’ relentless efforts to dismantle them." Thanks to the tireless advocacy of Americans across the country and the work of Democrats in Congress, the Affordable Care Act endures as a pillar of American health and economic security alongside Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. — Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) June 17, 2021 × "On this anniversary, we should remember just how close we have come to losing that act we fought so hard for," US President Biden said, adding, "just 50 days into my administration, we've delivered on that promise with the American Rescue Plan." A big win for the American people. There’s no better day than today to sign up for quality, affordable health care at https://t.co/gRX1fGFEzj. With millions of people relying on the Affordable Care Act for coverage, it remains, as ever, a BFD. And it’s here to stay. https://t.co/5GPl9aR8uB — President Biden (@POTUS) June 17, 2021 × The US president said the act ensures healthcare will be more affordable and Americans will pay lower premiums. (With inputs from Agencies)

'There’s no better day than today: US Supreme Court upholds Obamacare law, rejects Republican challenge

The Obamacare has survived yet another challenge after the US supreme court upheld the Affordable Care act. The decision left the entire law intact, saving healthcare coverage for millions of Americans. By a vote of 7-2, the justices ended up turning down the challenge.

US: Obamacare survives third Supreme Court challenge

The Supreme Court is set to consider next week whether to hear a challenge to Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program. If the justices take the case — a reasonably safe bet — affirmative action in higher education, which has survived several close calls at the court, will again be in peril.

Its main vulnerability will be the contested and largely untested proposition that diversity enhances education, and that students of different backgrounds benefit from learning from one another.

The court has said that idea is the sole permissible rationale for taking account of race in admissions decisions. But members of what is now a six-justice conservative bloc have mocked the notion and questioned how it could be subjected to meaningful judicial scrutiny.

“What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked at a 2015 argument over the constitutionality of an affirmative action program at the University of Texas.

The next year, the court upheld the program by a 4-3 vote. (Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat was vacant after his death that February, and Justice Elena Kagan was recused.) In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by the chief justice and Justice Clarence Thomas, said that there was no way of knowing whether diversity was working.

The university’s main argument, Alito wrote, “is that merely invoking ‘the educational benefits of diversity’ is sufficient and that it need not identify any metric that would allow a court to determine whether its plan is needed to serve, or is actually serving, those interests.”

A new study set out to devise such a metric.

“We found a real, quantifiable measure within the context of higher academia,” said Jonathan S. Masur, a law professor at the University of Chicago and one of the study’s authors. “That’s pretty hard to do.”

The particular setting was one that should resonate with the justices: the selection of student editors of law reviews and the effect of the articles they published.

The study, to be published in The Columbia Law Review, examined diversity policies over 58 years at the main law reviews of the 20 most prestigious law schools. It found that the articles the editors chose were cited markedly more often in the five years after the race-conscious policies were adopted than those published in their peer law reviews.

“If diverse groups of student editors perform better than nondiverse groups, it lends credibility to the idea that diverse student bodies, diverse student organizations, diverse faculties, diverse teams of attorneys and diverse teams of employees generally could perform better than nondiverse teams,” the study concluded.

The law reviews’ diversity policies were not uniform, but they tended to take account of race, as the Harvard College admissions policy does, as one factor among many for some or all of the available spots. The Harvard Law Review, for instance, selects 30 of its 48 editors based on some combination of a writing competition and grades. Another 18 editors, a statement on its website says, are “selected through a holistic but anonymous review” that may consider “racial or ethnic identity, disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status.”

The policy and a similar one adopted by The New York University Law Review (where 12 student editors, its website says, are “selected by the diversity committee”) were the subject of lawsuits challenging them as discriminatory. In the Harvard suit, unnamed scholars complained that their submissions would be “judged by less capable students — and these are the students who will ultimately make the career-altering decision of whether a professor’s article gets accepted for publication or rejected.”

