Tag Archives: U.S. Supreme Court

In political crosshairs, U.S. Supreme Court weighs abortion and guns

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Just before midnight on Sept. 1, the debate over whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority will dramatically change life in America took on a new ferocity when the justices let a near-total ban on abortion in Texas take effect.

The intense scrutiny of the court will only increase when the justices – six conservatives and three liberals – open their new nine-month term on Monday. They have taken up cases that could enable them to overturn abortion rights established in a landmark ruling 48 years ago and also expand gun rights – two cherished goals of American conservatives.

In addition, there are cases scheduled that could expand religious rights, building on several rulings in recent years.

These contentious cases come at a time when opinion surveys show that public approval of the court is waning even as a commission named by President Joe Biden explores recommending changes such as expanding the number of justices or imposing term limits in place of their lifetime appointments.

Some justices have given speeches rebutting criticism of the court and questions about its legitimacy as a nonpolitical institution. Its junior-most member Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative confirmed by Senate Republicans only days before the 2020 presidential election, said this month the court “is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”

“There’s no doubt that the court’s legitimacy is under threat right now,” lawyer Kannon Shanmugam, who frequently argues cases at the court, said at an event organized by the conservative Federalist Society. “The level of rhetoric and criticism of the court is higher than I can certainly remember at any point in my career.”

The court’s late-night 5-4 decision not to block the Republican-backed Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy put abortion-rights advocates including Biden on high alert.

The justices now have a chance to go even further. They will hear a case on Dec. 1 in which Mississippi is defending its law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi’s Republican attorney general is asking the court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide and ended an era when some states banned it.

In another blockbuster case, the justices could make it easier for people to obtain permits to carry handguns outside the home, a major expansion of firearms rights. They will consider on Nov. 3 whether to invalidate a New York state regulation that lets people obtain a concealed-carry permit only if they can show they need a gun for self-defense.

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS

Former President Donald Trump was able to appoint three conservative justices including Barrett who tilted the court further rightward, with the help of maneuvering by a key fellow Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell.

The Democratic-led Congress has held two hearings in recent months on how the court has increasingly decided major issues, including the Texas abortion one, with late-night emergency decisions using its “shadow docket” process that lacks customary public oral arguments.

“The Supreme Court has now shown that it’s willing to allow even facially unconstitutional laws to take effect when the law is aligned with certain ideological preferences,” Democrat Dick Durbin, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s chairman, said on Wednesday.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito in a speech on Thursday objected to criticism that portrays the court’s members as a “dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods.”

“This portrayal feeds unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution,” Alito said.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas last month said judges are “asking for trouble” if they wade into political issues. Thomas has previously said Roe v. Wade should be overturned, as many conservatives have sought.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer noted in a May speech that the court’s legitimacy relies in part on avoiding major upheavals in the law when people have come to rely on existing precedents.

“The law might not be perfect but if you’re changing it all the time people won’t know what to do, and the more you change it the more people will ask to have it changed,” Breyer said.

Abortion rights advocates have cited the fact that Roe v. Wade has been in place for almost a half century as one reason not to overturn it.

Breyer, at 83 the court’s oldest member, himself is the focus of attention. Some liberal activists have urged him to retire so Biden can appoint a younger liberal who could serve for decades. Breyer has said he has not decided when he will retire.

George Mason University law professor Jenn Mascott, a former Thomas law clerk, said the justices should not be swayed by public opinion.

“What the justices have said they want to do is decide each case on the rule the law,” Mascott said. “I don’t think they should be thinking that the perception would be that they are too partisan one way or another.”

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

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Boston Christian flag dispute

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a group’s challenge to Boston’s rejection of its request to fly a flag bearing the image of a Christian cross over city hall in a case involving religious and free speech rights.

The justices will consider an appeal by a Christian group called Camp Constitution of a lower court ruling in favor of the city, taking up the case four days before the start of their new nine-month term.

Camp Constitution is a volunteer group that teaches classes on U.S. history and current events. It unsuccessfully applied to raise a flag with a Christian cross on it over city hall in 2017. It noted that Boston had granted hundreds of requests brought by other private groups seeking to raise various flags.

