Tag Archives: Judge

Judge refuses to remove block on Trump sanctuary city order

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a "Made in America" event on pharmaceutical glass manufacturing at the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

By Dan Levine

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday refused to revisit a court order that blocks President Donald Trump’s administration from carrying out a policy designed to threaten the granting of federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco ruled that a recent memo from the Justice Department that appeared to narrow the scope of Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities did not remove the need for a court-ordered injunction.

Orrick wrote that the memo is not binding and the attorney general can revoke it at any time.

A Justice Department spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Trump issued the order in January, shortly after he was inaugurated, directing that funding be slashed to all jurisdictions that refuse to comply with a statute that requires local governments to share information with U.S. immigration authorities.

Sanctuary cities generally offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to enforce federal immigration laws. Dozens of local governments and cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have joined the growing “sanctuary” movement.

The Trump administration contends that local authorities endanger public safety when they decline to hand over for deportation illegal immigrants arrested for crimes.

After Trump issued the sanctuary cities executive order, California’s Santa Clara County – which includes the city of San Jose and several smaller Silicon Valley communities – sued, saying it was unconstitutional. San Francisco filed a similar lawsuit.

In a ruling in April, Orrick said Trump’s order targeted broad categories of federal funding for sanctuary governments and that plaintiffs challenging the order were likely to succeed in proving it unconstitutional.

The Justice Department asked Orrick to revisit that ruling, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo which said the only funds the government intended to withhold were certain grants tied to law enforcement programs.

Orrick voiced skepticism at a hearing earlier this month.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Leslie Adler)

U.S. judge unlikely to remove block on Trump sanctuary city order

U.S. President Donald Trump salutes on the South Lawn of the White House upon his return to Washington, U.S., from the G20 Summit in Hamburg, July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday said he was “very much inclined” to maintain a court order that blocks President Donald Trump’s administration from carrying out a policy designed to threaten federal funds to so-called sanctuary cities.

At a hearing in San Francisco federal court, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III said a recent memo from the Justice Department that appeared to narrow the scope of Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities did not remove the need for an injunction.

Trump issued the order in January directing that funding be slashed to all jurisdictions that refuse to comply with a statute that requires local governments to share information with immigration authorities.

Sanctuary cities generally offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to enforce of federal immigration laws. Dozens of local governments and cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have joined the growing “sanctuary” movement.

The Trump administration contends that local authorities endanger public safety when they decline to hand over for deportation illegal immigrants arrested for crimes.

The Republican president’s moves to crack down on immigration have galvanized legal advocacy groups, along with Democratic city and state governments, to oppose them in court.

After Trump issued the sanctuary cities executive order earlier this year, Santa Clara County – which includes the city of San Jose and several smaller Silicon Valley communities – sued, saying it was unconstitutional. San Francisco filed a similar lawsuit.

In a ruling in April, Orrick said Trump’s order targeted broad categories of federal funding for sanctuary governments and that plaintiffs challenging the order were likely to succeed in proving it unconstitutional.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions then issued a memo which formally endorsed a narrower interpretation of Trump’s order, saying that the only funds the government intended to withhold were certain grants tied to law enforcement programs.

In court on Wednesday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said the Sessions memo meant less than a million dollars were now at risk for Santa Clara County and San Francisco, so the injunction was no longer needed.

But Orrick said an injunction was still necessary because Trump could always order Sessions to issue new, broader guidance.

“The attorney general still has the ability to change that memo,” Orrick said.

The judge said he would also likely reject a Justice Department request to dismiss other claims by Santa Clara and San Francisco.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. judge halts deportation of Iraqis nationwide

FILE PHOTO: Protesters rally outside the federal court just before a hearing to consider a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Iraqi nationals facing deportation, in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

By Steve Friess

DETROIT (Reuters) – A federal judge halted late on Monday the deportation of all Iraqi nationals detained during immigration sweeps across the United States this month until at least July 10, expanding a stay he imposed last week.

The stay had initially only protected 114 detainees from the Detroit area.

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith sided with lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union who filed an amended complaint on Saturday seeking to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting Iraqis from anywhere in the United States.

