The Supreme Court Could Weigh In on Alleged ‘Overcriminalization’ of January 6 Cases

Two Jan. 6 defendants are asking the Supreme Court to correct what they argue is “prosecutorial overcharging” before their cases go to trial.

Edward Lang and Garrett Miller, who allegedly both entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, are asking the Supreme Court to dismiss an obstruction charge against them before their trials, alleging prosecutors broadened an unrelated statute to “over-penalize” those who participated in the riots, according to their petitions. If the Supreme Court takes the case, it could have broad implications for hundreds of other Jan. 6 defendants indicted under the statute.

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Corporate America Slowly Backs Away from ‘Diversity’ Language in Wake of Supreme Court Decision

American businesses have been moving away from using diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) language in the workplace after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in June, according to Bloomberg Law.

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Football Coach Who Won Landmark Court Case on Public Prayer Resigns

Joe Kennedy resigned from his position as assistant football coach at Bremerton High School on Wednesday after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in June 2022 allowed him to pray on the football field, according to Kennedy’s website.

Kennedy coached his first game since 2015 on Sept. 1 after he was suspended for refusing to stop praying on the field after each game. He had expressed before the game that he was unsure how long he would stay on as a coach and ultimately offered his resignation this week, citing the ailing health of a family member out of state and a desire to become an advocate for religious freedom, according to a statement from Kennedy’s website.

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Affirmative Action Opponent Takes on Military Academy Exemption

The student group that defeated affirmative action in the Supreme Court is turning their attention to American military academies exempted from the ban.

The group is currently collecting experiences of students who applied to the Air Force, Army and Navy military academies.

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Coach at Center of Religious Supreme Court Victory Says He Has ‘A Lot of Angst’ About Returning to the Field

High School Assistant Coach Joe Kennedy said he’s nervous about returning to the football field Friday after winning a years-long battle in the Supreme Court in 2022 allowing him to pray on the field, according to an interview with the Associated Press.

Bremerton High School, located in Washington state, is having its opening game of the season and it will be the first time Kennedy has coached since 2015 after he was suspended by Bremerton School District (BSD) for refusing to stop praying on the field, according to the AP. Kennedy expressed that he was nervous about people’s expectations and the reaction to him praying after the game.

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New Poll Suggests Democrats Could Be Overplaying Their Political Hand on Abortion on Demand

Abortion-on-demand proponents insist most Americans believe in the unfettered right to abortion.

A new poll finds a majority of Americans believe there is a limit.

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Commentary: The Left’s Relentless, Unjustified Assaults on the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy

In recent years, the Supreme Court has been the target of a relentless and strategic campaign aimed at undermining its credibility and impartiality.

Left-wing publications such as ProPublica, Slate, and The Guardian have led an orchestrated assault against the high court’s Republican-appointed justices, and their message has been amplified by Senate Democrats.

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Trump Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in Lawsuits Against Him, Citing ‘Election Interference’

Former President Donald Trump on Friday called on the Supreme Court to intervene in the numerous lawsuits against him, citing it as election interference.

“CRAZY! My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump posted on TRUTH Social.

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Commentary: Three Observations and Predictions About Affirmative Action in Universities Moving Forward

Following the recent Supreme Court decision overturning race-conscious admissions, certain sections of the media have adopted an alarmist tone, fueling doomsday predictions. Others are keen to celebrate the end of discriminatory practices that educational institutions have adopted for nearly 60 years.

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Federal Lawsuit Targets Race-Based Government Grant Decisions Alleged to Discriminate Against White and Other Business Owners

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down affirmative action in college admisssions, a San Antonio-based government program that allegedly uses race-based preferences to hand out federal grants faces a federal discrimination lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed this week by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), could spark a national re-examination of such taxpayer-funded, race-focused initiatives.

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Jan. 6 Defendant Appeals to Supreme Court in Case that Could Upend Hundreds of Riot Charges

Jan. 6 defendant Edward Jacob Lang is asking the Supreme Court to hear his challenge against one of the 11 charges he was indicted on – obstruction of an official proceeding – in a case that could upend legal proceedings against hundreds of other defendants indicted on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. 

