News Analysis The Supreme Court has had a mixed track record over the past year in terms of protecting Americans’ civil rights during the ongoing pandemic, according to legal experts consulted by The Epoch Times. The nation’s highest court generally did a good job at safeguarding religious freedoms, as it struck down limits on church capacity. A year ago, the court blocked then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo from enforcing pandemic-related restrictions on attendance at places of worship in a 5–4 ruling in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, which was a departure from the high court’s previous hands-off rulings … Continue reading Supreme Court has mixed record on protecting civil rights during the pandemic, experts say

Virginia’s incoming Republican governor is vowing to withdraw his state from a regional carbon emissions-trading exchange to which 10 coastal and New England states currently belong—a move that, if successful, would be a major setback for the left-wing environmentalist movement. During a Dec. 8 address to the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin described the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) as a “carbon tax that is fully passed on to ratepayers,” saying he would issue an executive order to take the state out of the interstate compact when he’s inaugurated next month, The Hill newspaper reported on Dec. 9. Virginia became part … Continue reading Incoming Virginia governor vows to reduce energy costs by exiting regional cap-and-trade scheme

A Maine law that excludes families from a student aid program if they choose to send their children to religious schools is flatly unconstitutional and should be struck down, a seemingly sympathetic Supreme Court heard Dec. 8. The program at issue provides tuition assistance for students who don’t have a local public school so they can attend private institutions, as long as the funding isn’t used for religious education. The case is Carson v. Makin, court file 20-1088, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit. The petitioners are parents David and Amy Carson, and Troy and Angela … Continue reading Maine student aid program discriminates on basis of religion, Supreme Court hears

Joe Biden has pulled the nomination of totalitarian leftist law professor Saule Tarikhovna Omarova to be his Comptroller of the Currency after her radical, un-American beliefs about banking, energy, markets, and economic freedom received the public airing the democratic process requires. As reported here, the Kazakh-born immigrant whom Biden chose to oversee the banking system wanted to nationalize Americans’ bank accounts, nuke the energy sector, and deindustrialize the world’s largest economy by building a gargantuan new bureaucracy to implement aspects of both the Green New Deal and the Great Reset. When Senate Republicans grabbed the low-hanging fruit and threw the would-be banking … Continue reading Biden’s commie nominee falls on her hammer and sickle

A good-government group is suing the District of Columbia in federal court for refusing to allow the inspection of voter list maintenance records as required by federal law. The D.C. Board of Elections claims it can’t provide the voter list maintenance documents because of its contract with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonprofit that describes its mission as “assisting states to improve the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.” ERIC was created in 2012 with assistance from The Pew Charitable Trusts, a left-wing philanthropy. The board says its contract with ERIC prohibits the … Continue reading DC Board of Elections sued for keeping voter data secret

Lawyers for both the Biden administration and a longtime illegal alien who falsely stated he was a U.S. citizen on a driver’s license application told a skeptical Supreme Court on Dec. 6 that a federal appeals court erred when it ruled a deportation order against the man should be allowed to stand. How the high court rules in this case could create a legal standard regarding how much, if any, discretion judges have in cases in which aliens are seeking green cards. The appeal at hand is Patel v. Garland, court file 20-979, which comes from an Aug. 19, 2020, ruling … Continue reading Supreme Court urged to halt deportation of man who wrongly claimed to be US citizen

The largest small-business advocacy group in the country is urging the Wisconsin Supreme Court to block Democratic Gov. Tony Evers from publishing the names of those businesses in the state whose employees have tested positive for the CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19. Evers doesn’t have a good track record in these matters in the state Supreme Court. Emergency orders he said were aimed to stop the spread of COVID-19 haven’t fared well before that judicial body. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down pandemic mitigation orders that the governor’s administration has issued by virtue of its purported public health emergency powers. A stay-at-home order, as … Continue reading Businesses ask Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent governor from outing companies with COVID-19-positive staff

The Supreme Court seemed open to the possibility of answering Mississippi’s call to scuttle Roe v. Wade, the perpetually controversial 1973 ruling that wrested the regulation of abortion from the states and made abortion lawful throughout the entire country. Roe v. Wade is “an egregiously wrong decision,” Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart said during oral arguments on Dec. 1. “Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey haunt our country,” Stewart said, referencing Roe’s companion ruling from 1992, which held states can’t impose significant restrictions on abortion before a fetus becomes viable for life outside the womb, somewhere around the 24-week gestation mark. … Continue reading Overturn seminal abortion precedent Roe v. Wade, state urges Supreme Court

An elderly COVID-19 patient has recovered after a court order allowed him to be treated with ivermectin, despite objections from the hospital in which he was staying, according to the family’s attorney. After an Illinois hospital insisted on administering expensive remdesivir to the patient and the treatment failed, his life was saved after a court ordered that an outside medical doctor be allowed to use the inexpensive ivermectin to treat him, over the hospital’s strenuous objections. Ivermectin tablets have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat humans with intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis, two conditions caused by parasitic worms. Some topical … Continue reading Dying COVID-19 patient recovers after court orders hospital to administer ivermectin