The group said the city’s refusal to grant the request violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. Part of the city’s defense is that raising the flag might violate another section of the First Amendment that prohibits government endorsement of religion.

Lower courts sided with the city, with the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals finding in January that raising the flag would represent a form of government speech, which gives the city more leeway to decide what speech is allowed.

The city had never previously denied a request and had previously approved flags of other countries and private organizations, including the LGBT pride flag.

The court will hear oral argument early next year, with a ruling due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Analysis: U.S. Supreme Court’s rightward lurch put Roe v. Wade on the brink

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – During a 2016 presidential debate, then-candidate Donald Trump made a statement that seemed brash at the time: If he were elected and got the chance to nominate justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion would be overturned.

By this time next year, with the court having tilted further to the right thanks to Trump’s three appointments to the nation’s highest court, his prediction could come true.

The court’s decision on Wednesday night to allow Texas’ six-week abortion ban to go into effect in apparent contravention of the 1973 Roe decision suggests the court is closer than ever to overturning a ruling U.S. conservatives have long reviled.

“We don’t know how quickly or openly the court will reverse Roe, but this decision suggests that it’s only a matter of time,” said Mary Ziegler, an expert on abortion history at Florida State University College of Law.

Two generations of American women have grown up with access to abortion, although its use has declined over the past decade.

But while Roe handed liberals a victory on a crucial issue of the times, it also helped to power the religious right into a galvanizing force as it worked to get the decision overturned.

Since Congress never acted to formalize abortion rights – which shows what a hot button issue it is politically – the same court that once legalized abortion has the power to allow states to ban it.

In the coming months, the court will weigh whether to throw Roe out altogether as the justices consider whether to uphold a 15-week abortion ban in the state of Mississippi.

Unlike the Texas dispute, in which the justices did not directly address whether Roe should be reversed, they will in the Mississippi case.

A ruling is due by the end of June 2022, just months before an election that will determine whether the Democrats retain their narrow majority in both houses of Congress.

The last time the Supreme Court was this close to overturning Roe, in 1992, opponents were bitterly disappointed when the court’s moderates banded together and upheld abortion rights. Although the Supreme Court had a conservative majority, it was not deemed conservative enough.

MCCONNELL’S ROLE

The reason why the outcome could be different now is in part thanks to the decades-long efforts of conservative legal activists to re-shape the court, which bore fruit during Trump’s presidency. Trump was aided by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as well as the death of liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which gave him a third vacancy to fill just before he lost the November 2020 election.

All three Trump nominees were pre-vetted by conservative lawyers associated with the Federalist Society legal group. All three — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — were in the majority as the court allowed the Texas abortion law to go into effect.

The court now has a rock-solid 6-3 conservative majority, which means that even if one peels away – as Chief Justice John Roberts did on Wednesday and in another abortion case in 2020 – the conservative bloc still retains the upper hand.

Conservative Republican McConnell played a key role in the Senate, which has the job of confirming nominees to the bench.

Democrats’ hopes were raised early in 2016, when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died, that what had been a 5-4 conservative majority on the high court could switch to a 5-4 liberal majority for the first time in decades. McConnell crushed those dreams, refusing to move forward with then-Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.

As a result, when Trump came into office in early 2017 he was able to immediately nominate Gorsuch, who was duly confirmed by McConnell’s Republican-led Senate.

Trump and McConnell then pushed through the nomination of Kavanaugh to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018 despite allegations of sexual misconduct against the nominee, which he denied. Kennedy was a conservative but had voted to uphold abortion rights in key cases, including in 1992.

Finally, in September 2020, Ginsburg died. In an unprecedented move, Trump and McConnell installed Barrett just days before Election Day on Nov. 7, leading to widespread accusations of hypocrisy but cementing the conservative majority.

Despite the favorable winds, some anti-abortion advocates are playing down the importance of the Supreme Court’s Texas ruling, and say the fate of Roe v Wade is still up in the air.

“I’ve long thought the court should overturn Roe because it is not based on what the Constitution actually says,” said John Bursch, a lawyer at conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, before adding: “This order doesn’t give a signal either way about what the majority will do in the Mississippi case.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Scott Malone and Sonya Hepinstall)

U.S. Supreme Court declines to block Texas abortion ban

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Texas’ new abortion ban, the strictest in the nation, stood on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block it, dealing a major blow to abortion rights by leaving in place the state law, which prohibits the vast majority of abortions.

