Tag: scotus

U.S. Supreme Court Smacks Down Lower Court in Major Win for Amish Families Fighting New York’s Draconian School Vaccine Mandates

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reversed a lower-court decision that had sided with New York State’s sweeping school vaccine mandates, and ordered the case back to the appeals court for a full reconsideration.

At the center of the case is a shocking and deeply disturbing campaign by New York officials to bankrupt Amish schools, intimidate parents, and shut down religious education entirely, all because the Amish refuse to inject their children with state-mandated vaccines that violate their longstanding religious beliefs.

Despite admitting that the Amish families were sincere in their religious beliefs, the New York Department of Health slapped three one-room Amish schools with devastating penalties:

  • $52,000 against Dygert Road School
  • $46,000 against Twin Mountains School
  • $20,000 against Shady Lane School

These fines were issued for a single day of alleged “noncompliance,” and the DOH openly bragged in its filings that it was being “generous,” warning that future fines would be even more severe.

The department declared that each unvaccinated child attending school constituted a separate violation worth up to $2,000 per day.

The Amish schools, which receive no government funding, operate on private land, and are central to the community’s religious life, face closure because the families have no means of paying these six-figure state-imposed financial attacks.

In one year alone, some New York schools granted medical exemptions to 30–50% of their students, depending entirely on local administrator discretion. But the Amish? Zero tolerance. Zero accommodation. Zero exemptions.

Lower courts dismissed their claims. But on Monday, the nation’s highest court issued a rare and forceful correction.

In its Monday order, the Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for reconsideration “in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor, 606 U.S. 522 (2025),” a landmark ruling handed down earlier this year strengthening protections for religious objectors against state public-health mandates.

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WEAPONIZATION EXPOSED: Justice Thomas Corners New Jersey AG’s Counsel — Confirms Subpoena for Pro-Life Donors Issued Even Though NO ONE Complained

Justice Clarence Thomas forced New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin’s chief counsel to admit that the state launched an intrusive investigation into a pro-life pregnancy center without receiving a single complaint about the organization.

During oral arguments in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, Justice Thomas methodically dismantled the state’s justification for issuing a donor-snooping subpoena targeting First Choice, a faith-based, pro-life pregnancy support network that has operated for over 40 years.

Justice Thomas drilled into a simple, devastating question: “You had no basis to think that they were deceiving any of their contributors?”

Sundeep Iyer, chief counsel to AG Platkin, conceded that New Jersey received zero complaints about First Choice Women’s Resource Centers.

Instead, he claimed the state merely “canvassed public information” before issuing a sweeping subpoena demanding years of internal records, including confidential donor information.

Iyer further admitted that the state did receive complaints about other pregnancy centers, but not First Choice.

First Choice, a faith-based pro-life nonprofit operating in New Jersey since 1985, provides free ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, counseling, and material support to women. It is fully upfront about its pro-life mission, stating on every page of its website that it does not provide or refer for abortion services.

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Pregnancy Center Lawfare: Will the Supremes End This?

Tuesday, Dec. 2, will determine whether America’s crisis pregnancy centers can operate freely or whether politicians in pro-abortion states can continue to harass them with lawfare. Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Platkin. 

At stake is “the future of pregnancy centers in America” said David Bereit, executive director of Life Leadership Conference. 

How the case started

In November 2023, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin sent subpoenas to the First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, demanding 10 years’ worth of records. The material requested included all solicitations and ads, statements on abortion pill reversal, information given to women, information about outside organizations First Choice worked with, and, most worrisome, staff information and identities of their donors.

There were “no allegations of wrongdoing…. It was a fishing expedition,” said Aimee Huber, executive director of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers. “The idea of compiling this… was daunting,” she said during an emergency webcast briefing scheduled by the Life Leadership Conference. 

Thousands of people nationwide and 40 different pro-life organizations attended the briefing Monday night, said David Bereit, executive director of the Life Leadership Conference. He called it “a pivotal case…weaponizing government power to intimidate, investigate and shut down centers.”

First Choice has served over 36,000 women over the last 40 years through its five locations. “New Jersey has the fifth highest abortion rate,” Huber said. “Since do not refer for abortions, we are a target.”

Critics of pregnancy centers such as First Choice smear them as ‘fake clinics” just for that reason.

Erin Hawley, senior counsel and vice president of the Center for Life, Alliance Defending Freedom, will be arguing for First Choice Tuesday in front of the Supreme Court.  ADF filed a suit in federal court asking the district court to enjoin the subpoena. 