The suits were dismissed on standing grounds, but the charge that diverse student editors are less skilled is not new. When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, Politico reported on a “a small dust-up in the blogosphere” about his tenure as the first Black president of The Harvard Law Review. Critics said that articles Obama helped edit were part of “the least-cited volume of The Harvard Law Review in the last 20 years,” Politico reported.

There were methodological problems with the claim; it did not take account of all the issues Obama oversaw and overstated his role in the process of selecting articles. But the general idea of assessing the effect of scholarly articles by counting how often they are cited is widely accepted, said Adam Chilton, a law professor at the University of Chicago who conducted the new study along with Masur; Justin Driver, a law professor at Yale; and Kyle Rozema, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

“On average, citations — once you account for field a little bit and subject a little bit — provide a pretty accurate measure of impact within the academy,” Chilton said. “It’s considered in hiring and promotion decisions. It’s certainly something academics themselves think about. Law review editors are all aware that they want their volumes to be cited and worry when making article selection decisions whether the topic will be general enough to be widely cited.”

The study considered about 13,000 research articles and found that median citations to volumes published in the five years after the adoptions of diversity programs grew by about 23%, which was statistically significant.

The study seems timely.

“It’s almost impossible to imagine the Supreme Court upholding an affirmative action program based on anything other than the diversity rationale,” Masur said. “If the court no longer believes in the diversity rationale, it probably no longer believes in affirmative action in higher education, and then the Harvard plan will fall, and all the others around the country with it.”

The Supreme Court is set to consider next week whether to hear a challenge to Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program. If the justices take the case — a reasonably safe bet — affirmative action in higher education, which has survived several close calls at the court, will again be in peril.

The Supreme Court is set to consider next week whether to hear a challenge to Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program. If the justices take the case — a reasonably safe bet — affirmative action in higher education, which has survived several close calls at the court, will again be in peril. Its main vulnerability will be the contested and largely untested proposition that diversity enhances education, and that students of different backgrounds benefit from learning from one another. The court has said that idea is the sole permissible rationale for taking account of race in admissions decisions. But members of what is now a six-justice conservative bloc have mocked the notion and questioned how it could be subjected to meaningful judicial scrutiny. “What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked at a 2015 argument over the constitutionality of an affirmative action program at the University of Texas. The next year, the court upheld the program by a 4-3 vote. (Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat was vacant after his death that February, and Justice Elena Kagan was recused.) In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by the chief justice and Justice Clarence Thomas, said that there was no way of knowing whether diversity was working. The university’s main argument, Alito wrote, “is that merely invoking ‘the educational benefits of diversity’ is sufficient and that it need not identify any metric that would allow a court to determine whether its plan is needed to serve, or is actually serving, those interests.” A new study set out to devise such a metric. “We found a real, quantifiable measure within the context of higher academia,” said Jonathan S. Masur, a law professor at the University of Chicago and one of the study’s authors. “That’s pretty hard to do.” The particular setting was one that should resonate with the justices: the selection of student editors of law reviews and the effect of the articles they published. The study, to be published in The Columbia Law Review, examined diversity policies over 58 years at the main law reviews of the 20 most prestigious law schools. It found that the articles the editors chose were cited markedly more often in the five years after the race-conscious policies were adopted than those published in their peer law reviews. “If diverse groups of student editors perform better than nondiverse groups, it lends credibility to the idea that diverse student bodies, diverse student organizations, diverse faculties, diverse teams of attorneys and diverse teams of employees generally could perform better than nondiverse teams,” the study concluded. The law reviews’ diversity policies were not uniform, but they tended to take account of race, as the Harvard College admissions policy does, as one factor among many for some or all of the available spots. The Harvard Law Review, for instance, selects 30 of its 48 editors based on some combination of a writing competition and grades. Another 18 editors, a statement on its website says, are “selected through a holistic but anonymous review” that may consider “racial or ethnic identity, disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status.” The policy and a similar one adopted by The New York University Law Review (where 12 student editors, its website says, are “selected by the diversity committee”) were the subject of lawsuits challenging them as discriminatory. In the Harvard suit, unnamed scholars complained that their submissions would be “judged by less capable students — and these are the students who will ultimately make the career-altering decision of whether a professor’s article gets accepted for publication or rejected.” The suits were dismissed on standing grounds, but the charge that diverse student editors are less skilled is not new. When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, Politico reported on a “a small dust-up in the blogosphere” about his tenure as the first Black president of The Harvard Law Review. Critics said that articles Obama helped edit were part of “the least-cited volume of The Harvard Law Review in the last 20 years,” Politico reported. There were methodological problems with the claim; it did not take account of all the issues Obama oversaw and overstated his role in the process of selecting articles. But the general idea of assessing the effect of scholarly articles by counting how often they are cited is widely accepted, said Adam Chilton, a law professor at the University of Chicago who conducted the new study along with Masur; Justin Driver, a law professor at Yale; and Kyle Rozema, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “On average, citations — once you account for field a little bit and subject a little bit — provide a pretty accurate measure of impact within the academy,” Chilton said. “It’s considered in hiring and promotion decisions. It’s certainly something academics themselves think about. Law review editors are all aware that they want their volumes to be cited and worry when making article selection decisions whether the topic will be general enough to be widely cited.” The study considered about 13,000 research articles and found that median citations to volumes published in the five years after the adoptions of diversity programs grew by about 23%, which was statistically significant. The study seems timely. “It’s almost impossible to imagine the Supreme Court upholding an affirmative action program based on anything other than the diversity rationale,” Masur said. “If the court no longer believes in the diversity rationale, it probably no longer believes in affirmative action in higher education, and then the Harvard plan will fall, and all the others around the country with it.”