The decision is a major milestone in the fight over abortion, as opponents have sought for decades to roll back access to the procedures.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices denied an emergency request by abortion and women’s health providers for an injunction on enforcement of the ban, which took effect early on Wednesday and prohibits abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, while litigation continues.

The law would amount to a near-total ban on the procedure in Texas – the United States’ second most populous state – as 85% to 90% of abortions are obtained after six weeks of pregnancy, and would probably force many clinics to close, abortion rights groups said.

One of the court’s six conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined its three liberals in dissent.

“The court’s order is stunning,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion.

“Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.”

In an unsigned explanation, the court’s majority said the decision was “not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law” and allowed legal challenges to proceed.

A majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in the United States, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Some 52% said it should be legal in most or all cases, with just 36% saying it should be illegal in most or all cases.

But it remains a deeply polarizing issue, with a majority of Democrats supporting abortion rights and a majority of Republicans opposing them.

The decision illustrates the impact of former Republican President Donald Trump’s three conservative appointees to the nation’s highest court, who have tilted it further right. All were in the majority.

Such a ban has never been permitted in any state since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, in 1973.

Texas is among a dozen mostly Republican-led states to ban the procedure once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, often at six weeks and sometimes before a woman realizes she is pregnant.

Courts had previously blocked such bans, citing Roe v. Wade.

The court’s action over the Texas ban could foreshadow its approach in another case over a 15-week ban by Mississippi in which the state has asked the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The court will hear arguments in the term beginning in October, with a ruling due by the end of June 2022.

The Texas law is unusual in that it prevents government officials from enforcing the ban and instead gives private citizens that power by enabling them to sue anyone who provides or “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks, including a person who drives someone to an abortion provider.

Citizens who win such lawsuits would be entitled to at least $10,000.

That structure has alarmed both abortion providers, who said they feel like they now have prices on their heads, and legal experts who said citizen enforcement could have broad repercussions if it was used across the United States to address other contentious social issues.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

Texas’s near-total abortion ban takes effect after Supreme Court inaction

By Andrew Chung and Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) -A Texas ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy took effect on Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court did not act on a request by abortion rights groups to block the law, which would prohibit the vast majority of abortions in the state.

Abortion providers worked until almost the midnight deadline, when the court’s inaction allowed the most restrictive ban in the country to be enforced while litigation continues in the groups’ lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.

The law amounts to a near-total ban on abortion procedures given that 85% to 90% of abortions occur after six weeks of pregnancy, and would likely force many clinics to close, the groups said.

Such a ban has never been permitted in any state since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, in 1973, they said.

At Whole Women’s Health in Fort Worth, clinic staff worked up to midnight, serving 25 patients in the 2-1/2 hours before the deadline, said spokeswoman Jackie Dilworth.

The national group said its Texas locations, also including Austin and McKinney, remained open on Wednesday.

“We are providing all abortion medication and abortion procedures, but as long as the patient has no embryonic or fetal cardiac activity,” Dilworth said. “Our doors are still open, and we’re doing everything we can to come within the law but still provide abortion care to those who need us.”

Planned Parenthood and other women’s health providers, doctors and clergy members challenged the law in federal court in Austin in July, contending it violated the constitutional right to an abortion.

The law, signed on May 19, is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks. Citizens who win such lawsuits would be entitled to at least $10,000.

Abortion providers say the law could lead to hundreds of costly lawsuits that would be logistically difficult to defend.

In a legal filing, Texas officials told the justices to reject the abortion providers’ request, saying the law “may never be enforced against them by anyone.”

“Texas Right to Life is thankful that the Texas Heartbeat Act is now in effect. We are now the first state ever to enforce a heartbeat law. We still await word from SCOTUS,” spokeswoman Kimberlyn Schwartz said in a statement, using an acronym for Supreme Court of the United States.

‘ALL-OUT EFFORT’

Democratic U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted the Texas move.