The Supreme Court is gearing up to hear a serious legal challenge on Dec. 1 to its 1973 ruling legalizing abortion throughout the United States—and contributing mightily to the polarization of the politics of the nation for nearly half a century. The court will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, court file 19-1392, a challenge to Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, which allows abortions after 15 weeks’ gestational age only in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality. Lower courts struck down the statute. It’s the first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion lawful throughout the United States, … Continue reading Supreme Court to hear Mississippi abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court gave a cool reception to the Biden administration during oral arguments on Nov. 29 in a case in which a health care system was seeking higher government reimbursements for treating low-income patients. The case, on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, is Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation, court file 20-1312. Xavier Becerra is U.S. secretary of health and human services. At issue is how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) figures out special Medicare payments to “disproportionate share hospitals,” sometimes called “DSH hospitals,” whose patients are largely low-income persons. Empire Health … Continue reading Supreme Court hears dispute over Medicare payment formula for safety-net hospitals

The Biden-Harris regime’s embattled nominee to oversee the banking system is a dishonest small-c communist who aspires to nationalize Americans’ bank accounts, crush the energy sector, and deindustrialize the world’s largest economy by creating a mammoth new bureaucracy to implement aspects of both the Green New Deal and the Great Reset. What could possibly go wrong? She’s not alone. Plenty of Democrats share Comptroller of the Currency nominee Saule Tarikhovna Omarova’s view that the economy is a plaything to be manipulated for political ends. Fortunately for your wallet, five of the more survival-savvy Democrats –including Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Mark Warner … Continue reading Partiya Lenina, Sila Narodnaya!

A conservative think tank filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against California to halt a law that will force quotas on publicly held corporations headquartered in the state, requiring them to appoint board members based solely on their race and sexual orientation. The legislation at issue is the fruit of last year’s race riots that caused more than $2 billion in property damage and were organized nationwide by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. The lawsuit, National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) v. Weber, was filed on Nov. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. Defendant Shirley Weber, a radical … Continue reading California sued over law forcing appointment of minorities and LGBT to corporate boards

After a civil trial, a federal jury in Virginia ordered organizers of the ill-fated “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville to pay 9 plaintiffs more than $20 million in compensatory and punitive damages for physical and emotional injuries. The case in Sines v. Kessler, civil action 3:17-cv-72, was heard in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia. The rally in question took place in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017. The event attracted neo-Nazis, but many non-Nazis attended to protest a proposal to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a nearby park. The plaintiffs claimed that a nighttime … Continue reading Civil jury finds ‘Unite the Right’ rally organizers responsible for 2017 Charlottesville violence

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a lower court ruling that allows New Jersey to unilaterally withdraw from a powerful bistate commission that was created to monitor corruption at the storied Port of New York and New Jersey. The case is Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor v. Murphy, court file 20-772. The port’s reckoning with organized crime was immortalized in director Elia Kazan’s 1954 film, “On the Waterfront,” which won eight Academy Awards. But organized crime was driven out years ago and critics have long blamed the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor for over-regulating businesses involved in the port and for labor … Continue reading Supreme Court allows New Jersey to quit Waterfront Commission

The Virginia Supreme Court has appointed two special masters nominated by either political party to redraw Virginia’s electoral maps within a 30-day deadline after an independent state commission deadlocked over a redistricting plan. A special master is someone appointed by a court to carry out some sort of action on its behalf, in this case to make new state legislative and congressional district maps using newly available census data. While Virginia will continue to have 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, population shifts within the state mean the boundaries will have to move. Electoral district boundaries are generally decided by state legislatures, … Continue reading Virginia Supreme Court names outside experts to draw maps in messy redistricting fight

The Washington Supreme Court denied for the time being a request to unmask the off-duty Seattle police officers who took intense political heat after the fact for attending the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in the nation’s capital. The huge rally in support of then-President Donald Trump’s claim that the election was being stolen took place as Congress began the process of officially tallying votes from the Electoral College. Some individuals entered the U.S. Capitol building, causing physical damage and halting for hours the count that eventually confirmed Joe Biden’s election as president. The unidentified law enforcement officials sued … Continue reading Washington Supreme Court refuses to allow release of officers’ names who attended Jan. 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally

The CVS Pharmacy chain has dropped a potentially precedent-setting Supreme Court case in which HIV/AIDS patients are claiming that the company was discriminating against them by enacting a policy requiring people in need of specialty medications to receive them by mail rather than at a local pharmacy. The case is CVS Pharmacy Inc. v. Doe. “Doe” refers collectively to five unnamed respondents who are individuals living with HIV/AIDS and who have employer-sponsored health care plans that allow them to obtain prescription drugs. The case was scheduled for oral argument before the Supreme Court on Dec. 7, but the parties filed a joint stipulation to … Continue reading CVS drops potentially precedent-setting Supreme Court case

The Supreme Court announced it will consider whether an hourly fast-food worker allegedly denied overtime pay is required to take her proposed wage-and-hour class-action lawsuit against a large Taco Bell franchisee to arbitration, instead of pursuing it in federal court. The case, Morgan v. Sundance Inc., court file 21-328, comes from the St. Louis, Missouri-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. The Supreme Court okayed the petition for certiorari, or review, on Nov. 15, in an unsigned order. The respondent, Sundance Inc., owns upwards of 150 Taco Bell franchises throughout the country. The petitioner, Robyn Morgan, worked at one of those franchises … Continue reading Supreme Court agrees to hear Taco Bell overtime dispute