Tag: scotus

SCOTUS Will Consider the Constitutionality of the Federal Ban on Gun Possession by Illegal Drug Users

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider the constitutionality of the federal ban on gun possession by illegal drug users. The Trump administration is urging the justices to overturn a ruling in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit deemed prosecutions under that law inconsistent with the Second Amendment unless there is evidence that the defendant handled firearms while intoxicated. Contrary to what the 5th Circuit held, the government’s petition argues that categorically disarming drug users is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test established by the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

The case, United States v. Hemani, involves a Texas man who was charged with violating 18 USC 922(g)(3), which makes it a felony for an “unlawful user” of “any controlled substance” to receive or possess a firearm. The defendant, Ali Hemani, was the subject of a terrorism investigation that included two searches of the Lewiston, Texas, home he shared with his parents. During the second search, in August 2022, FBI agents found a Glock 19 pistol that belonged to Hemani, along with less than a gram of cocaine and about two ounces of marijuana.

As Amel Ahmed explained in a Reason story about the case last year, the FBI was unable to substantiate its suspicion that Hemani, a native-born U.S. citizen whose parents are from Pakistan, was implicated in financial crimes involving Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The government’s petition nevertheless implies that Hemani is a dangerous character for reasons that extend beyond his recreational drug use. But that allegation is not relevant to the constitutional question raised by the Supreme Court case.

The law that Hemani was charged with violating applies to millions of Americans who pose no plausible threat to public safety, including cannabis consumers, even if they live in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. The 5th Circuit first questioned the constitutionality of Section 922(g)(3) prosecutions in 2023, when it overturned the conviction of Patrick Darnell Daniels Jr., who was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison after he was caught with two guns and the remains of a few joints during a routine traffic stop in Hancock County, Mississippi.

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After SCOTUS ignores ‘only two genders’ censorship, appeals court upholds ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ ban

Five months after Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas blasted their colleagues for refusing to review a ruling against a student punished for wearing an “Only Two Genders” shirt to school, a second federal appeals court has blessed another way for schools to clamp down on disfavored messages: the inference of vulgarity.

A divided 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a ban on “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts by Michigan’s Tri County Area Schools, ruling Tuesday that school administrators’ perception that the expression is code for “F— Joe Biden” renders it profane and thus exempt from students’ First Amendment rights in schools.

President Trump-nominated Judge John Nalbandian, who appeared to be the swing vote in oral argument, joined with President Clinton-nominated Judge Karen Nelson Moore to apply the SCOTUS precedent Fraser, which upheld a student’s discipline based on a “school assembly speech that had a rather elaborate sexual metaphor.”

This is despite the duo’s admission that “Let’s Go Brandon” has “a wide range of meanings” going back to its creation, when NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast falsely claimed crude chants against President Biden at a NASCAR race were support for driver Brandon Brown.

“Some saw it as merely a euphemism for what the crowd really said,” the majority said. “Others used it as a shibboleth to express antipathy” toward Biden and his policies, and yet others “used it to question what they perceived as liberal bias in the media—based on the theory that NBC had been trying to hide the anti-Biden sentiment on display at Talladega.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents the anonymous students who wore the sweatshirts, told Just the News it plans to appeal but hasn’t decided yet whether to go straight to SCOTUS or seek a full-court 6th Circuit review.

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Here Are 6 Key Moments From SCOTUS Arguments In Landmark Race-Based Redistricting Case

UPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES — The U.S. Supreme Court held oral arguments in a pair of high stakes redistricting cases that could significantly reshape American electoral politics.

Known as Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, the matter focuses on a dispute over the use of race in Louisiana’s congressional map. While the state’s initial map included a single black-majority district, a lawsuit and subsequent legal battle led lawmakers to redraw the map to include a second black-majority district, producing another legal battle that centered on the state’s allegedly unlawful use of race when creating the new map.

During oral arguments, the justices probed parties on the facts of the respective cases and the longstanding judicial conflict over provisions of the Voting Rights Act (Section 2) and 14th Amendment (equal protection clause). Here are some of the biggest moments from the hearing.