“This radical law is an all-out effort to erase the rights and protections of Roe v Wade,” Pelosi wrote on Twitter. Using the legislation’s number, she added, “we will fight SB8 and all immoral and dangerous attacks on women’s health and freedoms with all our strength.”

A court could still put the ban on hold, and no court has yet ruled on its constitutionality, Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, wrote in a tweet.

“Despite what some will say, this isn’t the ‘end’ of Roe,” he wrote.

Texas is among a dozen mostly Republican-led states that have enacted “heartbeat” abortion bans, which outlaw the procedure once the rhythmic contracting of fetal cardiac tissue can be detected, often at six weeks – sometimes before a woman realizes she is pregnant.

Courts have blocked such bans.

The state of Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in a major case the justices agreed to hear over a 2018 law banning abortion after 15 weeks.

The justices will hear arguments in their next term, which begins in October, with a ruling due by the end of June 2022.

The Texas challenge seeks to prevent judges, county clerks and other state entities from enforcing the law.

A federal judge rejected a bid to dismiss the case, prompting an immediate appeal to the New Orleans, Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which halted further proceedings.

On Sunday, the 5th Circuit denied a request by the abortion providers to block the law pending the appeal. The providers then asked the Supreme Court for an emergency ruling.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York and Gabriella Borter in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone, Gerry Doyle and Jonathan Oatis)

Abortion providers ask U.S. Supreme Court to block Texas’ six-week ban

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – Abortion rights groups filed an emergency request at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to block a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, which is set to take effect on Wednesday.

The groups, including Planned Parenthood and other abortion and women’s health providers, told the court that the law would “immediately and catastrophically reduce abortion access in Texas, barring care for at least 85% of Texas abortion patients” and would likely force many abortion clinics to close.

The groups challenged the law in federal court in Austin in July, contending it violates a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The law, signed on May 19, is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who assists a woman in getting an abortion past the six-week cutoff.

The law is among of a number of “heartbeat” abortion bans enacted in Republican-led states. These laws seek to ban the procedure once the rhythmic contracting of fetal cardiac tissue can be detected, often at six weeks – sometimes before a woman realizes she is pregnant.

Courts have blocked such bans as a violation of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The state of Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in a major case the justices agreed to hear over a 2018 law banning abortion after 15 weeks. The justices will hear arguments in their term that begins in October, with a ruling due by the end of June 2022.

The Texas lawsuit seeks to prevent judges, county clerks and other state entities from enforcing the law through citizen lawsuits. The plaintiffs also sued the director of an anti-abortion group that they said has threatened enforcement actions under the new law.

A federal judge rejected a bid to dismiss the case, prompting an immediate appeal to the New Orleans, Louisiana-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which halted further proceedings in the case. On Sunday, the 5th Circuit denied a request by the abortion providers to block the law pending the appeal.

The plaintiffs on Monday asked the Supreme Court to block the Texas law or allow proceedings in the lower court to continue.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York, additional reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Maine dispute over religious schools

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday took up a challenge by two families with children attending Christian schools to a Maine tuition assistance program that bars taxpayer money from being used to pay for religious educational institutions in a case that could further narrow the separation of church and state.

The justices agreed to hear an appeal by the families of a lower court ruling in favor of the state that concluded that Maine’s program did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

The case is the latest one for the court that pits the free exercise of religion against another element of the First Amendment: the separation of church and state that prohibits government establishment of an official religion or favoring one religion over another.

Some sparsely populated areas of Maine lack public secondary schools, so state law allows public funds to be used to pay for tuition at certain private schools of a parent’s choice as long as they are “nonsectarian.”

The case involves two sets of parents – David and Amy Carson, and Troy and Angela Nelson – who sued the state in 2018 in federal court, arguing that by the tuition assistance program’s exclusion of religious schools discriminates against them based on religion.

The Carsons pay out of pocket to send their daughter to Bangor Christian Schools in Maine’s third-largest city. The Nelsons would like to send both of their children to a Christian school called Temple Academy in Waterville, Maine, but can afford the tuition for only one, so their son attends Temple Academy while their daughter does not.

The schools, both of which are private and nonprofit, describe themselves as seeking to instill a “Biblical worldview” in their students. Bangor Christian Schools does not hire teachers who are gay or transgender, and would potentially expel openly gay or transgender students, according to court papers. Temple Academy does not hire gay teachers and likely would not accept gay, transgender or non-Christian students, court papers said.

