Tag: scotus

You Can’t Make This Up: Supreme Court to Decide If Nigerian Terrorist Group’s Personal Chef Deserves U.S. Asylum and Taxpayer Benefits

Just when you think the radical open-border lobby and activist judges have pushed the legal system to its absolute limit, the United States Supreme Court is now being forced to step in to answer a question that should take precisely two seconds to answer:

Should a man who cooked thousands of meals to sustain members of an armed terrorist organization be granted legal asylum inside the United States?

The case, Blanche v. Ozurumba, involves Izuchukwu Ozurumba, who entered the United States illegally in July 2023 after spending roughly six months in 2022 as a cook for a group known as the “Unknown Gunmen.”

Court records show he prepared three meals a day for 15 to 17 of the group’s leaders at a remote camp outside Lagos, potentially thousands of meals over the period. U.S. officials determined the Unknown Gunmen qualify as a Tier III terrorist organization, The Center Square reported.

An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals found that this constituted “material support” for terrorism under the Immigration and Nationality Act, rendering him ineligible for asylum. He was later removed to Nigeria.

Ozurumba claims “he was lured” by a job tip, discovered the true nature of the camp, and was forced to continue working (including unpaid for part of the time) under threat before escaping during a grocery run and eventually fleeing to Venezuela and then the U.S. The Board of Immigration Appeals has held that the statute contains no duress exception for providing support to terrorist groups.

A divided panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed in September 2025. Judge Andrew Wynn (an Obama appointee) ruled that Ozurumba’s cooking, using food and supplies provided by the group itself, was not “material” because it did not provide anything the organization could “use or readily divert to plan or carry out its terrorist activities.” The majority described him as a “captive laborer.”

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High School Wrestler Asks Supreme Court To Allow Her To Avoid Competing With Boys

A Washington state high school wrestler, Kallie Keeler, asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 5 for an emergency order letting her wrestle on the girls’ team without facing male athletes, after she was allegedly sexually assaulted by one during a match. She argues the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association violated Title IX by allowing male athletes in girls’ sports, and wants her mother notified of any male opponent.

The Ninth Circuit denied her requests last month, saying the situation wasn’t emergent because the wrestling season doesn’t start until November, and that her request for notice of all transgender athletes was too broad. A Title IX investigator who reviewed two videos of the match wrote that the opponent likely touched her with force, and the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation in February 2026, but the district attorney declined to bring charges.

As the Epoch Times notes further, Keeler’s appeal came amid multiple Supreme Court decisions surrounding girls’ sports and parents’ rights.

Most notably, the Supreme Court allowed states in June to bar male participation in girls’ sports and rejected that doing so would violate Title IX.

It also rejected Keeler’s arguments that her mother should receive notice and an opportunity to opt her daughter out of the competition.

This argument was based in part on the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which said that a Maryland school district should provide notice to parents of storybooks with controversial content about gender and sexuality.

The Ninth Circuit said that case and another regarding parents’ rights didn’t apply to Keeler’s situation.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s 2025-2026 handbook states that “Athletes will participate in programs consistent with their gender identity or the gender most consistently expressed.”

WIAA Director Sean Bessette stood by the policy in an email to The Epoch Times.

“The WIAA remains committed to following Washington State law, which permits student-athletes to participate in sports consistent with the gender with which they identify,” Bessette said.

“If state law changes in the future, the WIAA holds the authority to revise policies as necessary to remain in compliance with state law.”

Washington is currently considering Initiative 638, which would prohibit boys from participating in girls’ sports.

Sponsored by Let’s Go Washington, a political action committee, the measure will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot.

The group stated that Initiative 638 restores fairness to eligibility rules by prohibiting “biological men” from competing in female athletics.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington opposes the initiative.

ACLU-Washington said the measure would require annual sex verification procedures for all athletes participating in school girls’ sports.

The ACLU said existing state anti-discrimination laws and school athletic policies protect participation based on gender identity.

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Supreme Court Rejects Radical Far-Left PA Judge’s Appeal After He Was Suspended For Hyper-Partisan Pro-Biden Facebook Posts

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear former Philadelphia Judge Mark B. Cohen’s last-ditch bid to undo his suspension for turning a public Facebook page, one that identified him as a sitting judge and showed him in his robes, into a Democrat cheering section for Joe Biden, Josh Shapiro, and the party line.

The justices denied certiorari without comment. Cohen, a Democrat who spent more than four decades in the Pennsylvania House before winning a Court of Common Pleas seat in 2018, had asked the high court to rule that the First Amendment shielded dozens of partisan posts he made while on the bench. It did not.