Jackson Said What About the Disabled?

Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has never been one to shy away from making ill-advised statements, whether they be in interviews or opinions. So, it wasn’t surprising when the Biden appointee suggested race be considered by states in redistricting because black Americans are systemically “disabled” and don’t have legitimate access to the elections process.

“Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities, and so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings,” Jackson said, effectively arguing that it doesn’t matter whether such discrimination is intentional or not.

“I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here. … We are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system, right? They’re disabled … We say that’s a way in which you see that these processes are not equally open.”

Thomas Asks a Simple (Yet Meaningful) Question

As the longest serving member of the current court, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has often served as a critical voice of reason in many matters that come before the highest bench in the land. One of the ways he does this is through simple, yet meaningful, questions to parties in oral arguments.

While questioning Louisiana Solicitor General Ben Aguiñaga, Thomas asked “what role” the federal district court’s block on the state’s initial map “play[ed] in development of” the new map that included a second black-majority district. The state solicitor general disclosed that the court’s order is the “only reason” Louisiana drew a new map.

“Justice Thomas, [that court decision] is the only reason [this new map] exists,” Aguiñaga said. “We fought tooth and nail in the Robinson litigation itself in telling the courts that we did not think the Constitution permitted us to draw a second majority-black district. As you know, under protest, we drew [the new map] because the threat was that the federal courts would do it if we didn’t.”

“We would never pass [the new map] in the first instance without Robinson, Justice Thomas,” he added.

[READ: In Race-Based Redistricting Battle, Louisiana Urges SCOTUS To Uphold America’s ‘Color Blind’ Constitution]

DOJ Official Silences Sotomayor

Arguing on the side of Louisiana, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan got into a testy exchange with Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor over the Pelican State’s creation of a second-black majority district.

In debating the racial and political motivations behind the creation of maps like Louisiana’s, Mooppan noted the racial double standard that exists where if the block of voters in question were white, there wouldn’t be a debate about whether there should be an additional district tailored to their community.

“If these were white Democrats, there’s no reason to think they would have a second district. None,” Mooppan said. “And so what is happening here is their argument is, because these Democrats happen to be black, they get a second district. If they were all white, we all agree they wouldn’t get a second district. That is literally the definition of race subordinating traditional principles.”

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Clarence Thomas Wrecks Another Race Argument at SCOTUS

Supreme Court Clarence Thomas isn’t buying arguments that the Voting Rights Act allows for congressional districts to be drawn along racial lines (more specifically to help Democrats retain power in Washington D.C.). 

During a back and fourth with Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga Wednesday, who is opposed to race based lines, Thomas argued an all black district in the state wouldn’t exist without the state being forced to consider race in districting. 

“Would the maps that Louisiana have currently be used if they were not forced to consider race?” Thomas asked. 

“We drew it because the courts told us to!” Aguinaga explained. “They said a majority black district was required. And our legislature saw the marching order.”

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ACLU loses last-ditch effort to stop SCOTUS from evaluating state bans on males in girls’ sports

When the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Idaho and West Virginia can ban males from girls’ sports, two weeks after upholding Tennessee’s ban on medicalized gender transitions for minors, the transgender track athlete who defeated Idaho at trial and appeals courts got cold feet and tried to stop SCOTUS from hearing Idaho’s part of the case.

Lindsay Hecox, who is male, decided to “cease playing women’s sports in any context covered by H.B. 500” and dismissed the suit with prejudice so it cannot be filed again, claiming that continuing the litigation through SCOTUS will threaten Hecox’s “mental health, my safety, and my ability to graduate as soon as possible.”

U.S. District Judge David Nye, whose injunction against Idaho’s law as applied to Hecox was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, doesn’t think the ACLU-represented athlete is playing it straight.

The President Trump nominee, who saved Hecox’s challenge three years ago when the 9th Circuit questioned whether the lapsed athlete would resume competing and thus maintain legal standing to sue Idaho, interpreted Hecox’s late-breaking about-face as “somewhat manipulative to avoid Supreme Court review” and ruled it “should not be endorsed.”

