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Tag: Amy Coney Barrett

  • What to know about the Supreme Court arguments over Trump’s tariffs

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    Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:Tariffs are taxes on importsThey are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal courtChallengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policiesConservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”“In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.“What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decisionThe court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.

    WASHINGTON —

    Three lower courts have ruled President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs to be illegal. Now the Supreme Court, with three justices Trump appointed and generally favorable to muscular presidential power, will have the final word.

    In roughly two dozen emergency appeals, the justices have largely gone along with Trump in temporarily allowing parts of his aggressive second-term agenda to take effect while lawsuits play out.

    But the case being argued Wednesday is the first in which the court will render a final decision on a Trump policy. The stakes are enormous, both politically and financially.

    The Republican president has made tariffs a central piece of his economic and foreign policy and has said it would be a “disaster” if the Supreme Court rules against him.

    Here are some things to know about the tariffs arguments at the Supreme Court:

    Tariffs are taxes on imports

    They are paid by companies that import finished products or parts, and the added cost can be passed on to consumers.

    Through September, the government has reported collecting $195 billion in revenue generated from the tariffs.

    The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

    In February, he invoked the law to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, saying that the illegal flow of immigrants and drugs across the U.S. border amounted to a national emergency and that the three countries needed to do more to stop it.

    In April, he imposed worldwide tariffs after declaring the United States’ longstanding trade deficits “a national emergency.”

    Libertarian-backed businesses and states challenged the tariffs in federal court

    Challengers to Trump’s actions won rulings from a specialized trade court, a district judge in Washington and a business-focused appeals court, also in the nation’s capital.

    Those courts found that Trump could not justify tariffs under the emergency powers law, which doesn’t mention them. But they left the tariffs in place in the meantime.

    The appeals court relied on major questions, a legal doctrine devised by the Supreme Court that requires Congress to speak clearly on issues of “vast economic and political significance.”

    The major questions doctrine doomed several Biden policies

    Conservative majorities struck down three of then-President Joe Biden’s initiatives related to the coronavirus pandemic. The court ended the Democrat’s pause on evictions, blocked a vaccine mandate for large businesses and prevented student loan forgiveness that would have totaled $500 billion over 10 years.

    In comparison, the stakes in the tariff case are much higher. The taxes are estimated to generate $3 trillion over 10 years.

    The challengers in the tariffs case have cited writings by the three Trump appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, in calling on the court to apply similar limitations on a signal Trump policy.

    Barrett described a babysitter taking children on roller coasters and spending a night in a hotel based on a parent’s encouragement to “make sure the kids have fun.”

    “In the normal course, permission to spend money on fun authorizes a babysitter to take children to the local ice cream parlor or movie theater, not on a multiday excursion to an out-of-town amusement park,” Barrett wrote in the student loans case. “If a parent were willing to greenlight a trip that big, we would expect much more clarity than a general instruction to ‘make sure the kids have fun.’”

    Kavanaugh, though, has suggested the court should not apply the same limiting standard to foreign policy and national security issues.

    A dissenting appellate judge also wrote that Congress purposely gave presidents more latitude to act through the emergency powers law.

    Some of the businesses that sued also are raising a separate legal argument in an appeal to conservative justices, saying that Congress could not constitutionally delegate its taxing power to the president.

    The nondelegation principle has not been used in 90 years, since the Supreme Court struck down some New Deal legislation.

    But Gorsuch authored a dissent in June that would have found the Federal Communications Commission’s universal service fee an unconstitutional delegation. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the dissent.

    “What happens when Congress, weary of the hard business of legislating and facing strong incentives to pass the buck, cedes its lawmaking power, clearly and unmistakably, to an executive that craves it?” Gorsuch wrote.

    The justices could act more quickly than usual in issuing a decision

    The court only agreed to hear the case in September, scheduling arguments less than two months later. The quick turnaround, at least by Supreme Court standards, suggests that the court will try to act fast.