The ACLU argued those being deported could face persecution, torture, or death because many were Chaldean Catholics, Sunni Muslims, or Iraqi Kurds and that the groups were recognized as targets of ill-treatment in Iraq.

Goldsmith agreed with the ACLU on the grave consequences deportees may face, writing in his seven-page opinion and order that: “Such harm far outweighs any interest the Government may have in proceeding with the removals immediately.”

On Thursday, Goldsmith ordered a stay in the Michigan Iraqis’ deportation for at least two weeks while he decided whether he had jurisdiction over the merits of deporting immigrants who could face physical danger in their countries of origin.

He expanded his stay on Monday to the broader class of Iraqi nationals nationwide, saying it applies to the removal of all Iraqi nationals in the United States with final orders of removal who have been or will be detained by ICE.

There are 1,444 Iraqi nationals who have final deportation orders against them, although only 199 of them were detained as part of a nationwide sweep by immigration authorities, federal prosecutors said in court on Monday.

Those detained had convictions for serious crimes, including rape and kidnapping, ICE said.

Goldsmith also said his stays were designed to give detainees time to find legal representation to appeal against their deportation orders, and to give him time to weigh the question of his jurisdiction.

Daniel Lemisch, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, called the opinion “highly extraordinary.”

“But it’s a very extraordinary circumstance because of the on-the-ground situation in Iraq,” Lemisch said by phone, referring to the danger faced by possible deportees.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt praised the ruling for saying that “the lives of these individuals should not depend on what part of the United States they reside and whether they could find a lawyer to file a federal court action.”

Goldsmith’s order came the same day the U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to President Donald Trump by reviving parts of a travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries.

The roundup in Michigan followed Iraq’s agreement to accept deportees as part of a deal that removed the country from Trump’s revised temporary travel ban.

Some of those affected came to the United States as children and committed their crimes decades ago, but they had been allowed to stay because Iraq previously declined to issue travel documents for them.

That changed after the two governments came to the agreement in March.

(Reporting by Steve Friess in Detroit; Editing by Eric M. Johnson, Bill Trott and Paul Tait)

Judge in Michigan blocks deportation of 100 Iraqis

Protesters rally outside the federal court just before a hearing to consider a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Iraqi nationals facing deportation, in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

By Dan Levine

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the deportation of about 100 Iraqi nationals rounded up in Michigan in recent weeks who argued that they could face persecution or torture in Iraq because they are religious minorities.

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith in Michigan issued an order staying the deportation of the Iraqis for at least two weeks as he decides whether he has jurisdiction over the matter. Goldsmith said it was unclear whether the Iraqis would ultimately succeed.

The arrests shocked the close-knit Iraqi community in Michigan. Six Michigan lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives urged the government to hold off on the removals until Congress can be given assurances about the deportees’ safety.

The Michigan arrests were part of a coordinated sweep in recent weeks by immigration authorities who detained about 199 Iraqi immigrants around the country. They had final deportation orders and convictions for serious crimes.

The roundup followed Iraq’s agreement to accept deportees as part of a deal that removed the country from President Donald Trump’s revised temporary travel ban.

Some of those affected came to the United States as children and committed their crimes decades ago, but they had been allowed to stay because Iraq previously declined to issue travel documents for them. That changed after the two governments came to the agreement in March.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment on the ruling.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union representing the Iraqis in Michigan, said: “The court’s action today was legally correct and may very well have saved numerous people from abuse and possible death.”

The U.S. government has argued that the district court does not have jurisdiction over the case. Only immigration courts can decide deportation issues, which can then only be reviewed by an appeals court, it said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said that people with convictions for murder, rape, assault, kidnapping, burglary and drugs and weapons charges were among the Iraqis arrested nationwide.

The ACLU argued that many of those affected in Michigan are Chaldean Catholics who are “widely recognized as targets of brutal persecution in Iraq.”

