U.S. Supreme Court blocks Biden vaccine-or-test policy for large businesses

Proverbs 29:2 When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked President Joe Biden’s pandemic-related vaccination-or-testing mandate for large businesses at a time of escalating COVID-19 infections while allowing his administration to enforce its separate vaccine requirement for healthcare facilities.

The court acted after hearing arguments last Friday in the legal fight over temporary mandates issued in November by two federal agencies aimed at increasing U.S. vaccination rates and making workplaces and healthcare settings safer. The cases tested presidential powers to address a swelling public health crisis that already has killed more than 845,000 Americans.

The court was divided in both cases. It ruled 6-3 with the six conservative justices in the majority and three liberal justices dissenting in blocking the broader workplace ruling. The vote was 5-4 to allow the healthcare worker rule, with two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joining the liberals in the majority.

The federal workplace safety agency issued a rule affecting businesses with at least 100 workers requiring vaccines or weekly COVID-19 tests – a policy applying to more than 80 million employees. Challengers led by the state of Ohio and a business group asked the justices to block the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rule after a lower court lifted an injunction against it. Companies were supposed to start showing they were in compliance starting this past Monday.

The other mandate required vaccination for an estimated 10.3 million workers at about 76,000 healthcare facilities including hospitals and nursing homes that accept money from the Medicare and Medicaid government health insurance programs for elderly, disabled and low-income Americans.

The court’s unsigned ruling regarding larger businesses said that the OSHA rule was not an ordinary use of federal power.

“It is instead a significant encroachment on the lives – and health – of a vast number of employees,” the court said.

The court’s majority downplayed the risk COVID-19 specifically poses in the workplace, comparing it instead to “day-to-day” crime and pollution hazards that individuals face everywhere.

“Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life -simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock – would significantly expand OSHA’s regulatory authority without clear congressional authorization,” the court said.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote on behalf of the liberal justices that the decision “stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID-19 poses to our nation’s workers.”

The United States leads the world in COVID-19 deaths and infections.

The high court blocked a Dec. 17 decision by the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had allowed the mandate to go into effect.

The court’s order blocking enforcement while litigation continues in a lower court likely signals doom for the administration’s attempt to boost vaccination numbers by harnessing federal powers to protect workplace health and safety.

‘DO NO HARM’

In the healthcare facilities case, the court’s differently comprised majority concluded that the regulation “fits neatly” within the power Congress conferred on the government to impose conditions on Medicaid and Medicare funds, which includes policies that protect health and safety.

“After all, ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm,” the court said.

The justices lifted orders by federal judges in Missouri and Louisiana blocking the policy in 24 states, allowing the administration to enforce it nearly nationwide. Enforcement was blocked in Texas by a lower court in separate litigation not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court.

Workers must be vaccinated by the end of February under the mandate.

The White House has said the two mandates will save lives and strengthen the U.S. economy by increasing the number of vaccinated Americans by the millions. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that the pandemic poses a particularly acute workplace danger, with employees getting sick and dying every day because of their exposure to the coronavirus on the job, with outbreaks across all industries.

The challengers argued that the two federal agencies overstepped their authority in issuing the mandates without specific authorization by Congress.

The Supreme Court’s consideration of the challenges to the mandates underscored how divisive the issue of vaccination has become in the United States, as in many nations. Many Republicans have been critical of vaccine mandates imposed by governments and businesses.

The pandemic has presented an ongoing test for Biden since he took office in January 2021, having promised to improve the federal response to the crisis after an approach by his predecessor Donald Trump that critics called disjointed. But like many other countries the United States is still struggling to overcome the pandemic and is facing an upswing in COVID-19 cases driven by the fast-spreading Omicron coronavirus variant.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Analysis: Texas abortion law opens door to copycat curbs on guns, other rights

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to leave in place a Texas law banning most abortions has opened the door for states to seek to restrict other rights including guns by copying the measure’s novel enforcement mechanism, though it remains to be seen how many will actually do it.

The Republican-backed Texas law takes enforcement away from state officials, instead empowering private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in obtaining an abortion after embryo cardiac activity is detected – at about six weeks of pregnancy – with awards of at least $10,000 for successful lawsuits. The Supreme Court issued its ruling on Friday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said the next day that he directed his staff to work with legislators and the state’s attorney general on a bill that would similarly enable private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes or sells assault weapons or self-assembled “ghost guns,” also with at least $10,000 in damages.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, another Democrat, said in an appearance on Tuesday on ABC’s program “The View” that she would support a similar effort in her state.