The obstruction charge could be levied against “anyone who attends at a public demonstration gone awry,” attorneys for Lang wrote in an appeal to the Supreme Court last week. The proceeding for which the charge was brought refers to the event where Congress certifies the Electoral College votes to confirm the president.

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Despite Supreme Court Smackdown, Biden Admin Plans to Wipe $39 Billion in Student Debt

The Department of Education (DOE) announced Friday that it will automatically forgive $39 billion of student loan debt for more than 804,000 borrowers, following a recent ruling by the Supreme Court that blocked the administration’s plan to grant forgiveness to nearly 40 million Americans.

The DOE will start notifying borrowers Friday that their federal student loans “will be automatically discharged in the coming weeks,” according to a DOE press release. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that the Biden administration cannot use executive power to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for non-Pell Grant recipients and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

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Commentary: Biden Begins Shadow Loan Forgiveness Plan

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness proposal which would have forgiven $10,000-$20,000 of student loans per borrower. But the fight for student loan forgiveness isn’t going anywhere.

In a previous article for FEE, I highlighted how student loan forgiveness has already been happening and started under president Trump due to the freeze on interest accumulation. Although this may not be as visible as a $10,000 lower balance, frozen interest means the real cost of taking a loan out became smaller than the initial terms suggested.

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Commentary: Two Americas Collide at the Supreme Court

When President Biden fumed that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling is “not normal,” he spoke more truth than he may have intended. It is certainly not normal nowadays to acknowledge, even implicitly, that discrimination against whites is possible, or even wrong. The Supreme Court blasted the vaporous pretexts that elites have used to justify this invidious scheme, which has carried on indefinitely, feasting on countless dreams without satisfying a bottomless hunger of unquantifiable grievance. The sentimental and, arguably, self-serving wailing of the dissenters, particularly Justice Jackson, draws from that same source.

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Commentary: America Needs to Update Its Labor Union Laws

For years, labor unions have been exempt from the consequences of destroying private property. Would you like a higher wage or salary? Sounds good! So, how would you go about persuading your employer to give you a raise? Why not vandalize some of your employer’s property with your labor union, or at least threaten to do so unless the boss gives you the raise you want?

Let’s say you want to get hired for a certain job, but you are worried that another applicant might get the job you want. Should you slash the tires on the other person’s car and threaten to pound him with a baseball bat if he doesn’t disappear?

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Harvard Facing New Civil Rights Complaints After Affirmative Action Ruling

Following a landmark ruling from the Supreme Court effectively ending the practice of race-based preferences in college admissions, Harvard University is facing new civil rights challenges over its practice of legacy admissions.

As reported by The Hill, the Ivy League university is now facing complaints from the Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a left-wing group representing black and Hispanic groups based in the New England area. LCR’s complaint claims that “each year, Harvard College grants special preference in its admissions process to hundreds of mostly White students — not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely because of who their relatives are.”

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Judge Orders Biden Administration to Limit Contact with Social Media Platforms

A Louisiana federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Biden administration to limit its contact with social media platforms, determining that the government likely violated the First Amendment by working to censor disfavored political viewpoints online. Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointed U.S. District Court judge, issued a preliminary injunction barring federal officials and agencies from contacting social media firms to seek the removal of protected speech, Politico reported.

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U.S. Supreme Court Again Vacates Judgement Against Oregon Bakers

Aaron and Melissa Klein

For the second time, the U.S. Supreme Court has vacated a lower court decision against a Christian couple in Oregon who were punished for not making a cake for a same-sex wedding.

In an orders list release Friday, the nation’s highest court vacated the decision against Aaron and Melissa Klein in their ongoing litigation with the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries.

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Supreme Court Expands Degree to Which Businesses Must Accommodate Religious Workers

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday to expand the degree to which businesses have to accommodate workers for religious purposes.

In the case, Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, the court found that postman Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian, should not have been disciplined for refusing to work on Sundays for religious reasons. The majority opinion cited Title VII’s requirement to accommodate employees for religious purposes provided it does not cause the employer “undue hardship.”

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Supreme Court Ban on Affirmative Action Expected to Prompt ‘Workarounds’ to Favor Some Races

Two decades ago, the Supreme Court purportedly put limits on racial preferences in college admissions: no stereotyping of minority viewpoints or policies that “unduly harm” non-minorities, plus a 25-year ticking clock to wind them down.

