The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that a deaf and blind woman may not claim damages for emotional distress for a physical therapy clinic’s decision to deny her an American Sign Language interpreter. The court’s opinion in Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller PPLC, court file 20–219, came on April 28 after the case was argued on Nov. 30, 2021. The petitioner is Jane Cummings, who has been deaf since birth, is legally blind, and has albinism. The respondent is Premier Rehab Keller PLLC, which operates physical therapy clinics around Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. Legal blindness, a term used by governments to determine eligibility … Continue reading Supreme Court rebuffs Biden admin, rules deaf-blind woman can’t seek damages for denial of interpreter

States should be allowed to prosecute non-Indians for crimes committed on Native American land, an attorney representing the state of Oklahoma told the Supreme Court on April 27, after a court ruling two years ago threw the state’s judicial system into disarray by changing jurisdictional rules. The case is Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, court file 21-429. The Supreme Court agreed on Jan. 21 to take the case. Scheduled for 70 minutes, the hearing ran for 131 minutes. The case comes after McGirt v. Oklahoma, in which the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 on July 9, 2020, that most of eastern and some of central Oklahoma … Continue reading Supreme Court considers if states can prosecute non-Indians for crimes on Indian land: Chief Justice Roberts bids farewell to Justice Breyer at his final hearing

Wisconsin’s Walworth County has become the first local government in the state to ban the acceptance of private monies or grants for use in the administration of elections. Approval of the measure came after 16 states enacted legislation to ban or regulate the acceptance and use of private funds by public election officials. Good-government advocates have been incensed that a Mark Zuckerberg-funded activist group, the left-wing Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), flooded election offices in Democratic Party strongholds with millions of dollars in an apparent effort to drive up voter turnout for that party in 2020. In 2016, then-candidate … Continue reading Wisconsin county takes the lead in banning private funding of elections

The Biden administration told the Supreme Court on April 26 that it should not have to continue operating the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program that required non-Mexican asylum-seekers arriving at the southern border to wait in Mexico for processing. The case at hand is Biden v. Texas, court file 21-954. The high court agreed on February 18 to hear the case, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. One hour was set aside for the hearing, but it ran 1 hour and 47 minutes. Upon assuming office, Biden halted enrollments in the program, part of the Migrant Protection … Continue reading Biden administration urges Supreme Court to let it drop ‘Remain in Mexico’ program

The Supreme Court seemed to be generally sympathetic toward a high school football coach who claims he was fired for kneeling to pray at the 50-yard line after football games. Coach Joseph A. “Joe” Kennedy, who no longer works for the taxpayer-funded Bremerton School District in Washington state, says his rights were violated when the school district forbade him from praying in view of the public after games. Some of the facts, such as whether his prayers were silent and how he came to not be employed by the district, are in dispute. The case is Kennedy v. Bremerton School … Continue reading SCOTUS hears case of high school football coach banned from praying on field

The Supreme Court agreed on April 25 to hear the appeal of Rodney Reed, who was convicted of murder and rape, and who now wants evidence found at the scene of the crime years ago to be tested for DNA, even though a Texas law forbids it because he took too long to raise the issue. Justice Sonia Sotomayor foreshadowed the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2020 when she questioned the strength of the scientific evidence used to convict Reed. The case is Reed v. Goertz, court file 21-442. Respondent Bryan Goertz, a Republican, is the district attorney for Bastrop County, Texas. The court … Continue reading SCOTUS takes appeal of Texas death row inmate claiming scientific evidence was flawed

The city clerk of Green Bay, Wisconsin, participated in illegal absentee ballot harvesting in the April 5 local election, a new legal complaint filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission claims. Several voters reported seeing City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys accepting multiple absentee ballots from the hand of a single person several times, according to Erick Kaardal, special counsel with the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit public interest law firm. Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, a Democrat, appointed Jeffreys to her current post. “This is ballot harvesting, and it is illegal,” Kaardal said in a statement. The complaint against Jeffreys (pdf), cited as Roeser … Continue reading Wisconsin city clerk sued in alleged illegal ballot harvesting scheme

I’m quoted in five more books. I’ll update the official list later, but here they are: The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation, by Nilay Saiya, Oxford University Press, 2022, endnote 80 The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros, by Matt Palumbo, Liberatio Protocol, 2022, page citation unknown Comprehending Antisemitism Through the Ages: A Historical Perspective, edited by Armin Lange, Dina Porat, Kerstin Mayerhofer, Lawrence H. Schiffman, De Gruyter, 2021, endnote 26 Critical Legal Studies and the Campaign for American Law Schools: A Revolution to Break the Liberal Consensus, by Paul Baumgartner, Springer Nature, 2021, … Continue reading Matthew Vadum quoted in 5 new books