Hawley explained that the district court dismissed the subpoena, saying that federal courts were not a remedy because First Choice first had to go to state court. “Once the state court rules, then there are a couple of legal doctrines that basically say, once one court has decided it, another court can’t,” she said. This is even through Congress expressly provided legislative relief allowing this. 

Numerous organizations not ideologically aligned with First Choice filed amicus briefs supporting First Choice. “They all agree the right to present first amendment claims in federal court when you have been harassed by a hostile official is something that is guaranteed,” said Hawley.

Since the Dobbs decision reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, pregnancy centers have been busier than ever supporting women and children. Last week the Charlotte Lozier Institute released their 2025 report stating that pregnancy centers had helped over one million women in 2024, and that material support (everything from diapers to car seats) skyrocketed 48%. 

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Supreme Court Fails to Keep a Tight Leash on Police K-9 Drug-Sniff Searches That Intrude Into Vehicles, Raising Fourth Amendment Concerns

In yet another ruling that contributes to the steady normalization of police overreach, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to rein in police K-9 drug-sniff searches during traffic stops.

By declining to hear an appeal in Mumford v. Iowa, the Court let stand an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that allows police to rely on a drug dog’s intrusion into a car’s interior during a traffic stop—even when officers lack probable cause to believe the car contains contraband. In a 5-2 decision in Mumford v. Iowa, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a search in which a police K-9 placed its paws on a car door and inserted its snout through an open window before alerting to drugs.

The Rutherford Institute, joined by Restore the Fourth, had urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, arguing that warrantless, nonconsensual intrusions into protected spaces violate the Fourth Amendment, which extends its protection to a person’s vehicle. The amicus brief further warned that allowing a police dog to breach the interior of a car provides no limiting principle: if a dog’s snout may trespass inside a vehicle without probable cause, then so might thermal-imaging devices, x-ray scanners, fiberscopes, or other police technologies.

“What this ruling makes clear is that no American is safe from government intrusion, not even during a routine traffic stop. This is how constitutional rights are lost—not in dramatic sweeps, but in small, incremental intrusions that courts refuse to check,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “If a police dog’s snout can be used to justify a warrantless search of a car, then there is nothing to stop the government from using ever more intrusive technologies, surveillance tools, and police instrumentalities to invade our privacy with little to no judicial oversight.”

The case arose after an Iowa police officer initiated a traffic stop of Ashlee Mumford’s vehicle, claiming the last two numbers on her license plate were obscured by dirt and grime. The officer summoned a K-9 unit, and Mumford and her passenger were ordered out of the vehicle “for their own safety” while the handler walked the dog around the car to conduct a “free air sniff.” Because Mumford’s passenger had left his window open, the dog pushed its snout through the open window into the cabin before alerting to drugs. A subsequent search of the vehicle uncovered drugs in the glove compartment which apparently belonged to the passenger. Officers then searched Mumford’s purse—which she had taken with her upon exiting the vehicle—and found marijuana and a pipe.

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Maine Democrat Senate Candidate Graham Platner Caught on Tape Saying He Wants to ‘Stack’ the Supreme Court and Impeach Two Justices

Maine Democrat Graham Platner, a candidate for the U.S. Senate who has been caught saying racist and sexist things on the internet, admitted he is a communist, and also has lost staffers due to a scandal about his actual Nazi tattoo, is back in the news.

Platner was caught on tape saying to supporters that he wants his party to regain control of the senate in order to ‘stack’ the Supreme Court. He then went on to say that they should also impeach two justices. One can safely assume that Justice Clarence Thomas is one of them and the other is surely another conservative.

This guy belongs nowhere near the United States Senate. He is a total radical.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Graham Platner Calls To Stack the Supreme Court and Impeach ‘At Least Two’ Sitting Justices

Senate candidate Graham Platner called to stack the Supreme Court and impeach “at least two” of its sitting justices, moves he said should be top priorities for Democrats should they retake the upper chamber next year.

“We’re going to have to start treating the Supreme Court like the political action wing that it has become of conservatism,” Platner said Saturday during a Somerset County Democrats meeting in the central Maine town of Skowhegan. “It is not functioning as a constitutional body.”

“I’m a supporter of stacking the Court,” he continued. “I’m also a supporter of, I mean, the Senate can write its own rules. … I firmly believe if we held Supreme Court justices to the same standard that we hold other federal judges, there’s a compelling case for the impeachment and removal of at least two justices.”