The families contended that they are entitled to tuition help given the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings siding with religiously based institutions, including its decision last year endorsing Montana tax credits that can help pay for students to attend religious schools. The families are represented by the Institute for Justice conservative legal group.

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the families last year, deciding that Supreme Court precedents did not forbid states from barring public funds from religious entities based on how those dollars would be used.

While states cannot disqualify religious schools from public aid programs simply because of their religious status or affiliation, Maine is not required to subsidize schools that would use the money to provide religious instruction, the 1st Circuit decided.

The families appealed to the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has taken an expansive view of religious rights.

“States should not be permitted to withhold an otherwise available education benefit simply because a student would make the private and independent choice to use that benefit to procure an education that includes religious instruction,” they said in a court filing.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, defending the law, said in a court filing that religious schools willing to provide a secular education may receive public funds.

“In excluding sectarian schools, Maine is declining to fund explicitly religious activity that is inconsistent with a free public education,” Frey wrote.

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

U.S. Supreme Court invalidates California charity donor disclosure

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday backed two conservative nonprofit groups that challenged California’s requirement that tax-exempt charities provide the state the identities of top financial donors – a decision that could imperil some political donor disclosure laws and buttress “dark money” donations.

The justices, in a 6-3 ruling, sided with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Thomas More Law Center in finding that the California attorney general’s policy, in place for the past decade, violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and association.

The court’s conservatives were in the majority, with its liberal members dissenting, just as they were in the other decision on their final day of rulings for their current nine-month term. In the other case, the court upheld Republican-backed ballot curbs in Arizona in a ruling that makes it earlier for states to enact voting restrictions.

Democratic-governed California, the most populous U.S. state, had said the donor information is required as part of the state attorney general’s duty to prevent charitable fraud.

“We are left to conclude that the Attorney General’s disclosure requirement imposes a widespread burden on donors’ associational rights,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling.

The state’s interest in “amassing sensitive information for its own convenience is weak,” Roberts added.

The Thomas More Law Center is a conservative Catholic legal group. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which funds education and training on conservative issues, is the sister organization of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group – both founded by conservative billionaire businessman Charles Koch and his late brother David.

“Stripping our office of confidential access to donor information – the same information about major donors that charities already provide to the federal government – will make it harder for the state to fight fraud and prevent the misuse of charitable contributions,” California’s Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

Americans for Prosperity Foundation CEO Emily Seidel said the ruling “protects Americans from being forced to choose between staying safe or speaking up,” alluding to her group’s concerns that donors could face threats if their identities become public.

‘A BULL’S-EYE’

The decision could make it easier for groups to withhold donor identities in other contexts, allowing for the entrenchment of untraceable “dark money” political donations that shield the identity of the donor.

The Supreme Court in the past has been hostile to political campaign finance restrictions – it ruled in 2010 that corporations and other outside groups could spend unlimited funds in elections – but had upheld disclosure requirements.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court has reversed this previous approach.

“Today’s analysis marks reporting and disclosure requirements with a bull’s-eye. Regulated entities who wish to avoid their obligations can do so by vaguely waving toward First Amendment ‘privacy concerns,'” Sotomayor wrote.

Sotomayor said the court struck down the requirement without any evidence that donors would face negative consequences if their identities become public.

University of California, Irvine School of Law election law expert Rick Hasen wrote on his blog that the ruling will make it “much harder to sustain campaign finance disclosure laws going forward.”

Democratic congressional leaders fumed. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the decision “jaw-dropping” and said it will make it “much harder to expose the evils of dark money in our political system.”

California required charities to provide a copy of the tax form they file with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service listing donors who contribute big amounts of money. Larger groups had to disclose donors who contributed $200,000 or more in any year. That information was not posted online and was kept confidential but some had become public.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 reversed a judge’s ruling in favor of the groups, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments in March.

Some congressional Democrats had urged conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was part of the majority in the ruling, not to participate in the case because Americans for Prosperity spent money last year to support her Senate confirmation to the court.