Some Kurdish Iraqis were also picked up in Nashville, Tennessee. In a letter on Thursday, Tennessee Representative Jim Cooper, a Democrat, asked the Iraqi ambassador whether Iraq would be able to ensure safe passage for them if they were returned.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco and Eric Walsh in Washington; Editing by David Alexander and Cynthia Osterman)

U.S. judge finds Texas voter ID law was intended to discriminate

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – A Texas law that requires voters to show identification before casting ballots was enacted with the intent to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters, a U.S. federal judge ruled on Monday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos came after an appeals court last year said the 2011 law had an outsized impact on minority voters. The court sent the case back to Ramos to determine if lawmakers intentionally wrote the legislation to be discriminatory.

Ramos said in a 10-page decision that evidence “establishes that a discriminatory purpose was at least one of the substantial or motivating factors behind passage” of the measure.

“The terms of the bill were unduly strict,” she added.

Spokesmen for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Jr. and Governor Greg Abbott, both Republicans, could not be reached for comment.

In January, after the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, Paxton said it was a common sense law to prevent voter fraud.

The ruling on voter ID comes about a month after two federal judges ruled that Texas lawmakers drew up three U.S. congressional districts to undermine the influence of Hispanic voters.

The measure requires voters to present photo identification such as a driver’s license, passport or military ID card.

Plaintiffs have argued the law hits elderly and poorer voters, including minorities, hardest because they are less likely to have identification. They contend the measure is used by Republicans to suppress voters who typically align with Democrats.

The legislation has been in effect since 2011 despite the legal challenges.

Ramos said the law had met criteria set by the U.S. Supreme Court to show intent that included its discriminatory impact, a pattern not explainable on other than racial grounds, Texas’ history of discriminatory practices and the law’s unusually swift passage.

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the plaintiffs, said the ruling showed other states that discriminatory laws would not stand up to legal scrutiny.

“This is a good ruling that confirms what we have long known, that Texas’ voter ID law stands as one of the most discriminatory voting restrictions of its kind,” she said.

In a shift from its stance under former President Barack Obama, the U.S. Justice Department dropped a discrimination claim against the law in February. The department said that the state legislature was considering changing the law in ways that might correct shortcomings.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. judge orders Florida nightclub shooter’s widow to remain in jail

File Photo: Investigators work the scene following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando Florida, U.S. June 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – The widow of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida must remain in jail after prosecutors argued that she was a threat to the community and a flight risk, a U.S. judge on Thursday ordered.

The federal judge in Florida stayed another judge’s order issued on Wednesday that would have released Noor Salman, 30, from a California jail. He put the release order on hold pending further arguments in the case.

Salman was arrested in California in January on federal charges she knew before the June 2016 shootings in Orlando that her husband, Omar Mateen, was planning the attack and concocted a cover story for him.

U.S. District Judge Paul Byron in Orlando ordered Salman detained and set a Wednesday deadline for her lawyers to respond to prosecutors’ arguments that she should be jailed pending her trial in Florida.

Salman is charged with obstructing justice and aiding Mateen in his attempt to provide material support to the Islamic State militant group.

Prosecutors argued in a motion that the seriousness of the charge related to the Islamic State meant Salman should be kept in jail.

“No pretrial release condition or combination of conditions may be imposed to reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance as required or the safety of the community,” they said.

They also said that Salman was a flight risk since she was unemployed and had moved to California, where she has relatives, and had almost no ties to Florida. Her family also owns property in the Middle East, they said.

Charles Swift, Salman’s lawyer, said Byron’s order keeping Salman jailed pending the filing of more motions was routine. “It’s standard,” he said in a telephone interview.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu on Wednesday had cleared the way for Salman’s release and appeared throw doubt on the government’s case against her.

Ryu had ordered her to live with her uncle in Rodeo, California, undergo GPS monitoring and leave home only for court and medical appointments. She set a $500,000 bond.