“It’s very frustrating to me that there are Democrats in the Senate that either do not understand or don’t want to understand the power they actually have. … If we retake the Senate, get the majority—fingers crossed—we need to use every single lever of power that we have to deal with the Supreme Court.”

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Supreme Court case could have major affect on 2026 midterms

The U.S. Supreme Court has agree to take up a case that could have an effect on the 2026 midterm elections.

The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, centers around a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after an election as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The Mississippi law was enacted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fifteen other states and the District of Columbia have similar laws that allow domestic mail-in ballots to be received after Election Day, as long as the ballot is postmarked by the date of an election. In Illinois, mail-in ballots can be received up to 14 days after Election Day.

The nation’s highest court will decide whether to uphold a ruling from the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted.

Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, celebrated the court’s decision to take up the mail-in ballot challenge. He said the court’s decision is especially important because it will set a precedent for election law going into the 2026 midterms.

“The Supreme Court now has the chance to set the record straight: Federal law clearly says that ballots must be received by Election Day,” Snead told the Center Square. “Despite this, some states continue to allow absentee ballots to pour in days or even weeks late.”

“This case gives the Supreme Court the chance to resolve that question once and for all,” Snead said.

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the case is an attempt to restrict voting rights in states that offer delayed mail-in ballot deadlines.

“The DNC will fight like hell in this case for the rights of Mississippians and every other citizen to make sure their voices are heard and their votes are counted,” Martin said.

Lawyers for the Republican National Committee argued that federal law sets the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia filed a brief to the Supreme Court that argued states should have the ability to set rules over the receipt of ballots. The states said mail-in ballot deadlines give voters a greater opportunity to cast their ballots.

“States have the constitutional authority to make individualized judgments on how best to receive and count votes in federal elections,” representatives for the state wrote.

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Why the Supreme Court Shouldn’t Possess the Power to Bestow Individual Rights

The national anxiety over Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court of the United States seems disproportionate to size of the footnote he will occupy in history.

Why does it matter that one federal judge will retire?

An Elite Judicial Body

Robert Jackson was Solicitor General of the United States, Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. For his education, Jackson spent about a year at Albany Law School, reading the law, and passing the bar examination.

His story is an inconvenient truth in the era of big student loan debt. As debt soars, income stagnates, housing skyrockets, and 30-year olds bunk with roommates (or parents), a generation now awakens to a looming higher education crisis. Many are losing faith, looking to alternatives, or simply opting out.

Then again, when the Supreme Court issues its opinions each June, and 5 billion social media users morph into Robert Jackson, I am reminded that law is indeed a trained profession.

I know the government schools told us we are each entitled to our opinion. But there is a simple reason the Supreme Court does not poll the American public before stating its opinions. That is because it is, by definition, elite. It is nine lawyers rendering legal judgments about legal arguments, raised to them by other lawyers (all of whom studied law, and passed a bar examination).  

The Court is also not merely nine typical practitioners of an elite profession. To be on the Court you need to be exceptional.

A Robert Jackson, for example.

The Egalitarian Myth

Yet, it happens every year. Social media erupts with opinion every June—opinions for, or against the Court’s decisions. When Obergefell v. Hodges recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in 2015, the White House lit up with rainbow colors. Major corporations responded by altering their logos to include rainbow colors.

So, is the legitimacy of a Supreme Court decision now measured against its popularity? Must we wait for the Court to catch up to popular opinion, or must popular opinion catch up to the Court?

In 2018’s Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Division, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority: “Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights.”

It may be that “society” has come to these conclusions. But is it not bizarre that nine elite lawyers, sitting on the most elite court in the world, seem to speak on behalf of society?

Is that how self-government works?

Because no matter how egalitarian the Court’s decision is, anyone who thinks individual rights come from nine elite lawyers is about the furthest thing from being egalitarian. That person surely recognizes that popular approval is irrelevant to some legal questions.

So which questions? Is there any limit to what the Supreme Court gets to decide?

If only, there was some written framework. Like a sacred scroll or some tealeaves we could read.

Plain English

Surely, we do not believe that non-lawyers are incapable of understanding their own civil rights. To the contrary, that is exactly the point of a Constitution, written in plain English.

The question is not whether the Supreme Court ought to conform its decisions to popular will; it is whether the Court has stepped outside its authority altogether.