Nye granted Idaho’s motion to strike Hecox’s notice of voluntary dismissal, in the latest setback for the ACLU’s quest to preempt state laws that favor sex over gender identity, through federal regulation and the federal courts, while keeping SCOTUS from hearing close cases.

Federal courts including President Biden’s nominees blocked his administration’s Title IX regulation conflating sex and gender identity as his lone term closed, leaving the first Trump administration’s sex-based Title IX regulation in place. Second-term President Trump’s executive orders against gender ideology left SCOTUS the ACLU’s last hope.

That hope was dashed in June when a 6-3 court rejected the ACLU’s argument, on behalf of transgender children’s families, that gender identity is a protected trait like sex and race in the context of Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery as treatment options for gender-confused youth.

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Gorsuch Gets NAACP Lawyer To All But Admit Support For Racial Discrimination In Redistricting

UPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES — Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch got a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to all but admit support for states intentionally discriminating on the basis of race in the redistricting process.

The moment came during the Supreme Court’s Wednesday oral arguments for a pair of cases known as Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, which center on the Louisiana Legislature’s use of race when creating its recent congressional map.

As The Federalist previously reported, the matter first arose “following ‘a previous lawsuit … where plaintiffs argued that the prior map’ put forward by the state ‘violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority votes,’ according to Oyez.” A district court order and subsequent legal battle prompted the Louisiana Legislature to “draft a new map last year ‘that included a second majority-black district,’ which plaintiffs in Louisiana v. Callais contend violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by ‘prioritizing race in its creation.’”

While the Supreme Court was initially supposed to issue a verdict on the matter during its 2024-2025 term, the court announced on the last day of the session that it would be rehearing arguments in the case this fall. The justices notably issued an order over the summer instructing parties in the case to address the question of “[w]hether [Louisiana’s] intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

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KBJ Suggests Black People Can’t Vote, Compares Them To The Disabled

During oral arguments for a major case that could put an end to race-based gerrymandering on Wednesday, Democrat-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that race should be a consideration when drawing congressional districts because black people are systemically “disabled” and don’t have proper access to voting systems.

Jackson drew a comparison between the redistricting cases in question, Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, and accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She implied that minorities like black people are systemically blocked from accessing voting polls (a demonstrably false claim) and compared this to disabled people not being able to access a building. She used this faulty comparison to bolster her underlying argument that past race-based discrimination should allow for a present race-based remedy.

“Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities, and so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings,” Jackson said. She argued that whether such discrimination is intentional is irrelevant.

“I guess I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here. … We are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system, right? They’re disabled. … We say that’s a way in which you see that these processes are not equally open.”

The case considers possible 14th Amendment violations of a congressional district map in Louisiana. As The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood has reported, the origins of the case date back to 2022, “when the Louisiana Legislature drafted a congressional map with a single black-majority district.” This led to a lawsuit by a group of plaintiffs — “represented by left-wing groups like the ACLU” — who alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by “dilut[ing] black voting strength.” 

“Following an injunction barring the map’s implementation by a district court judge, continued litigation in the case ultimately resulted in the state redrawing the map to include a second black-majority district. This led to another lawsuit from a different group of plaintiffs, who claimed the state unlawfully prioritized race in the map’s creation and therefore violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause,” Fleetwood reported. “A three-judge panel on a separate district court agreed with these plaintiffs and blocked the new map’s implementation.”

The Supreme Court was initially slated to decide the case during its 2024-2025 term, but announced in June that it would rehear the case this fall.

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Will the Supreme Court upend the Voting Rights Act?

The Supreme Court may very well upend one of the last remaining central pieces of the Voting Rights Act – that elections or voting practices cannot discriminate based on race.

And, in doing so, the high court may bolster efforts by Republican state legislatures to redraw congressional maps to expand the party’s majority.

The justices’ ruling could actually crush minority representation in Congress.

According to two voting rights groups, Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund, a ruling gutting the race provision would let the GOP nationwide redraw up to 19 House seats to favor the party.