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a descendant of a German Jewish family whose valuable French Impressionist painting was confiscated by the Nazis during the Holocaust and is now on display at a government-owned art museum in Madrid. The gist of the unanimous decision made public on April 21 is that in property cases, foreign governments and the entities they control should be placed in the same position as private parties. The high court also found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit erred in finding that federal—not state—law should apply in such disputes, and in … Continue reading Unanimous SCOTUS overturns 9th Circuit, rules against Spanish museum in Nazi-looted painting case

The Supreme Court revisited its 56-year-old precedent, Miranda v. Arizona, at an April 20 hearing as justices and attorneys sparred over the extent to which the landmark decision protects criminal defendants and provides a basis for post-trial litigation by acquitted defendants. The specific issue in Vega v. Tekoh, court file 21-499, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, is the following question: When an arresting officer fails to provide a criminal defendant with the warnings required by the Miranda decision, can that defendant file a federal civil rights lawsuit based solely on the failure to provide … Continue reading Supreme Court revisits decades-old Miranda rights precedent

A former scout for the Washington Nationals is suing the Major League Baseball (MLB) team in federal court for firing him in August 2021 when he refused on religious grounds to receive the vaccine for COVID-19, also known as the CCP virus. Bernard “Benny” Gallo of Carlsbad, California, has said that his constitutional rights were violated by the team and that the vaccination requirement, which didn’t apply to athletes, was discriminatory. The lawsuit comes after New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, was sued earlier this month by an MLB sports venue worker over his city’s inconsistent enforcement of its COVID-19 vaccination … Continue reading Baseball scout fired for refusing CCP virus vaccine on religious grounds sues Washington Nationals

The Supreme Court sided with the often-reversed U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit by declining to intervene on behalf of a U.S. Air Force Reserve officer who was relieved of command as punishment for his religious-based refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The case is still pending before both the 9th Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. The ruling in Dunn v. Austin, court file 21A599, came late in the day on April 18. The lead respondent, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, was sued in his official capacity. The Supreme Court did … Continue reading SCOTUS sides with 9th Circuit, refuses application of airman punished for refusing COVID-19 vax: 3 conservative justices—Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch—dissent, saying court should hear the case

A Washington state law that extended workers’ compensation benefits to employees at a decommissioned federal nuclear production facility where employees suffered exposure to radioactive waste discriminates against the federal government, the Supreme Court heard April 18. The case could have expensive consequences for U.S. government contracts related to hazardous work conducted on federal property. The Biden administration argues that the state law impermissibly intrudes on federal authority. Washington state counters that the case is moot because a new state law replaced the old one. The case is United States v. Washington, court file 21-404, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals … Continue reading State workers’ comp law at nuclear site discriminates against feds, Biden administration tells Supreme Court

The Supreme Court decided on April 18 not to hear an appeal from New York and three other Democrat-dominated Northeastern states that were challenging the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions imposed by President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law. The case is New York v. Yellen, court file 21-966. Janet Yellen was sued in her official capacity as secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The respondents were New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maryland. According to its usual practice, the high court didn’t provide reasons why it refused to take up the case. The Biden administration urged the court not to hear … Continue reading Supreme Court declines New York’s challenge to Trump-era federal cap on state and local tax deductions

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is vowing to ask the Supreme Court to prevent the Biden administration from recalculating and using the “social cost” of carbon emissions, a metric used in climate regulation that critics say needlessly drives up operating costs for businesses and prices for consumers. Critics have long said the classification of carbon dioxide, the gas humans expel from their lungs when breathing, as a pollutant makes no sense. Carbon dioxide is essential to life on the planet and is used in the process of photosynthesis, which spurs plant growth. But environmentalists claim human-created carbon dioxide contributes to climate change. … Continue reading Louisiana asks SCOTUS to block Biden administration from calculating ‘social cost’ of carbon emissions: AG Jeff Landry argues the metric hurts consumers and industry

A left-wing group is trying to disqualify outspoken Trump supporter Pennsylvania state Senator Doug Mastriano from the state governor’s race because he allegedly participated in an “insurrection” against the U.S. government by supporting the former president’s reelection bid. Recent polling shows Mastriano has the lead—garnering 19 percent support—in the field of 9 candidates seeking the Republican nomination for governor of the Keystone State, according to a poll Eagle Consulting Group conducted of 502 likely GOP primary voters from April 7 through April 9, PennLive reports. The primary election is May 17. The current governor, Democrat Tom Wolf, is term-limited. Attorney General Josh Shapiro is running … Continue reading Left-wing group tries to disqualify Republican frontrunner in PA governor’s race on ‘insurrection’ grounds