    High-profile cases can take half a year or more to resolve, often because the majority and dissenting opinions go through rounds of revision.

    But the court can act quickly when deadline pressure dictates. Most recently, the court ruled a week after hearing arguments in the TikTok case, unanimously upholding a law requiring the popular social media app to be banned unless it was sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump has intervened several times to keep the law from taking effect while negotiations continue with China.

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  • As justices confront harassment, death threats and an assassination attempt, Barrett declares “I’m not afraid”

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    Whenever Justice Amy Coney Barrett arrived at an auditorium or a library or a university last month to discuss her new book, she encountered a familiar sight: protesters.

    They lined the streets, chanting and carrying signs. One wore a handmaid’s costume, a symbol of oppression. Another was dressed as liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death in 2020 created a vacancy on the Supreme Court that President Trump would fill with Barrett.

    For Barrett, protesters have become routine, another logistical wrinkle in her everyday life, much like the ones who regularly gather at her home outside Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and younger children. What surprises her, she told me in a wide-ranging interview in her chambers late last month, is how she can let it roll off her back.

    “If I had imagined before I was on the Court, how I would react to knowing that I was being protested, that would have seemed like a big deal, like, ‘oh, my gosh, I’m being protested,’” she says. “But now I have the ability to be like, ‘Oh, okay, well, are the entrances blocked?’ I just feel very businesslike about it. It doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t disrupt my emotions.”

    A fury of protests against conservative justices erupted in 2022, when news leaked that the Court was poised to overturn the landmark decision Roe v. Wade. Barrett, a conservative in the mold of her former mentor and boss Antonin Scalia, was a particular source of ire. Replacing Ginsburg, whose legal career was grounded in women’s rights, she provided a key fifth vote to overturn Roe and let each state decide whether to allow abortion or not. But the decision also unleashed something much darker.

    On Friday, a California resident was sentenced to eight years in prison for the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who also voted to overturn Roe. Court papers revealed the perpetrator had also mapped out the homes of three other conservative justices, including Barrett’s. Death threats have not gone away, and security remains high at their homes and whenever they appear in public. 

    I asked Barrett if she is ever afraid. Her response was immediate and emphatic: “I’m not afraid.”

    “You can’t live your life in fear,” she continued. “And I think people who threaten — the goal is to cause fear. And I’m not afraid. I’m not going to reward threats with their intended reaction.” 

    That kind of mental discipline and self control, even in the face of threats and extreme criticism, reflects an outlook that has guided the 53-year-old Barrett much of her life. 

    “I don’t make decisions emotionally. I try very hard not to let emotions guide decisions in any aspect of my life. The way that I respond to people, the choices that we make,” she continues, adding with a laugh, “apart from maybe some impulse buys of clothes or something.” 

    That outlook is also reflected in her approach to the law. 

    On the Supreme Court, Barrett’s opinions are highly analytical. She doesn’t like to decide more than the issue at hand, which is one reason she has parted ways with conservative colleagues who would rather swing for the fences, like in a case two terms ago when the Court ruled states cannot remove Trump from the ballot. Barrett agreed on the bottom line, but had a more limited approach. 

    As a former law professor, she can be formalistic and technical, qualities that also can separate her from other conservatives, as in a 2024 case that attempted to hold the Biden administration responsible for suppressing speech on social media during Covid.

    Now entering her sixth year on the Court, Barrett continues to defy stereotypes. Critics span the political spectrum, not only Democrats after she voted to overturn Roe, but more recently Republicans in the wake of decisions at odds with President Trump. She is “confounding the Right and the Left,” as the New York Times put it, raising hopes and fears on both sides.

    That’s partly because, in decades past, some conservative justices have turned out to be anything but conservative. Would Barrett, too, go that route? And it’s also in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding about the Court, reflecting an idea that the justices are mere political actors who should stay on their respective sides, regardless of the law.