As Harvard case looms at Supreme Court, study tests value of diversity

The eventual ruling by the conservative-majority court, expected next year, could allow states to ban abortions before a fetus is viable outside the womb, upending decades of legal precedent.

US Supreme Court to consider gutting landmark 1973 ruling

The US&nbsp;Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider gutting the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalised abortion nationwide, taking up Mississippi's bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. 
 
By hearing the case in their next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2022, the justices will look at whether to overturn a central part of the landmark ruling, a longstanding goal of religious conservatives. 
 
The ruling, expected next year, could allow states to ban the procedure before the fetus is viable outside the womb, upending decades of legal precedent. 
 
In the Roe v. Wade decision, subsequently reaffirmed in 1992, the court said that states could not ban abortion before the viability of the fetus outside the womb, which is generally viewed by doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks. The Mississippi law would ban abortion much earlier than that. Other states have backed laws that would ban the procedure even earlier. 
 
"Alarm bells are ringing loudly about the threat to reproductive rights. The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is among those challenging the law. 
 
The office of Mississippi`s attorney general did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
The Roe v. Wade ruling recognised that a constitutional right to personal privacy protects a woman`s ability to obtain an abortion. The court in its 1992 decision, coming in the case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, reaffirmed the ruling and prohibited laws that place an "undue burden" on a woman`s ability to obtain an abortion. 
 
A CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY 
 
Abortion opponents are hopeful that the Supreme Court will narrow or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. The court moved from a 5-4 to a 6-3 conservative majority following Senate confirmation last year of Republican former President Donald Trump`s third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. 
 
The Supreme Court in a 5-4 June 2020 ruling struck down an abortion law in Louisiana that imposed restrictions on doctors who perform the procedure. The late liberal Justice Ruth Bader was still on the court at the time, and conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the court`s liberal wing in the ruling. Roberts at the time, however, made it clear that he voted the way he did because he felt bound by the court`s 2016 ruling that struck down a similar law in Texas. 
 
The 2018 Mississippi law, like others similar to it passed by Republican-led states, was enacted with full knowledge that was a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. 
 
After the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women`s Health Organization, sued to try to block the measure, a federal judge in 2018 ruled against the state. The New Orleans-based 5th US&nbsp;Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 reached the same conclusion, prompting the state to appeal to the Supreme Court. 
 