Not only is there “no end in sight” to race-conscious admissions with five years left, but selective colleges can’t even explain how courts would evaluate the constitutionality of their programs under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, casting a pall over the use of race in settings far beyond higher education.

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Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden’s Multibillion Dollar Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

In a landmark ruling with implications for the 2024 election, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that the Biden administration does not have the authority to unilaterally cancel hundreds of billions in student loan debt. The ruling was a major rebuke of President Joe Biden’s political efforts to court young voters with large college debts, and sets a fresh battle ahead of the next presidential election. It also was the latest of several major court rulings that chided the administration for trying to impose regulatory powers that Congress did not give the executive branch.

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‘A Great Day For America’: 2024 GOP Presidential Candidates Praise SCOTUS for Affirmative Action Decision

Several 2024 Republican presidential candidates praised the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday for striking down affirmative action in college admissions via two cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

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Supreme Court Rules Against GOP in North Carolina Election Law Case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against North Carolina Republicans, who were fighting for a congressional map that would be in their favor.

The justices ruled 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett siding with the court’s three liberal members. 

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SCOTUS Holds Law Making It Illegal to ‘Encourage or Induce’ Illegal Immigration Does Not Violate First Amendment

The Supreme Court upheld a law that makes it a crime to “encourage or induce” illegal immigration, rejecting the argument that it violates the First Amendment.

The case, United States v. Hansen, stems from Helaman Hansen’s 2017 conviction for running a program advertising a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants through “adult adoption,” which earned him more $1.8 million between 2012 and 2016. Though it affirmed Hansen’s convictions on mail and wire fraud charges, the Ninth Circuit held that the law behind his two counts of encouraging or inducing non-citizens to reside in the United States for financial gain was “overbroad and unconstitutional,” covering “a substantial amount of speech protected by the First Amendment.”

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Supreme Court Sides with Biden Admin on Immigration Enforcement Plan

The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration Friday, ruling 8-1 against two states that challenged its immigration enforcement priorities.

Texas and Louisiana challenged guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security in 2021 that prioritized arresting and removing certain groups of illegal immigrants, including suspected terrorists and criminals. The Supreme Court held Friday that the two states lack standing to challenge the guidelines, noting that the states “have not cited any precedent, history, or tradition of courts ordering the Executive Branch to change its arrest or prosecution policies so that the Executive Branch makes more arrests or initiates more prosecutions.”

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Commentary: The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Race-Based Redistricting Is a Real Head-Scratcher

Chief Justice John Roberts made a major error in judgment last week in rejecting the State of Alabama’s 2022 congressional redistricting plan in Allen v. Milligan, an error that, as dissenting Justice Samuel Alito says, puts the Voting Rights Act “on a perilous and unfortunate path.”

Joined by the three liberal justices and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Roberts, writing for the majority, approved race being the driving factor in drawing up the boundary lines of political districts, while glibly denying he was doing that. That violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.

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Pollsters Shift Five House Seats Toward Dems After SCOTUS Ruling

The Cook Political Report updated the ratings of five House races across several states in 2024 on Thursday, shifting them towards Democrats after the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama’s redistricting plan.

The Court struck down Alabama’s GOP-drawn Congressional map for the 2022 midterm elections on Thursday, ruling in Allen v. Milligan that the was racially discriminatory and diluted African-American voting strength in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The decision’s implications mean that more House seats in Alabama are likely to be competitive in the 2024 election, with the Cook Political Report reflecting those changes in its ratings.

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Half of Americans Oppose Race-Based Admissions at Elite Colleges Ahead of SCOTUS Ruling: Poll

Ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of affirmative action in universities’ admissions process, 50% of Americans are opposed to the race-based method, according to a Thursday Pew Research poll.

Approximately 74% of Republicans disapprove of the use of affirmative action while 29% of Democrats also disapprove of the race-based admissions process, according to a Pew Research poll. In October, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for two lawsuits which will decide whether Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s use of race-based admission policies is constitutional.

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Supreme Court Strikes Down GOP-Drawn Alabama Congressional Map in Support of Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down an Alabama congressional district map drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in a decision that the Court’s majority says upholds the Voting Rights Act. 