    “That is a notion that I try to disabuse people of in the book,” she says. 

    Correcting some of those public misperceptions that the Supreme Court is driven by politics or outcomes or is loyal to Trump is one of her main goals with her new book, “Listening to the Law.” She is part teacher, part tour guide, taking the reader inside the Court and highlighting some of its most controversial decisions to explain how the justices interpret the Constitution and the differences in conservative and liberal philosophies. 

    And there is no case more controversial than the 5-4 decision overturning Roe, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Whole Health. Barrett uses it to explain how she and the Court’s conservative majority interpret the Constitution with a method known as “originalism,” focusing on the Constitution’s original meaning, the way the public understood it when it was adopted.

    In our interview, Barrett said she was drawn to originalism when she read Justice Scalia’s opinions in a constitutional law class during her second year at Notre Dame Law School. She said she was frustrated after a first-year criminal law class, reading liberal decisions of the Warren Court and finding them to be “unmoored.” Scalia’s opinions, with his originalist framework, made sense to her.

    “I think I am different in style than Justice Scalia. I don’t think I’m different in substance,” she said. “I think one thing that was important to Justice Scalia is fidelity to his analytical framework, so fidelity to textualism and originalism, even when it led to places that he didn’t want to go.” 

    Scalia, for example, upheld flag burning as a First Amendment right, even though he said “if I were king, I would not.” With Barrett, an example is the death penalty. She upholds it as constitutional, even though it is at odds with her religious views. 

    And that framework, she says, is how she approaches the cases involving Trump. While politicians, the media and the public are focused on the current occupant of the office, she says “the Court has to take the long view.”

    “The way that we have to view cases is about the presidency, not about the president. We have to make a decision that’s going to apply to six presidents from now, and that’s how I try to view the law,” she says. “So in the same way that I do try to erase particular policies, or substitute in ones that I like or dislike — to try to maintain neutrality — I try to do that with the presidents too, because it can’t turn on the president.”

    Her critics aren’t convinced, but Barrett seems unfazed by the attacks on her judgment or her character. In our conversation, and in multiple interviews with those who know her, she comes across as someone with a strong sense of self and an equally clear view on the right way to interpret the Constitution. Unlike some justices, she says she doesn’t monitor what journalists and law professors and politicians say about the Court. She has seen them get it wrong. It doesn’t matter to her.

    “If I could have, especially as a 16-year-old, imagined that I would not care or be impervious to being criticized and mocked, I would have been very surprised,” she says. “And so I am glad, because I think this would be a miserable job if you let yourself care, if you let yourself be affected.” 

    Barrett first walked through the fire after Trump nominated her in 2017 to the Chicago-based federal appeals court. In her Senate hearings, she withstood withering attacks on her faith, notably when then-Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told her, “the dogma lives loudly within you.” Her steely performance impressed conservatives and helped get her on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist. 

    Barrett was astonished by how she was portrayed by the media. (She said a cousin told her “the person they were describing is not the person that I’ve known my whole life at all.”)

    A mother of seven, Barrett is a devout Catholic and proud daughter from a large and supportive family with deep roots in New Orleans. Before becoming an appeals court judge, she was a popular and respected Notre Dame law professor with sparkling credentials. Always a high achiever, she had received full scholarships to college and law school at Notre Dame, where she was top in her class (and met her future husband) and earned highly competitive clerkships with towering conservative icons, Judge Laurence Silberman and Scalia.

    “One thing that I really disliked was this idea that I had no backbone, or that I was just this subservient woman in some way,” she said, “because I felt like I am anything but that.”

    She had set goals for her life early on, and she made conscious and methodical choices to reach them. She wanted a big family like she grew up with, but, of course, she would work, so she wanted flexibility in her career. 

    “I really admired my parents, I really admired my grandparents, and I thought, if I want to be the kind of people that they are, I have to make definite choices,” she told me. “I have to decide what my values are, what my priorities are, and make definite choices and prioritize those kinds of things.” 