It could also prevent Black voters from challenging political maps they believe don’t accurately represent them.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais.

Arguments lasted for more than two hours in an unusually lengthy, complicated debate.

It stems from a complex congressional redrawing dispute starting in 2022.

Louisiana’s GOP-led legislature drew a map that only had one Black majority district and five mostly white districts, despite Louisiana’s population being one-third Black. So, a group of Black voters sued.

A federal judge struck the map down and ordered a redraw. Instead of letting the judge redraw it, Louisiana Republicans passed the current map that added a second Black majority district (but protected districts of key Republicans in the state, like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise).

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Project Veritas Challenge to State Law Blocking Secret Recording

The Supreme Court has decided against hearing an investigative journalism organization’s First Amendment-based challenge to a decades-old Oregon law prohibiting most secret recordings of oral conversations.

Undercover journalism group Project Veritas had argued that the state’s conversational privacy statute violated the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 9–2 in January that the law did not violate the group’s free speech rights.

The Supreme Court dismissed the petition in Project Veritas v. Vasquez without comment in an unsigned order on Oct. 6. No justices dissented.

The respondents were sued in their official capacities. One is Nathan Vasquez, district attorney for Multnomah County, Oregon; the other is Dan Rayfield, attorney general of Oregon.

In its April 7 petition, Project Veritas described Oregon’s audio recording law as “a national outlier” because it requires that “anyone in almost any conversation [be informed] that their words are being recorded.”

This requirement “severely hampers modern investigative journalism” and undermines the First Amendment “by effectively prohibiting the use of today’s most powerful reporting tools—discreet audio recordings,” the petition states.

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SCOTUS To Decide If Free Speech Applies To Biology-Affirming Therapists And Their Clients

n Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar. This is the latest in a seemingly unending series of cases from Colorado that my colleagues at Alliance Defending Freedom have argued. The cases stem from the state’s apparent aversion to the First Amendment.

Not content with their failed attempts to coerce speech from artists like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop or Lorie Smith of 303 Creative, and not deterred by clear rebukes from the Supreme Court in those cases, the state of Colorado has set its sights on professional counselors.

The law in question bans specific, voluntary counseling conversations, silences the viewpoint disfavored by the government, and leaves struggling youth and their parents with only one government-approved option. Colorado’s law bans counselors like Kaley Chiles from helping minors realign their thoughts and feelings with their biological sex — even when that is the young person’s goal for counseling.

Counseling that affirms so-called “gender transition” is fine by Colorado. Counseling that affirms biological reality is fined by Colorado, up to $5,000 per offense, and could include the loss of licensure.

This is not just an esoteric debate for law school faculty lounges; children’s health and well-being are at stake. Colorado’s defense of this blatant viewpoint discrimination and government censorship hinges on the contention, without a hint of irony, that the state is regulating conduct, not speech. How do Kaley Chiles and her clients engage in the “conduct” of talk therapy without it being speech? Perhaps a high-stakes game of charades? The notion would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

If government places an authoritarian thumb on the scale, allowing only one viewpoint, invading the vulnerable space between counselor and client, and dictating one outcome, the victims are children and their families. If the Supreme Court does not protect the speech of counselors like Kaley Chiles and her clients, children in Colorado and more than 20 other states with similar censorship laws will be trapped on a one-way journey to the perils of “gender transition.”

The eventual destination is one of irreversible physical damage, potential sterilization, and a lifetime of being a patient. Our nation’s struggling youth deserve compassionate counseling directed by their goals with assistance from loving parents and professionals, not a government-sponsored pathway to chemicals and surgeries that can leave permanent mental and physical scars.

Adding rhetorical insult to injury is the fact that under Colorado’s law, counseling clients to align their feelings with their biology is deemed “conversion therapy,” while counseling a client to transition from his or her sex to the opposite sex is “gender affirming care.” The assault on common sense and the English language may pale in comparison to the harm suffered by Chiles and her clients, but the First Amendment protects speech because words matter, truth matters, and any attempt by government to silence citizens matters.

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