As The Hill reported, Pennsylvania’s judicial discipline system suspended him in 2024 over posts praising Democrats, including Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, and pushing policies such as raising the minimum wage.

That suspension was not a close call, and it was not a surprise.

The Judicial Conduct Board charged Cohen over scores of posts on a page that advertised his status as a Family Division judge.

The record, laid out in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s January 21, 2026, opinion and in the board’s filings, shows a longtime Democratic operative who never really left the campaign.

He called Biden an excellent president. He boosted Shapiro. He backed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

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The Supreme Court Won’t Save ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ From the School Censors

Two Michigan middle-school boys wore sweatshirts bearing three words that contained no profanity: “Let’s Go Brandon.” School administrators made them take the shirts off anyway because everybody knew what the phrase meant.

Now the Supreme Court has decided not to get involved.

The justices declined Monday to hear the students’ First Amendment appeal, leaving intact a divided Sixth Circuit ruling that allowed Tri County Area Schools to treat the slogan as vulgar speech. A denial of review doesn’t mean the Supreme Court endorsed that reasoning. It does mean the two students lost their last chance to overturn it in their case.

From the Associated Press:

The school told her sons to take off the sweatshirts she bought them for Christmas in 2022.

Lower courts upheld the ban, finding the veiled vulgarity of the phrase allows schools to ban it. It functions as a stand-in for “F-— Joe Biden.”

The woman’s attorneys argued that the decision wrongly gives school officials wide latitude to squelch political speech based on their personal ideas of what is vulgar. The phrase itself doesn’t contain any swear words or sexual implications, they said.

The school district urged the justices to reject the case, arguing that messages with lewd implications have no place in school, even if they touch on political topics. There has been evidence that some students wore clothing that read “Make America Great Again” or had messages supporting President Donald Trump, a Republican who lost the 2020 election to Biden, a Democrat.

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Supreme Court Reinstates Database for Voter Citizenship Verification – Ketanji Brown Jackson Fumes

The US Supreme Court on Friday reinstated President Trump’s database for voter citizenship verification.

In an unsigned order, the high court, in a 6-3 decision, allowed the Trump Administration to use an expanded database that contains citizenship information.

Liberal Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented.

“[The] harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take,” Jackson wrote.

Excerpt from NBC News:

The Supreme Court on Friday permitted the Trump administration to use an expanded federal database containing citizenship information, as the president encourages states to purge people from voter rolls.

The justices, divided 6-3 on ideological lines with conservatives in the majority, granted an emergency request filed by the government after lower courts ruled that the Trump administration’s changes to the database were likely unlawful.

But the court noted in its unsigned ruling that the National Voter Registration Act bars the broad purging of voter rolls in the weeks leading up to an election, which “limits the potential impact” of the decision this year. States can still make individualized queries about voters.

Last March, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at preserving and protecting the integrity of US elections.

“Free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion are fundamental to maintaining our constitutional Republic. The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election,” Trump’s executive order said.

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Pete Buttigieg Says Democrats Have to Pack the Supreme Court Because it’s too Partisan

Former Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on Meet the Press this weekend and explained that Democrats have to pack the U.S. Supreme Court, because it’s just too partisan.

This is one of those complaints that Democrats only make now. When the court had a liberal majority for years, there were no concerns about partisanship, only now is this suddenly an issue.

The Daily Wire has more details:

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg argued Sunday that the Supreme Court has become dangerously partisan — then proposed a fix that would require Congress to add six justices widely expected to lean in his own party’s favor, during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Buttigieg told host Kristen Welker that the court has come to look like a “nakedly partisan institution” and calling for six additional justices to be added to the current nine-member bench — a bigger expansion than he has previously floated.

“It has become a nakedly partisan institution,” he said. “And I want to be clear. The idea is not to just add justices for its own sake. The idea is to reform the institution, to make it less partisan.”

The comments extend a message Buttigieg has delivered repeatedly since at least July, when he told Fox News that public confidence in the court had fallen to what he called the lowest point in its history, and proposed a package of changes including term limits for justices and a “balanced bench” selection process meant to reduce political influence over appointments. At that time, Buttigieg said he favored expanding the court from nine seats to 13, a number he said should match what he called “the number of districts” in the federal system. In fact, the federal judiciary has 94 judicial districts; the number 13 refers to the appellate circuits, not districts — an error critics flagged after his July remarks.

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SCOTUS Directs NYC to Offer Defense of Its Stun Gun Ban

The Supreme Court wants to hear from the city of New York after the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and several individual plaintiffs asked the Court to accept their lawsuit challenging the Big Apple’s ban on stun guns. The request from the High Court doesn’t guarantee that the justices will grant cert in Calce v. New York, but it does indicate that one or more justices are interested in the lawsuit. 