    Thinking about law school after college, she says she remembers sitting in her dorm room at Rhodes College and making a list of pros and cons, focusing on what mattered to her and “I just reasoned my way to it.” (Barrett, always analytical, mentions in her book that her life runs on to-do lists, but she also is partial to pro/con lists.)

    She’s now the only justice on the Court who didn’t attend an Ivy League school, but Barrett says she didn’t care about labels or what was considered “the best school.” She didn’t even apply to Harvard. She opted for Notre Dame over the University of Chicago, for instance, not only because she could prioritize her Catholic faith, but that it also offered a full scholarship. That meant no big student loans that would force her into an all-consuming, high-paying law firm job after graduation. 

    Searching for a more accurate way to describe herself, Barrett uses the term “Steel Magnolia.” 

    “I’ve done a lot of traditionally feminine things. I have a large family. I’ve made unconventional choices in that way. And I’m not sorry to be feminine,” she said. “But I don’t feel like I have to sacrifice that part. I think you can be traditional in some of those ways, and still have grit or the backbone or the spine. I felt like I had the grit.” 

    “Grit” is a word she uses more than once in the book when talking about strong women she admires, like her great-grandmother, a widow who raised 13 children in a tiny house “bursting at the seams” during the Great Depression. “Somehow she always managed to find the resources, space and time,” Barrett writes.  

    Throughout our conversation, I’m struck by something she wrote early in the book, when she mentions advice her father gave to her and her siblings: “Control your emotions, or your emotions will control you.” 

    It’s similar to advice Justice Ginsburg liked to share from her mother: “Don’t be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time.” Ginsburg would say her advice came in handy at the Court, because she learned that reacting with “anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”  

    I asked Barrett if she, like Ginsburg, drew on that advice at the Court. 

    “Yes, in this job, I think it’s part of the tuning out, that I can’t let what people say…certainly not affect the decisions that I make, but even affect how I feel,” she says. “If I let that in, and then let that affect my mood when I go home or when I’m relating to people, then that needs to be kept out.” 

    Having that mindset, Barrett says, is one of the things she’s most proud of as justice, because that wasn’t how she felt as a young teenager growing up in a family of nine. 

    “I felt very conspicuous. We would go into restaurants, and you could see people turning around and counting and looking,” she says. “In the preteen and teenage self-conscious years, I thought, I just want to be unnoticed. I’m never gonna have a family that attracts attention.”

    Barrett rarely shows the kind of rhetorical fire or hyperbole some of her colleagues regularly exhibit. Stylistically, as she says, she is no Scalia. But with the Court increasingly under strain as it grapples with dozens of emergency requests from the Trump administration, Barrett exhibited a flash of pique last term, responding to a fiery dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in the case limiting the use of nationwide injunctions.

    Jackson, a Biden appointee and the Court’s newest member, accused the Court of engaging in “legalese.” Barrett, speaking for the majority, responded: “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries with of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.” 

    In the months since, Jackson has only ratcheted up her rhetoric as the Court has issued temporary orders in a range of cases brought by the Trump Administration. In one emergency order last month, on whether Trump could cancel grants to the National Institutes of Health, Jackson impugned the conservatives’ motives. 

    Jackson accused them of having “no fixed rules” except “this Administration always wins” something Barrett pointed out in an event last month was obviously false. (Just one high-profile example: The Court ruled against the Administration’s deportation of Kilmar Albrego Garcia and ordered it to work toward his return to the U.S.)

    Still, Barrett insists that kind of language doesn’t affect her relationship with Jackson, and that she works to have relationships with all the other justices. She says she enjoys talking about the law with Justice Elena Kagan, also a former law professor who, like Barrett has a more formalistic approach to the law than the Court’s two other liberals, even though it leads them to very different places.

    In a recent interview, Bari Weiss of The Free Press asked Barrett to give one word for each of her colleagues. For Kagan, Barrett chose “analytical.” That’s a word she also used in our conversation to describe herself.