The two groups that challenged California’s mandate were backed by nonprofit organizations spanning the ideological spectrum. Liberal groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, had urged a narrower ruling against California.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court backs voting restrictions in Arizona

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday endorsed two Republican-backed ballot restrictions in Arizona that a lower court found had disproportionately burdened Black, Latino and Native American voters, handing a defeat to voting rights advocates and Democrats who had challenged the measures.

The 6-3 ruling, with the court’s conservative justices in the majority, held that the restrictions on early ballot collection by third parties and where absentee ballots may be cast did not violate the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision.

The decision comes at a time when states are pursuing a series of Republican-backed voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud and irregularities in his 2020 loss to now-President Joe Biden.

The ruling represented a victory for the Arizona Republican Party and the state’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich. They had appealed a lower court ruling that had deemed the restrictions unlawful.

The case involves a 2016 Arizona law that made it a crime to provide another person’s completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers. Community activists sometimes engage in ballot collection to facilitate voting and increase voter turnout. Ballot collection is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Republican critics call the practice “ballot harvesting.”

The other restriction at issue was a longstanding Arizona policy that discards ballots cast in-person at a precinct other than the one to which a voter has been assigned. In some places, voters’ precincts are not the closest one to their home.

The case raised questions over whether fraud must be documented in order to justify new curbs.

Democrats have accused Republicans at the state level of enacting voter-suppression measures to make it harder for racial minorities who tend to support Democratic candidates to cast ballots. Many Republicans have justified new restrictions as a means to reduce voter fraud, a phenomenon that election experts have said is rare in the United States.

Republicans are seeking to regain control of the U.S. Congress from the Democrats in the 2022 mid-term elections.

The Arizona legal battle concerned a specific provision called Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that bans voting policies or practices that result in racial discrimination. Section 2 has been the main tool used to show that voting curbs discriminate against minorities since the Supreme Court in 2013 gutted another section of the statute that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.

Arizona Republicans said in court papers that voting restrictions have partisan effects and impact elections. Invalidating the out-of-precinct policy would reduce Republican electoral prospects because it would increase Democratic turnout, they told the justices during March 2 arguments in the case.

The Republicans said that “race-neutral” regulations on the time, place or manner of an election do not deny anyone their right to vote and that federal law does not require protocols to maximize the participation of racial minorities.

The Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party sued over the restrictions. Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has backed the challenge to the measures.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year found Arizona’s restrictions violated the Voting Rights Act, though they remained in effect for the Nov. 3 election in which Joe Biden, a Democrat, defeated Donald Trump, a Republican, in the state.

The 9th Circuit also found that “false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud” were used to convince Arizona legislators to enact that restriction with discriminatory intent, violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on denying voting rights based on race.

U.S. Senate Republicans on June 23 blocked Democratic-backed legislation that would broadly expand voting rights and establish uniform national voting standards to offset the wave new Republican-led voting restrictions in states.

Biden has sharply criticized Republican-backed state voting restrictions. Biden called a measure signed by Georgia’s Republican governor in March “an atrocity” and likened it to racist “Jim Crow” laws enacted in Southern states in the decades after the 1861-65 U.S. Civil War to legalize racial segregation and disenfranchise Black people.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court backs pipeline companies in New Jersey land dispute

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of a consortium of energy companies including Enbridge Inc seeking to seize land owned by New Jersey to build a $1 billion natural gas pipeline despite the state’s objections.

The justices in a 5-4 ruling handed a victory to PennEast Pipeline Company LLC, a joint venture seeking to build the 116-mile (187-km) pipeline from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. The justices overturned a lower court ruling in favor of New Jersey’s government.

Other companies joining Enbridge in the consortium include South Jersey Industries Inc, New Jersey Resources Corp (NJR), Southern Co and UGI Corp.

The court ruled that a 1938 U.S. law called the Natural Gas Act that lets private energy companies seize “necessary” parcels of land for a project if they have obtained a certificate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can be applied to state-owned land.

“Specifically, we are asked to decide whether the federal government can constitutionally confer on pipeline companies the authority to condemn necessary rights-of-way in which a state has an interest. We hold that it can,” conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

The law effectively gives private companies the power of eminent domain, in which government entities can take property in return for compensation.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)