Back in 2016, SCOTUS issued a per curiam opinion in Caetano v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts that rejected the state’s arguments in favor its own stun gun ban. The Court reminded the First Circuit that the Second Amendment doesn’t only protect those arms that existed in 1791, but modern arms as well. SCOTUS didn’t directly strike down the stun gun ban, but it did negate the argument used to uphold it. …………………

While Massachusetts ended its outright prohibition shortly thereafter, New York City has kept its ban on the books. A district court judge and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have upheld the ban, arguing that the plaintiffs failed to “provide any evidence that stun guns and tasers are in common use.”

The cert petition filed with the Court not only questions the Second Circuit’s opinion on the validity of the stun gun ban, but how the Court reached its conclusion. Does a challenger to a ban on a type of arm have to first demonstrate that the arm is “in common use” to establish that the ban implicates the Second Amendment’s plain text? Or is it up to the defenders of the ban to demonstrate that the arm is not in common use for lawful purposes? 

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Supreme Court rules against new Missouri redistricting map again

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Missouri’s new congressional map again after two separate courts gave conflicting rulings.

Republicans had planned to use the new map in November’s elections. It was drawn last year to give Republicans an advantage in Congressional elections in the hopes of keeping a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Plaintiffs People not Politicians asked the high court Wednesday for an emergency ruling.

The pause in using the map will stay while a legal fight goes through the courts. The Supreme Court justices didn’t offer any reason for blocking the new map.

A snag in the elections, though, is that Missouri already held primaries using the new map.

The Missouri Supreme Court had ruled that the state couldn’t use the map for this fall’s elections. The state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected the appeal, kicking it back to the state. At the same time, Federal Judge Stephen R. Clark ruled that the state could use the map, which added more chaos to the elections. It was Clark’s ruling that the Supreme Court decided Thursday.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins told local elections officials that the federal judge’s ruling should be followed instead of the Missouri Supreme Court. That court has summoned Hoskins to explain why they shouldn’t find him in contempt.

It’s now unclear what next steps the state will take.

Some map opponents have said the state could continue because the districts are still numbered the same.

“The law is the law, the Missouri Constitution is clear as was the Missouri Supreme Court,” Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said in a statement.

Those opposed to the new map collected more than 300,000 signatures to push a referendum on the map, but Hoskins said he didn’t believe that redistricting could be decided in a voter referendum. He refused to add it to the ballot, triggering the legal battles.

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U.S. Supreme Court Rejects New York Healthcare Workers’ Bid to Revive COVID Vaccine Mandate Lawsuit

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined for a second time to take up a case brought by New York healthcare workers who lost their jobs after the state denied their requests for religious accommodations from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, SCOTUSblog reported.

The justices rejected a petition asking them to reconsider their June decision not to hear Does 1-2 v. Hochul, the lawsuit healthcare workers brought against the state. The court denied the request without asking New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to respond.

“This ruling is definitely a sad day for the workers who stood up and said no,” said Michael Kane, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) director of advocacy and member of New York’s Teachers for Choice, which also challenged New York’s vaccine mandate in the courts.

Kane said he was “not surprised” by the decision.

The plaintiffs represented a handful of healthcare workers, he said. “But over 30,000 were fired in New York state because of this horrendous policy from Gov. Hochul. The policy didn’t allow for any religious exemption from vaccination. On its face, it is illegal. It is unconstitutional, but the politics of the thing seems to be playing out instead.”

The workers filed their lawsuit in 2021, challenging a now-repealed New York state law mandating that workers in some healthcare-related positions get the COVID-19 vaccine.

In 2022, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit, and in 2024, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal. In 2025, the workers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an unusual move, the Supreme Court asked the U.S. Department of Justice solicitor general to weigh in. In May 2026, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote an amicus brief recommending the court deny the appeal.

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Supreme Court Denies Missouri’s Emergency Appeal to Use State’s New GOP-Favored Congressional Map in Midterms

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Missouri’s emergency appeal to use the GOP-favored Congressional map in this year’s midterm elections.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied Missouri’s emergency application without comment.

Missouri will now have to use its 2022 Congressional map.

The Missouri Supreme Court last Thursday threw out the state’s new congressional map that favored the GOP and eliminated one Democrat seat.

The new map will only go into effect in 2028 if voters approve it during the 2026 midterms.

Last year, the Missouri House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans, passed a sweeping new congressional map that would reduce Democrat representation to just one seat.

The “Missouri First” map promised a fierce partisan restructuring ahead of the 2026 midterms.

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