"States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman`s right, but they may not ban abortions. The law at issue is a ban," 5th Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote. 
 
Abortion remains a divisive issue in the United States, as in many countries. Christian conservatives are among those most opposed to it. Abortion rates in the United States have steadily declined since the early 1980s, reaching the lowest levels on record in recent years, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute. 
 
The June 2020 ruling in the Louisiana case marked the court`s first major abortion decision since Trump appointed Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Neil Gorsuch in 2017 as justices. Both voted in favor of Louisiana`s restrictions. If Barrett were to vote on similar lines, conservatives could have a majority to curb abortion rights regardless of how Roberts votes. Trump had promised during the 2016 presidential race to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. 
 
The Mississippi appeal had been pending at the court since June 2020 without the justices taking action on whether or not to hear it. During that time, Ginsburg died and was replaced by Barrett and Trump lost his re-election bid, to be replaced by Democratic President Joe Biden, who supports abortion rights. 
&nbsp;

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider gutting the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalised abortion nationwide, taking up Mississippi's bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider gutting the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalised abortion nationwide, taking up Mississippi's bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. By hearing the case in their next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2022, the justices will look at whether to overturn a central part of the landmark ruling, a longstanding goal of religious conservatives. The ruling, expected next year, could allow states to ban the procedure before the fetus is viable outside the womb, upending decades of legal precedent. In the Roe v. Wade decision, subsequently reaffirmed in 1992, the court said that states could not ban abortion before the viability of the fetus outside the womb, which is generally viewed by doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks. The Mississippi law would ban abortion much earlier than that. Other states have backed laws that would ban the procedure even earlier. "Alarm bells are ringing loudly about the threat to reproductive rights. The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is among those challenging the law. The office of Mississippi`s attorney general did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Roe v. Wade ruling recognised that a constitutional right to personal privacy protects a woman`s ability to obtain an abortion. The court in its 1992 decision, coming in the case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, reaffirmed the ruling and prohibited laws that place an "undue burden" on a woman`s ability to obtain an abortion. A CONSERVATIVE MAJORITY Abortion opponents are hopeful that the Supreme Court will narrow or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. The court moved from a 5-4 to a 6-3 conservative majority following Senate confirmation last year of Republican former President Donald Trump`s third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The Supreme Court in a 5-4 June 2020 ruling struck down an abortion law in Louisiana that imposed restrictions on doctors who perform the procedure. The late liberal Justice Ruth Bader was still on the court at the time, and conservative Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the court`s liberal wing in the ruling. Roberts at the time, however, made it clear that he voted the way he did because he felt bound by the court`s 2016 ruling that struck down a similar law in Texas. The 2018 Mississippi law, like others similar to it passed by Republican-led states, was enacted with full knowledge that was a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. After the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women`s Health Organization, sued to try to block the measure, a federal judge in 2018 ruled against the state. The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 reached the same conclusion, prompting the state to appeal to the Supreme Court. "States may regulate abortion procedures prior to viability so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the woman`s right, but they may not ban abortions. The law at issue is a ban," 5th Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote. Abortion remains a divisive issue in the United States, as in many countries. Christian conservatives are among those most opposed to it. Abortion rates in the United States have steadily declined since the early 1980s, reaching the lowest levels on record in recent years, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute. The June 2020 ruling in the Louisiana case marked the court`s first major abortion decision since Trump appointed Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Neil Gorsuch in 2017 as justices. Both voted in favor of Louisiana`s restrictions. If Barrett were to vote on similar lines, conservatives could have a majority to curb abortion rights regardless of how Roberts votes. Trump had promised during the 2016 presidential race to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. The Mississippi appeal had been pending at the court since June 2020 without the justices taking action on whether or not to hear it. During that time, Ginsburg died and was replaced by Barrett and Trump lost his re-election bid, to be replaced by Democratic President Joe Biden, who supports abortion rights.

US Supreme Court takes up major challenge to abortion rights

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