Mateen was killed in a shootout with police after a standoff at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub and carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Before the shooting he called 911 and swore allegiance to the Islamic State.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. judge blocks Texas plan to cut Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds

FILE PHOTO - Planned Parenthood South Austin Health Center is seen in Austin, Texas, U.S. on June 27, 2016. REUTERS/Ilana Panich-Linsman/File Photo

By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A U.S. judge in Austin issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday halting Texas’ plan to cut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, saying the state did not present evidence of a program violation that would warrant termination.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said state health officials “likely acted to disenroll qualified health care providers from Medicaid without cause.” He said the preliminary injunction will preserve the court’s ability to render a meaningful decision on the case’s merits.

“Such action would deprive Medicaid patients of their statutory right to obtain health care from their chosen qualified provider,” wrote the judge who was appointed by Republican former President George H.W. Bush.

The reproductive healthcare group has said the threatened funding cut, by terminating Planned Parenthood’s enrollment in the state-funded healthcare system for the poor, could affect nearly 11,000 patients across Texas as they try to access services such as HIV and cancer screenings.

Texas and several other Republican-controlled states have pushed to cut the organization’s funding since an anti-abortion group released videos it said showed Planned Parenthood officials negotiating prices for fetal tissue collected from abortions.

Texas investigated Planned Parenthood over the videos and a grand jury last January cleared it of any wrongdoing. The grand jury indicted two anti-abortion activists who made the videos for document fraud but the charges were dismissed.

The state took no further criminal action against Planned Parenthood after that but has repeated its accusations that the abortion provider may have violated state law.

Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing and sued the anti-abortion activists who made the videos.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office would appeal.

“Today’s decision is disappointing and flies in the face of basic human decency,” he said in a statement.

In fiscal 2015, Planned Parenthood affiliates across Texas received about $4.2 million in Medicaid funding, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission said. Planned Parenthood said the amount for 2016 was estimated at around $3 million.

None of the money that the group received went for abortions, plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Texas and the Medicaid defunding plan have said.

Planned Parenthood has 34 health centers in Texas, serving more than 120,000 patients, 11,000 of whom are Medicaid patients, it said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Grant McCool and James Dalgleish)

Legal battles to test Trump and his immigration ban

Protesters against travel ban

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s temporary immigration ban faced on Monday the first of several crucial legal hurdles that could determine whether he can push through the most controversial and far reaching policy of his first two weeks in office.

The government has a deadline to justify the executive order temporarily barring entry of people from seven mostly Muslim countries and the entry of refugees after a federal judge in Seattle blocked it with a temporary restraining order on Friday.

The uncertainty caused by a judge’s stay of the ban has opened a window for travelers from the seven affected countries to enter the United States.

Trump has reacted with attacks on the federal judge and then the wider court system which he blames for hampering his efforts to restrict immigration, a central promise of the Republican’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Democrats, meanwhile, sought to use Trump’s attacks on the judiciary to raise questions about the independence of his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco over the weekend denied the Trump administration’s request for an immediate stay of the federal judge’s temporary restraining order that blocked nationwide the implementation of key parts of the travel ban.

But the court said it would consider the government’s request after receiving more information.

The government has until 3 p.m. PST (2300 GMT) on Monday to submit additional legal briefs to the appeals court justifying Trump’s executive order. Following that the court is expected to act quickly, and a decision either way may ultimately result in the case reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

Top technology giants, including Apple, Google and Microsoft banded together with nearly 100 companies on Sunday to file a legal brief opposing Trump’s immigration ban, arguing that it “inflicts significant harm on American business.”

Noting that “immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list,” the brief said Trump’s order “represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years.”

The controversial executive order also “inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result,” the brief added.

Trump, who during his campaign called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, has repeatedly vowed to reinstate the Jan. 27 travel ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day bar on all refugees in the name of protecting the United States from Islamist militants.

His critics have said the measures are discriminatory, unhelpful and legally dubious.

Ten former U.S. national security and foreign policy officials, who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, filed overnight a declaration in the court case against the executive order arguing the ban serves no national security purposes.

The declaration was signed by former secretaries of state including John Kerry, Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice and former CIA Directors Michael Hayden and Michael Morell.

Bob Ferguson, the Washington State attorney general who filed the Seattle lawsuit, said he was confident of victory.