“We need to follow his lead,” James said, referring to Newsom.

President Joe Biden has urged the U.S. Congress to pass national gun restrictions, but Democratic-backed legislation over the years has been stymied by Republican opposition.

Legislators in five other Republican-led states have introduced abortion bills modeled on the Texas law, similarly structured to avoid judicial review, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group favoring abortion rights. None have yet been enacted.

The Texas law, known formally as S.B. 8, was designed to be difficult for courts to block because it removed state officials from enforcement, making it is hard for challengers to figure out who to sue and obtain a ruling that would halt it statewide. The Supreme Court largely accepted that construct while allowing abortion providers to proceed with a legal challenge aimed at some medical licensing officials.

‘A BIT OF AN INVITATION’

Critics have said that ruling would allow states to enact laws that circumvent other recognized rights such as LGBT and religious rights as well as guns.

“The court is not pushing back on the use of S.B. 8-style laws to infringe constitutionally protected rights. I do think this is a bit of an invitation to other states,” said David Noll, a professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey.

States seeking to roll back abortion rights may in the near future not need to resort to novel mechanisms like the Texas law to avoid running afoul of Supreme Court precedent on abortion. The conservative justices who hold a 6-3 majority on the court indicated during oral arguments on Dec. 1 in a case from Mississippi that they are willing to undercut or even overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

In Illinois, one Democratic legislator has proposed targeting gun dealers with a measure similar to the one California is discussing. National gun control activists sound noncommittal.

Stacey Radnor, a spokesperson for the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement that Newsom’s proposal is “an interesting approach that we’re going to examine further as we get more details.”

Groups favoring gun rights have called Newsom’s announcement a stunt, pointing out that California already has a law banning military-style assault weapons.

“If they really wanted to be the full-blown aggressive so-and-sos that Texas has been, they would ban handguns,” said Erik Jaffe, a lawyer who filed a brief at the Supreme Court on behalf of the Firearms Policy Coalition gun rights group that has been critical of the Texas law, said of California.

Jaffe said Newsom, who in September survived a recall election, “might not survive the political fallout” of such a measure.

James White, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives who supports the state’s abortion law, questioned in a letter to the state’s attorney general whether private individuals are bound by the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide. But White said in an interview he does not anticipate a state law similar to the abortion law targeting the rights of same-sex couples.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that who people decide to get married to is left to their discretion. I don’t know how you would get into civil litigation,” White said.

Advocacy groups for LGBT people said they have not heard of any such proposals.

“I have not, and I hope I never do,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, adding that any such measures could run into other legal problems because they would be unlawfully discriminatory.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

Arizona asks U.S. Supreme Court to allow abortion restriction

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The state of Arizona on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow a Republican-backed law that bans abortions performed due to fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome to go into effect.

The emergency request to the justices, made by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, seeks to block part of a September ruling by a federal judge in the state that put the newly enacted measure on hold.

The Arizona Medical Association physicians’ group and abortion rights advocates were among those filing suit after Arizona Governor Doug Ducey in April signed into law the measure banning abortions performed strictly on the basis of genetic disorders detected in the fetus, such as Down syndrome or cystic fibrosis, unless the condition is considered lethal.

It is one of a series of Republican-backed abortion restrictions pursued at the state level in recent years.

Brnovich has asked the high court to allow the provision to go into effect while litigation continues on the appeal.

His request reaches the conservative-majority court as the justices weigh another major abortion case from Mississippi that could lead to the overturning of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide. Such a move would make it easier for states to impose restrictions on abortion or possibly ban it entirely.

Mississippi’s law, blocked by lower courts, bans abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy. The conservative justices during arguments on Dec. 1 indicated sympathy toward Mississippi’s law and potential support for overturning Roe.

In another case, the Supreme Court last Friday left in place a Texas ban on abortions starting at about six weeks of pregnancy but allowed a legal challenge to proceed, with the fate of the Republican-backed measure that allows private citizens to enforce it still hanging in the balance.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court rejects religious challenge to New York vaccine mandate

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected challenges brought by a group of Christian doctors and nurses and an organization that promotes vaccine skepticism to New York’s refusal to allow religious exemptions to the state’s mandate that healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Acting in two cases, the justices denied emergency requests for an injunction requiring the state to permit religious exemptions while litigation over the mandate’s legality continues in lower courts. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted the injunction.