We cannot expect every person to become trained lawyers, or to read every Supreme Court opinion before opening a bakery, falling in love, or getting pregnant. Yet in 2018, the Court spilled gallons of inks telling more than a quarter-billion people about the existential meaning of cake.

Cake.

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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch Says Lack of Basic Civics Knowledge is Major Threat to the Country

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared on FOX News this morning to promote his new children’s book, but things took on a more serious tone.

Gorsuch said that a lack of basic civics knowledge about the country is a major threat to America, perhaps the greatest threat.

He cited the fact that there are Americans who could not pass the basic test given to foreigners who want to legally immigrate to the United States.

The Federalist reports:

Justice Gorsuch: ‘The Greatest Danger America Faces Today’ Is ‘Itself’

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has long championed the importance of civic education in America. So, it wasn’t totally surprising when he issued a stark warning about what happens when a people abandon their shared history and responsibilities.

The moment came on Thursday morning when Gorsuch appeared on Fox News’ Fox & Friends to debut his new children’s book, The Heroes of 1776. The literary work seeks to take kids on a journey through the harrowing stories of the Founding Fathers and lesser-known patriots during the Revolutionary War era.

While speaking to the justice, network host Lawrence Jones asked Gorsuch about the meaning of a quote from the book, which reads, “The Constitution established the first modern republic in which people rule themselves …” The Trump appointee referred back to the Declaration of Independence, which he said “contains three ‘radical’ ideas: that we’re all created equal, that we have unalienable rights that come to us from God [and] not from government, and that we the people have a right to rule ourselves — not be subjects to some dictator or a crown or king.”

“Those three ideas really shook old Europe [and were] never before tried in history. We now almost take them for granted. They’re the air we breathe, the water we swim in,” Gorsuch said. “But those ideas required courageous men, women, and children to make happen in 1776, and they require the same of us today. Thomas Jefferson said an ignorant people will never remain free for long, and he’s right. We need to know our history in order to preserve it.”

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Supreme Court Lets Government Continue to Withhold Funding From SNAP

The Trump administration may, for the time being, continue not to fully fund the food stamp program until Congress appropriates new funds, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled late on Nov. 11.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as the food stamp program, provides financial assistance for food purchases to about 42 million people.

The court extended until 11:59 p.m. on Nov. 13 an administrative stay it granted on Nov. 7 that blocked lower court decisions that ordered the Trump administration to redirect about $4 billion in tariff revenue to SNAP on top of $4.6 billion it already used from a contingency fund. An administrative stay gives members of a court more time to consider an urgent matter.

The new unsigned order in Rollins v. Rhode Island Council of Churches did not provide reasons for the decision.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated she would have denied the extension and the federal government’s emergency application. She did not explain her dissent.

Jackson on Nov. 7 had placed a temporary hold on the adverse lower court orders until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a written explanation outlining why it denied the administration’s appeal of those rulings. That explanation was released on Nov. 10, prompting the administration to request that Jackson extend her stay.

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Supreme Court Allows Trump to Mandate Biological Sex on Passports – Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Fumes

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision on Thursday, allowed President Trump to enforce a new policy that has ended the use of the “X” marker on passports.

The high court issued the decision in an unsigned order.

President Trump signed an executive order shortly after his inauguration, which directed agencies like the State Department and Homeland Security to issue IDs, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, based solely on biological sex assigned at birth.

This reversed prior allowances for self-selected genders, including “X” for unspecified.

The anti-American ACLU represented transgender individuals who sued over the Trump Administration’s passport policy.

Two liberal district court judges struck down the Trump Administration’s new passport policy.

“The President’s choice to revert to prior policy and rely on biological sex—a choice that bound the State Department—should be the last place for novel equal-protection claims or Administrative Procedure Act objections,” DOJ Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in a petition to the Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump Administration’s passport policy and allowed the State Department to mandate biological sex on passports.

“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,” the Supreme Court said.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, with whom Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan joined, dissented.

“As is becoming routine, the Government seeks an emergency stay of a District Court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. As is also becoming routine, this Court misunderstands the assignment,” Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote.

“Here, the balance-of-the-equities factor requires weighing the harm to the Government from not being able to proceed immediately with its allegedly unlawful policy against the harm to the individuals who would be subjected to that policy,” she added.

Bondi celebrated the latest SCOTUS win.

“Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,” Bondi said.

“In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth,” Bondi added.

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