“We have a checks and balance system in our country, and the president does not have totally unfettered discretion to make executive orders as he chooses,” he told NBC News’ “Today” show. “In the courtroom, it’s not the loudest voice that prevails… it’s the Constitution.”

On Sunday, Trump broadened his Twitter attacks on U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, who issued the temporary stay on Friday, to include the “court system.” Trump a day earlier derided Robart, who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, as a “so-called judge.”

“Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “If something happens blame him and court system.”

Trump did not elaborate on what threats the country potentially faced.

It is unusual for a sitting president to attack a member of the judiciary. Vice President Mike Pence defended Trump, even as other Republicans urged the businessman-turned-politician to avoid firing such fusillades against the co-equal judicial branch of government, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check on the power of the presidency and Congress.

Democrats, still smarting from Republicans’ refusal last year to allow the Senate to consider former Democratic President Barack Obama’s nomination of appeals court Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, have seized on Trump’s attacks to question his nomination last week of Gorsuch.

“With each action testing the Constitution, and each personal attack on a judge, President Trump raises the bar even higher for Judge Gorsuch’s nomination to serve on the Supreme Court,” Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said in a statement. “His ability to be an independent check will be front and center throughout the confirmation process.”

Republicans hope to swiftly confirm Gorsuch, a 49-year-old conservative appeals court judge tapped by Trump to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia nearly a year ago.

(Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chizu Nomiyama)

Trump picks conservative judge Gorsuch for U.S. Supreme Court

By Lawrence Hurley and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Neil Gorsuch for a lifetime job on the U.S. Supreme Court, picking the 49-year-old federal appeals court judge to restore the court’s conservative majority and help shape rulings on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, the death penalty and religious rights.

The Colorado native faces a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the U.S. Senate after Republicans last year refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the February 2016 death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

Gorsuch is the youngest nominee to the nation’s highest court in more than a quarter century, and he could influence the direction of the court for decades.

Announcing the selection at the White House flanked by the judge and his wife, Trump said Gorsuch’s resume is “as good as it gets.” Trump said he hopes Republicans and Democrats can come together on this nomination for the good of the country.

“Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous disciple, and has earned bipartisan support,” Trump said.

“Depending on their age, a justice can be active for 50 years. And his or her decisions can last a century or more, and can often be permanent,” Trump added.

Gorsuch is a judge on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and was appointed to that post by Republican President George W. Bush in 2006.

Some Democrats in the U.S. Senate, which votes on whether to confirm judicial nominees, have already said they would seek to block whoever Trump nominates.

Gorsuch is considered a conservative intellectual, known for backing religious rights, and is seen as very much in the mold of Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the court for decades.

“I respect … the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws,” Gorsuch said, as Trump looked on. “It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.”

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the choice of Gorsuch was seen by the White House as a significant departure from Supreme Court nominations from the recent past, given that many justices have come from the eastern United States. Gorsuch lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he raises horses and is a life-long outdoorsman.

The official described Gorsuch as a mainstream judge who should easily be confirmed by the Senate. The official noted that the Senate confirmed him for his current judgeship in 2006 by voice vote with no one voting against him.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said that “the Senate owes the American people a thorough and unsparing examination of this nomination,” saying Trump “outsourced this process to far-right interest groups.”

The liberal advocacy group People for the American Way immediately opposed the nomination, with its president, Michael Keegan, describing Gorsuch as an “ideological warrior who puts his own right-wing politics above the Constitution.”

The administration official said the White House feels Gorsuch has the qualities that Democratic senators said they wanted to see in a justice during visits with senior Trump officials about filling the vacancy.

“He plays it straight. He sticks to principles, and his opinions reflect a consistency regardless of who is in his courtroom,” the official said of Gorsuch.

Trump made his choice between two U.S. appeals court judges, Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a source involved in the selection process.

Gorsuch became the youngest U.S. Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 selected conservative Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time.

He is the son of Anne Burford, the first woman to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She served in Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration but resigned in 1983 amid a fight with Congress over documents on the EPA’s use of a fund created to clean up toxic waste dumps nationwide.