The Supreme Court previously rejected other challenges to vaccine mandates including one focusing upon Maine’s lack of a religious exemption for healthcare workers.

The New York challengers said the mandate violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on religious discrimination by the government, or a federal civil rights law requiring employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs. A lower court rejected their bid for an injunction.

New York’s Department of Health on Aug. 26 ordered healthcare professionals who come in contact with patients or other employees to be vaccinated by Sept. 27. That deadline was delayed to Nov. 22.

The state has said that under the policy employers can consider religious accommodation requests and employees can be reassigned to jobs such as remote work.

The state said it allows a narrow medical exemption for the small number of people with a serious allergic reaction to the COVID-19 vaccines. It said longstanding healthcare worker vaccine mandates for measles and rubella also have no religious exemptions.

One lawsuit was brought by a group of 17 doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers, most of whom are Catholic, who sued under pseudonyms, denouncing “medical dictatorship.” Sixteen said they were fired or suspended under the policy, while one nurse agreed to be vaccinated to keep her job.

In a dissent in that case, Gorsuch said the mandate seemed based “on nothing more than fear and anger at those who harbor unpopular religious beliefs.” Joined by Alito, Gorsuch chastised the court for not protecting the challengers, saying that it “is always the failure to defend the Constitution’s promises that leads to this court’s greatest regrets.”

The other case involved a challenge by three Christian nurses, who are members of We the Patriots USA, a Connecticut-based group that is also a plaintiff. The group opposes vaccine mandates and advocates for various causes including what it called “medical freedom.”

In a video on the group’s website, co-founder Brian Festa said, “We were fighting against vaccine mandates. We were fighting to reveal the truth about what’s in these shots, long before COVID was even a thing.”

These plaintiffs are represented by Norman Pattis, a lawyer known for defending conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, founder of the right-wing website Infowars, against defamation lawsuits after he falsely called a 2012 Connecticut school mass shooting a “hoax.”

According to government data, about 84% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 72% are fully vaccinated. A minority of Americans has declined to get the shots.

In legal filings, the New York challengers said that they believe abortion is “evil” and object to any COVID-19 vaccine whose development relied on cell lines from aborted fetuses.

The three COVID-19 vaccines authorized for U.S. use do not contain aborted fetal cells. Laboratory-grown cells that descended from the cells of an aborted fetus obtained decades ago were employed in testing during the vaccine development process. Drug efficacy and safety testing using such cell lines is routine.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court allows challenge to Texas six-week abortion ban

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday allowed abortion providers to pursue a legal challenge to a ban on most abortions in Texas, with the fate of the Republican-backed measure that allows private citizens to enforce it now hanging in the balance.

The justices, who heard arguments on the case on Nov. 1, lifted a block on lower court proceedings, likely paving the way for a federal judge to formally block the law. The conservative-majority court on Sept. 1 had declined to halt the law. The court in a separate case dismissed a separate challenge brought by President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Supreme Court has yet to decide another major abortion rights case from Mississippi that could lead to the overturning of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The court in the Texas case ruled 8-1 that the challenge was allowed under a 1908 Supreme Court ruling that said state laws can be challenged in federal court by suing state government officials. Texas had sought to exploit a loophole in that earlier ruling by saying no state officials could enforce it, but the Supreme Court said the challengers could pursue their case by naming state licensing officials as defendants.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas dissented on that part of the ruling, saying he would have dismissed the lawsuit altogether.

The Texas measure is the nation’s most restrictive abortion law. It bans abortions at around six weeks, a point in time when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant, and has no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. It is one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed by Republicans at the state level in recent years.

The Texas law enables private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. Individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits under the law. Biden’s administration has called it a “bounty.”

That feature made it more difficult to directly sue the state to challenge the law’s legality, helping shield the measure from being immediately blocked.

Abortion providers and the Biden administration in separate legal challenges argued that the law violates a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy recognized in the Roe v. Wade ruling and is impermissibly designed to evade federal judicial review.

The Mississippi law – blocked by lower courts – bans abortions starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court’s conservative justices during oral arguments in the Mississippi case on Dec. 1 indicated sympathy toward the Mississippi measure and potential support for overturning Roe.

How the conservative justices voted in the Texas case may not guide how they vote on the Mississippi law because the legal issues differed, particularly relating to its unusual enforcement mechanism.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court conservatives lean toward more public dollars for religious schools

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared ready to further expand public funding of religiously based entities, indicating sympathy toward a challenge by two Christian families to a Maine tuition assistance program that excludes private schools that promote religious beliefs.