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the court’s three liberals in the 5-4 ruling against Alabama. State officials will now have to redraw the congressional map to correctly reflect that the state is 27% black.

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Supreme Court Rolls Back Biden EPA’s Expansive Water Regulation

The Supreme Court rolled back the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate under the Clean Water Act (CWA) in a unanimous decision Thursday.

Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, brought by a couple prevented by the EPA from building a home on their own land near Priest Lake, Idaho because it contained wetlands, considered the scope of the agency’s “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule, which defines what “navigable waters” can be regulated under the CWA. Plaintiffs Chantell and Mike Sackett, who have spent 15 years fighting the agency’s rule in court, allege the EPA has overstepped the authority it was granted when Congress enacted the CWA in 1972—forcing them to stop construction on their land or face fines.

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Trump Vows to Reduce Abortions Through Incentivized Adoptions

Former President Donald Trump says his remaking of the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v Wade and gave pro-life activists “the upper hand” in fighting abortion, and if he returns to the White House he will focus on reducing abortions by incentivizing adoptions.

“I think it’s very important that if I win, and I hope I’m going to win, we’re winning by a lot right now, we’ll be pressing the adoption option,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview Monday night with Just the News, No Noise television show on the opening night of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention in Orlando, Fla.

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Supreme Court Shields Tech Companies from Liability for Terrorist Content

The Supreme Court unanimously sided with tech companies Thursday in two cases that charged them with “aiding and abetting” terrorism, declining to address a heated question on the extent of immunity granted to social media platforms for content hosted on their website.

Justice Clarence Thomas authored the majority opinion in Twitter v. Taamneh, a lawsuit brought by the family of a Jordanian citizen, Nawras Alassaf, who was killed in the January 2017 ISIS attack at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey. Thomas wrote that “plaintiffs’ allegations are insufficient to establish that these defendants aided and abetted ISIS in carrying out the relevant attack.”

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Universities Seek Ways to Skirt the Supreme Court’s Likely Ban on Race-Based Admissions

Universities are searching for ways to maintain racial quotas ahead of a likely Supreme Court decision blocking affirmative action.

With the Supreme Court soon to issue a ruling in a pair of cases questioning the constitutionality of affirmative action, which multiple justices appeared ready to rule against during oral arguments, universities are developing plans to maintain the current racial composition of their student bodies without explicitly using racial preferences in the admissions process. Schools have floated ideas such as making testing optional, giving greater weight to students’ socio-economic backgrounds and recruiting based on geographic area.

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Supreme Court Upholds California Law, Rejects Challenge Brought by Pork Industry

“Products may be marketed as free range, wild caught, or graded by quality (prime, choice, select, and beyond). The pork products at issue here, too, sometimes come with “antibiotic-free” and “crate-free” labels…Much of this product differentiation reflects consumer demand, informed by individual taste, health, or moral considerations. Informed by similar concerns, States (and their predecessors) have long enacted laws aimed at protecting animal welfare.” 

This is the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Thursday’s  ruling which upheld a California law banning the sale of pork products in California that didn’t meet the state’s requirements. 

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Appeals Court Guts Religious Accommodations for Teachers That SCOTUS May Soon Strengthen: Lawyers

A week before the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could force employers to more freely grant religious accommodations, a federal appeals court determined that calling all students by their last names for the sake of religious conscience was a fireable offense.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month that Indiana’s Brownsburg Community Schools Corp. had a “legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason” for firing music teacher John Kluge: He caused “emotional harm” and disrupted the learning environment by not addressing transgender students by preferred names and pronouns.

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Supreme Court Maintains Broad Access to Abortion Pill, Pending Litigation

The Supreme Court on Friday opted to preserve access to mifepristone while a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug makes its way through the courts. The Biden administration and mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories had appealed to the court for relief. The court did not decide on the merits of the case, which will continue through the court system, the Associated Press reported.

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Trump Asks NRA Members for Their Votes to End the Radical, Gun Control Left’s Reign

Reminding gun owners what he did for the protection of the Second Amendment and pledging to do much more, former President Donald Trump closed the National Rifle Association’s main event Friday with a stemwinder that brought the crowd to its feet. 

