CAPITAL CASE By Amy Howe on Sep 8, 2021 at 10:47 pm The Supreme Court agreed to postpone the execution of John Ramirez, who was scheduled to die on Wednesday night in Texas. The last-minute respite will allow the justices to fully consider Ramirez’s request that his pastor be allowed to physically touch Ramirez and […]
CAPITAL CASE By Amy Howe on Sep 7, 2021 at 10:39 pm The Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, where the state’s execution chamber is housed. (Nick DiFonzo via Flickr) A Texas inmate asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to block his execution, arguing that the state’s refusal to allow his spiritual adviser to lay his […]
SCOTUS FOCUS By Lee Kovarsky on Sep 6, 2021 at 12:03 pm Lee Kovarsky is the Bryant Smith chair in law and co-director of Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Most people following the litigation over S.B. 8 — the new Texas ban on nearly all abortions after the sixth week […]
Emergency docket By Amy Howe on Sep 2, 2021 at 2:26 am Nearly 24 hours after a Texas law that bans nearly all abortions in the state went into effect, the Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed what it had previously only implied through its failure to act the night before: The court rejected a request […]
SCOTUS FOCUS By Mary Ziegler on Sep 1, 2021 at 3:28 pm Mary Ziegler is a law professor at Florida State University and the author of Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present. Since the decision of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey in 1992, the hallmark of the […]
Emergency docket By Amy Howe on Aug 30, 2021 at 5:09 pm A pro-choice activist holds a sign in front of the Supreme Court in 2016. (Rena Schild via Shutterstock) A Texas law that bans abortions anytime a fetal heartbeat is detected will “immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access in Texas” if it is allowed […]
EMERGENCY DOCKET By Amy Howe on Aug 26, 2021 at 11:01 pm Just under two months after a divided court allowed an earlier moratorium to remain in place, the Supreme Court on Thursday night blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the latest federal moratorium on evictions, imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The justices divided […]
EMERGENCY DOCKET By Amy Howe on Aug 24, 2021 at 9:38 pm A woman seeking asylum arrives with her newborn baby at the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2018. (Daniel Arauz via Flickr) The Supreme Court on Tuesday night rejected the Biden administration’s plea for a reprieve from a district-court order requiring it to […]
EMERGENCY DOCKET By Amy Howe on Aug 20, 2021 at 9:16 pm A group of Alabama real-estate agents and landlords returned to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking the justices to block the Biden administration’s latest ban on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The request came just under two months after the justices, in a […]
EMERGENCY DOCKET By Amy Howe on Aug 20, 2021 at 8:06 pm President Joe Biden wants to unwind a Trump-era border policy, but a federal district judge recently ordered the administration to reinstate it. (archna nautiyal via Shutterstock) The Biden administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court for an immediate reprieve from having to reinstate […]