The court heard nearly two hours of arguments in an appeal by the families of a lower court ruling rejecting their claim that the Maine program singles them out for religious discrimination in violation of the U.S. Constitution including its First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion.

Expanding religious rights has been a priority in recent years for the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.

Conservative justices asked questions aimed at exposing potential bias in Maine’s program, indicating their concern that religious schools and parents are being treated differently than their secular counterparts.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the lesson from the court’s prior rulings in this area is that “discriminating against all religions versus secular is itself a kind of discrimination that the court has said is odious to the Constitution, at least in certain contexts.”

Liberal justices emphasized that the program is meant only to provide a public education everywhere in the state and expressed concern over possible strife that funding the promotion of religion could cause in society.

The families sought taxpayer dollars to send their children to two Christian schools that integrate religion into their classrooms and have policies against gay and transgender students and staff. The First Amendment also prohibits government endorsement of any particular religion.

The case comes to the Supreme Court on the heels of its 2020 ruling in a Montana case that paved the way for more taxpayer dollars to flow to religious schools.

The ruling in the Maine case, due by the end of June, could further erode the separation of church and state in the United States.

The Montana ruling prevented states from disqualifying schools from public aid based on their religious status or affiliation. The Maine case goes further, with the possibility looming of requiring states that subsidize private education to also fund religious activities.

Maine is backed in the case by President Joe Biden’s administration, public school boards and teacher unions. The state has said it excludes certain private schools not because they are religious but because they would use public funds to promote religious beliefs.

The families asked the justices to consider overruling a 2004 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Locke v. Davey that upheld a Washington state post-secondary grant program that excluded theology students.

In some sparsely populated areas lacking public secondary schools, Maine lets public funds be used to pay for tuition at certain private schools of a family’s choice. The schools must be “nonsectarian” and are excluded only if they promote a particular religion and present material “through the lens of that faith.”

Two sets of parents – David and Amy Carson, and Troy and Angela Nelson – sued the state in 2018.

The Nelsons would like to use the tuition aid to send their son to a Christian school called Temple Academy in Waterville, but instead use it to send him to a secular private high school. The Carsons paid out-of-pocket to send their daughter to Bangor Christian Schools in Maine’s third-largest city.

The two schools involved describe themselves as seeking to instill a “Biblical worldview” in students, according to court records. They will not admit gay or transgender students, or hire gay teachers. Bangor Christian Schools teaches that a “husband is the leader of the household” and includes a class instructing students to “refute the teachings of the Islamic religion with the truth of God’s Word.”

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the families last year.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

Groups push to make California a haven for abortion rights

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California must prepare for an influx of women seeking abortions in the liberal state if the U.S. Supreme Court ends the constitutional right to the procedure, dozens of women’s health and rights groups said in a report released on Wednesday.

The report by the Future of Abortion Council is aimed at positioning California as place where women from conservative states can get abortions. It comes as the Supreme Court considers overturning or weakening its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized the procedure nationwide.

Last week, the conservative-dominated court signaled a willingness to dramatically curtail abortion rights in America and possibly overturn Roe during oral arguments for a Mississippi case.

“It is imperative that California take the lead, live up to its proclamation as a ‘Reproductive Freedom State,’ and be ready to serve anyone who seeks abortion services,” Democrat Toni Atkins, president pro tem of the state Senate, wrote in a letter introducing the report.

The council made more than 40 recommendations, including a call for the state to fund programs to train additional abortion providers and legal protections for women from states where abortion becomes illegal.

Twenty-six states are certain or likely to ban abortions if the court limits or overturns Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies abortion rights.

More than 40 health care providers, women’s rights groups and Democratic politicians formed the council in September after the Supreme Court refused to block a Texas law that effectively bans abortion at about six weeks and allows people to sue doctors or others who have helped a woman end a pregnancy after fetal cardiac activity can be detected.

The Guttmacher Institute predicted in September that as many as 1.4 million women may drive in to California for abortion services if neighboring states outlaw or severely limit access to the procedure. That estimate doesn’t include women who might fly to the West Coast for abortions.

When the new Texas law took effect in September, Planned Parenthood clinics in California began treating two to three Texans per day, said Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for the clinics.