In a full-on campaign speech, the Republican presidential frontrunner told those assembled at the NRA-Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum that he was running for another term to right the ship listing from “nation-wrecking, globalist marxists, RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and tyrants.” 

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DOJ to Ask Supreme Court to Intervene in Abortion Pills Case

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking the Supreme Court to intervene in the Texas abortion pills case, it announced Thursday.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said Thursday that the DOJ “strongly disagrees with the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA.” On Wednesday night, the Fifth Circuit granted in part the government’s emergency motion for a stay pending appeal on a federal judge’s decision to suspend U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the abortion pill, allowing the suspension on relaxed rules introduced by the FDA after 2016 to stand.

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Supreme Court Rules Deaf Michigan Student Can Sue School for Damages

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a deaf former student can pursue monetary damages against a Michigan school district that allegedly failed to provide an adequate education. 

Nine-year-old Miguel Perez, the plaintiff, left Mexico with his family and enrolled at Sturgis Public School District in 2004. Perez was assigned to a classroom aide and was never given a sign language interpreter – only aides who were either unqualified or absent.

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House Bill Would Block Biden’s Student Loan Bailout

While the constitutionality of President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout is awaiting a Supreme Court decision, a bill re-introduced by two House members would block the Biden administration from canceling student loan debt on a mass scale. 

The Student Loan Accountability Act, authored by U.S. Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) and Drew Ferguson (R-GA-03) would also prevent forgiven loans from getting an additional tax break and it would bar the Internal Revenue Service from sharing American’s tax information for the purpose of implementing mass loan cancelation. 

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Commentary: Student Debt Forgiveness Won’t Cure Higher Education’s Ills

On February 28th, the Supreme Court heard arguments on President Biden’s plan to extinguish an estimated $400 billion in student debt. Biden deserves credit for highlighting a debilitating federal program in desperate need of reform. His proposal, however, would make the problem far worse, not better. Any serious reform would force academic institutions to take some responsibility for the education they provide—and to show some responsibility to the many young Americans they induce to go deeply into debt. 

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Supreme Court Justices Raise Concerns About Biden’s Ability to Forgive Student Debt

 The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt.

Biden announced in August of last year that his administration would “forgive” $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 per year or $250,000 for married couples. Debtors who borrowed money before July 1 can qualify. 

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Big Tech Faces Potential Reckoning at Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a landmark case that could see every major social media platform become liable for harmful content on their websites, changing the game forever when it comes to legal protections for such companies.

As reported by Politico, the case Gonzalez v. Google is centered around the family of a woman who was killed in the Paris terrorist attacks in November of 2015. Her family claims that the video-sharing platform YouTube, which is owned by Google, should be held liable for allowing pro-ISIS propaganda videos to be hosted on the site, which the family claims helped radicalize one of the attackers.

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Supreme Court Cancels Arguments for Health Measure Limiting Illegal Immigration

The Supreme Court has removed arguments from its calendar for a highly anticipated case on Title 42, a COVID-19 public health measure allowing Border Patrol to quickly expel some illegal aliens. The case was going to be heard March 1.   

The Supreme Court announced Thursday that the case had been removed from its argument calendar. The high court did not provide an explanation as to why the justices would no longer hear arguments for the case, but it seems likely related to the Biden administration’s plan to officially end the COVID-19 public health emergency on May 11.

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Commentary: After Affirmative Action

The betting odds are that the Supreme Court will soon rule against affirmative action. It is worth asking how we got here, and what we should do about it.

Why is affirmative action in jeopardy? The main reason, ironically, might be the increasing ethnic diversity of the United States. In 1960, the U.S. was roughly 88% white and 12% black. The census category “Hispanic” did not yet exist. Similarly, the U.S. did not have a separate “Asian” category for the less than one million Americans from various nations in Asia, though the 1960 census had separate boxes for some, but not all, Asian countries. Today the U.S. is 61% white and dropping. Among American children, the white/nonwhite population is rapidly approaching 50-50.

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Biden Administration to End Title 42 in May

On Tuesday, the Biden Administration told the Supreme Court that it still fully intends to end the Title 42 public health rule that heavily limited immigration during the presidency of Donald Trump.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar revealed in a filing to the court that the administration will formally allow Title 42 to expire in May, around the same time the White House will let the nationwide public health emergency status over COVID-19 end as well.

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