Trump’s selection was one of the most consequential appointments of his young presidency as he moved to restore a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that had been in place for decades until Scalia died at age 79 on Feb. 13, 2016.

Trump, who took office on Jan. 20, got the opportunity to name Scalia’s replacement only because the Republican-led U.S. Senate, in an action with little precedent in U.S. history, refused to consider Obama’s nominee for the post, appeals court judge Merrick Garland. Obama nominated Garland on March 16 but Republican senators led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denied Garland the customary confirmation hearings and vote.

Trump has said his promise to appoint a conservative justice was one of the reasons he won the Nov. 8 presidential election, with Christian conservatives and others emphasizing the importance of the pick during the campaign. Trump last week said evangelical Christians would love his nominee.

Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate. The minority Democrats, irate over Garland’s rebuff, potentially could try to block the nomination with procedural hurdles.

The new appointee would expand the court’s conservative wing, made up of John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Kennedy long has been considered the court’s pivotal vote, sometimes siding with the liberals in key cases such as the June 2016 ruling striking down abortion restrictions in Texas.

The court’s restored conservative majority likely would be supportive toward the death penalty and gun rights and hostile toward campaign finance limits. Scalia’s replacement also could be pivotal in cases involving abortion, religious rights, presidential powers, transgender rights, voting rights, federal regulations others.

Gorsuch has strong academic qualifications, with an Ivy League education: attending Columbia University and, like several of the other justices on the court, Harvard Law School. He also completed a doctorate in legal philosophy at Oxford University, spent several years in private practice and worked in George W. Bush’s Justice Department.

Gorsuch joined an opinion in 2013 saying that owners of private companies could object on religious grounds to a provision of the Obamacare health insurance law requiring employers to provide coverage for birth control for women.

As long as Kennedy and four liberals remain on the bench, the court is not expected to pare back abortion rights as many U.S. conservatives fervently hope. The Supreme Court legalized abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In June, the justices ruled 5-3 to strike down a Texas law that restricted abortion access, with Kennedy and the liberals in the majority.

The current vacancy is the court’s longest since a 391-day void from 1969 to 1970 during Republican Richard Nixon’s presidency. After Abe Fortas resigned from the court in May 1969, the Senate voted down two nominees put forward by Nixon before confirming Harry Blackmun, who became a justice in June 1970. Aside from that one, no other Supreme Court vacancy since the U.S. Civil War years of the 1860s has been as long as the current one.

Some Democrats have threatened to pursue a procedural hurdle called a filibuster, meaning 60 votes would be needed in the 100-seat Senate unless its long-standing rules are changed. Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 52-48 majority, meaning some Democratic votes would be needed to confirm his pick.

Trump said last week he would favor Senate Republicans eliminating the filibuster, a change dubbed the “nuclear option,” for Supreme Court nominees if Democrats block his pick.

Trump during his presidency may get to make additional appointments to the Supreme Court. Liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Trump called upon to resign last July after she called him “a faker,” is 83 while Kennedy is 80. Stephen Breyer, another liberal, is 78.

If any of those three is replaced by a Trump appointee, conservatives would be eager to bring cases challenging the Roe v. Wade ruling in the hope it would be overturned, long a goal for many Christian conservatives.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Chung, Richard Cowan, Susan Heavey, Ayesha Rascoe and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Alistair Bell and Will Dunham; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)

Judge Refuses To Delay Boston Bomber Trial

A judge on Wednesday denied attempts by lawyers for the Boston Marathon terrorism suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to delay the start of his trial.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole, Jr. means that jury selection will begin Monday in Boston federal court.

Lawyers for Tsarnaev tried to make the case that it would impossible to find an impartial jury in Massachusetts because of the amount of publicity given to the case.  They also said they needed more time to examine the large amounts of discovery turned over my prosecutors.

The lawyers tried to use the example of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh whose trial was moved to Denver because of media attention.

Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges that could bring the death penalty if he is convicted.

Jury selection in the case is expected to take weeks because of the intense media coverage and the number of local residents impacted in some way because of the bombings.  Also, jurors who object to the death penalty could also be excluded from the case.