“We started to see an immediate impact on our health centers in California,” Richards said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and David Gregorio)

Justices debate abortion rights in U.S. Supreme Court showdown

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday began hearing arguments in a case on whether to gut abortion rights in America as it weighs Mississippi’s bid to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, is hearing at least 70 minutes of oral arguments in the southern state’s appeal to revive its ban on abortion starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts blocked the Republican-backed law.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, challenged the law and has the support of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. A ruling is expected by the end of next June.

Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy. The Supreme Court in a 1992 ruling called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey reaffirmed abortion rights and prohibited laws imposing an “undue burden” on abortion access.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer quoted from the Supreme Court’s Casey ruling, which stated that the court should not bow to political pressure in overturning Roe and that such a ruling would “subvert the court’s legitimacy.”

“The right of a woman to choose, the right to control her own body, has been clearly set since Casey and never challenged. You want us to reject that line of viability and adopt something different,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

Sotomayor said Mississippi brought its new challenge purely because of changes on the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative.

“Will this institution survive the stench this creates?” Sotomayor asked, saying that it would give the impression that the Constitution and its interpretation is based purely on politics. “If people think it is all political … how will the court survive?”

Anti-abortion advocates believe they are closer than ever to overturning Roe, a longstanding goal for Christian conservatives.

Mississippi’s is one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed in Republican-governed states in recent years. The Supreme Court on Nov. 1 heard arguments over a Texas law banning abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy but has not yet issued a ruling.

Hundreds of protesters from both sides of the abortion debate rallied outside the white marble neoclassical courthouse ahead of the arguments. Anti-abortion protesters held huge signs reading “abortion is murder,” some carrying Christian crosses. Abortion rights activists chanted “what do we want? Abortion access. When do we want it? Now.”

FETAL VIABILITY

The Roe and Casey decisions determined that states cannot ban abortion before a fetus is viable outside the womb, generally viewed by doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether viability was a central issue in the Roe or Casey rulings.

Mississippi’s 15-week ban directly challenged the viability finding. Even if the court does not explicitly overturn Roe, any ruling letting states ban abortion before fetal viability outside the womb would raise questions about how early states could prohibit the procedure. In the 1992 Casey ruling, the court said Roe’s “central holding” was that viability was the earliest point at which states could ban abortion.

While urging the court to overturn Roe, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, has said the justices could uphold its law by finding that a 15-week ban does not impose an undue burden. Such a ruling would wipe out the viability standard embraced in the Roe and Casey decisions, meaning the justices would have to consider where to draw the line.

Abortion rights advocates have said such a decision would eviscerate Roe, making it easier for conservative states to impose sweeping abortion restrictions.

Mississippi is among 12 states with so-called trigger laws designed to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Additional states also likely would move quickly to curtail abortion access.

If Roe were overturned or limited, large swathes of America could return to an era in which women who want to end a pregnancy face the choice of undergoing a potentially dangerous illegal abortion, traveling long distances to a state where the procedure remains legal and available or buying abortion pills online. The procedure would remain legal in liberal-leaning states, 15 of which have laws protecting abortion rights.

Abortion remains a contentious issue in the United States, as in many countries. In a June Reuters/Ipsos poll, 52% of U.S. adults said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% said it should be illegal in most or all cases.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Gabriella Borter, Jan Wolfe and Julia Harte; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court wrestles with Puerto Rico’s exclusion from benefits program

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday tackled the question of whether a decision by Congress five decades ago to exclude Puerto Rico from a federal program that provides benefits to low-income elderly, blind and disabled people was unlawful.

Some of the nine justices posed tough questions during arguments in the case to the lawyer for the U.S. government, which has appealed a lower court ruling that Puerto Rico’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program exclusion violated a U.S. Constitution mandate that laws apply equally to everyone.

But it remained unclear whether the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, ultimately will rule in favor of Puerto Rican resident Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, who received SSI benefits when he lived in New York but lost eligibility when he moved to Puerto Rico in 2013.

Many Puerto Ricans have long complained that the Caribbean island’s residents are treated worse than other Americans despite being U.S. citizens. Puerto Rico, which is not a state, is the most-populous of the U.S. territories, with about 3 million people.

SSI benefits are available to American citizens living in any of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the Northern Mariana Islands, but not the territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.

If Vaello-Madero wins, more than 300,000 Puerto Rico residents could become eligible for the benefit at a cost that the U.S. government has estimated at $2 billion annually.

The Supreme Court has been instrumental in defining the legal status of Puerto Ricans dating to a series of rulings starting more than a century ago called the Insular Cases, some suffused with racist language. The rulings endorsed the notion that the people of newly acquired U.S. territories could receive different treatment than citizens living in U.S. states.

Vaello-Madero’s case gives the justices an opportunity to revisit those rulings. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed interested in doing so.

“Why shouldn’t we just admit that the Insular Cases were incorrectly decided?” Gorsuch asked.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose parents were from Puerto Rico, mentioned the history of Puerto Ricans being treated as second-class U.S. citizens.

“Puerto Ricans are citizens and the Constitution applies to them. Their needy people are being treated different than the needy people in the 50 states,” Sotomayor said.

The federal government’s central argument is that the congressional decision to exclude Puerto Rico was rational based on the fact that Puerto Ricans do not pay many federal taxes, including income tax.

Conservative justices wondered about the repercussions of a ruling favoring Vaello-Madero including whether other benefits would have to be extended to residents of U.S. territories.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that if there was “equal treatment across the board” then questions would be raised over whether Puerto Ricans should pay federal income taxes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Vaello-Madero’s lawyer made “compelling policy arguments” but noted that a clause of the Constitution specifically allows Congress to treat territories differently than states.

Kavanaugh said it is a part of the Constitution that “people would want to change” but that it is not the court’s role to do that.

Vaello-Madero is 67 years old and disabled. The government sued him in federal court in Washington in 2017 seeking more than $28,000 for SSI payments he received after moving to Puerto Rico.

Congress decided not to include Puerto Rico when it enacted the program in 1972. Puerto Ricans are eligible for a different government program, called Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled, that allows for more local control but not as much federal funding.

The appeal originally was filed by Republican former President Donald Trump’s administration. His Democratic successor Joe Biden has continued the appeal while at the same time urging Congress to extend SSI to Puerto Rico.

A provision extending SSI benefits to Puerto Rico is being considered as part of Democratic-backed social spending legislation being crafted in Congress. Enactment of the provision would limit the importance of the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling, due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court poised for major gun rights case from New York

By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court returns to the divisive issue of gun rights on Wednesday with arguments in a challenge to New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns in public – a case that could imperil certain firearms restrictions nationally.

The justices are set to hear an appeal by two gun owners and the New York affiliate of the National Rifle Association, an influential gun rights group closely aligned with Republicans, of a lower court ruling throwing out their challenge to the state’s law, enacted in 1913.

Ahead of the oral arguments, advocates for gun control held a rally outside the courthouse, with victims of gun violence including former Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords speaking about their experiences. Giffords was shot in the head in 2011 at a community meeting in Arizona.

Across the street, a small group of gun rights activists posted signs including one reading, “We stand for the Bill of Rights,” a reference to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Lower courts rejected the argument by the plaintiffs that the New York law violates the Second Amendment. The lawsuit seeks an unrestricted right to carry concealed handguns in public.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is considered sympathetic to an expansive view of Second Amendment rights.

The case could yield the most important gun rights ruling in more than a decade. The court in 2008 recognized for the first time an individual’s right to keep guns at home for self-defense, and in 2010 applied that right to the states.

New York’s law requires a showing of “proper cause” for carrying concealed handguns. To carry such a weapon without restrictions, applicants must convince a state firearms licensing officer of an actual, rather than speculative, need for self-defense.

Decisions by Justice Richard McNally Jr., a state trial court judge, to deny gun owners Robert Nash and Brandon Koch unrestricted concealed-carry licenses triggered the legal fight. Nash and Koch, along with the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, sued in federal court.

The plaintiffs have argued that the right to self-defense matters most outside the home because that is where the chance of confrontation is highest.

New York has justified its law by arguing that analogous restrictions run from medieval England through the founding of the United States and ever since. The plaintiffs have argued that centuries-old restrictions were limited to dangerous and unusual weapons, not common arms for self-defense like handguns, and that many of America’s founders “carried firearms and supported the right to do so.”

Advocates for gun restrictions fear that the New York case could threaten other state and local measures such as “red flag” laws targeting the firearms of people deemed dangerous by the courts, expanded criminal background checks for gun buyers or restrictions on selling untraceable “ghost” guns.

Eight states including New York empower officials to decide whether people can carry concealed handguns in public even if they pass criteria such as criminal background checks. New York has said that about two-thirds of applications for unrestricted permits are granted in the state, amounting to tens of thousands annually.

Gun rights, held dear by many Americans, are a contentious issue in a nation with high levels of firearms violence. President Joe Biden has called gun violence a “national embarrassment.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)