    “You can’t take it personally, and so I think you just have to understand and see opinions for what they are: disagreements about ideas,” Barrett said of the dissents. “I intend my opinions to be about the ideas, not about the people, and I think a big part of life is assuming the best of other people.”

    Barrett doesn’t seem like a person who dwells in regret. But she said she saw a “missed opportunity” on her cross-country book tour, and she wished she’d emphasized how the emergency orders in the Trump cases are different. Always a teacher, she wants to explain these orders aren’t the last word.

    “I don’t think the public is really aware this isn’t the final decision. If a district court enters a preliminary injunction, and we enter a stay of that preliminary injunction, it’s not saying the administration wins,” she says. “It’s simply saying that the administration…can continue to pursue whatever policy it is, because it has not been finally decided yet.” 

    In other words, she says, these interim orders — whether they’re allowing Mr. Trump to cut grants or foreign aid or fire political appointees from federal agencies — are short-term, preliminary decisions. The Court is allowing Mr. Trump to pursue those policies for now, but if he ultimately loses on the underlying merits, the aid money will have to be spent and the employees reinstated with back pay.

    And Mr. Trump, I said, may not win them all? 

    “Right,” Barrett said.

    It may look different, I asked, once you’re deciding the merits?

    “100 percent,” she said. 

    For now, one factor weighing in Mr. Trump’s favor is the Court’s assessment of the harm caused when unelected judges reflexively block policies enacted by popularly elected representatives. Because litigation can take years to resolve, those policies may never end up taking effect. The harm caused by judicial interference, the Court has explained, is to the democratic process.

    “The case that we always cite is Maryland v. King, and it points out that any time a policy of one of the politically accountable branches or politically accountable state legislatures or governor is stopped, that, in itself, is an irreparable harm because you are affecting the people,” she says. “It was the people’s preferred policy. The president is the one that they elected. The members of whatever legislature, state or Congress, are the ones that people elected.” 

    “I may disagree, or agree, with whatever choices the people have made in the selection of their representatives,” she said. “But the people have made this choice.”

    Beyond the obvious strain on the Court, the unprecedented crush of emergency appeals also has put pressure on lower court judges, and some have complained publicly that the Court’s brief orders aren’t giving them enough guidance. But Barrett, always methodical, says more guidance at the preliminary stage would come at a cost, raising the risk of locking the Court into its views before it has fully considered the issues. 

    “I do think opinions are important,” she says. “I don’t know that it’s always valuable to have an interim opinion that comes before the final opinion.”

    Barrett, like all the justices when speaking in public, is exceedingly careful with her words. She won’t discuss any upcoming issues or cases, or give any hint on how the Court may see the underlying merits. Even her book tour seemed like an exercise in not making news, and she succeeded.

    But she will have that opportunity soon enough: The justices already have agreed to decide whether Mr. Trump can impose far-ranging tariffs and fire members of certain federal agencies, including the Federal Reserve Board. In the interim, it’s allowing him to pursue tariffs and fire some Biden-appointed commissioners, though not on the Fed. Other cases, including birthright citizenship, are on the horizon.

    Beyond the Trump cases, the Court this term also will confront controversial cases on gun rights, voting rights, campaign finance reform and whether students who identify as transgender can play girls sports. The tensions and commentary will not ease anytime soon.

    For Barrett, that means staying the course, following her own internal compass and tuning out the noise, because one thing is certain. Whatever the Court decides in any of the cases, she says, “somebody’s going to be mad.” It’s a part of her life now.

    “I just think you have to know who you are,” she says, “and make decisions that you decide are right, and stick with your priorities and not worry about the feedback you get from others, whether it’s negative or whether it’s positive.”

    Jan Crawford

    Jan Crawford is CBS News’ chief legal correspondent and a recognized authority on the Supreme Court. Her 2007 book, “Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for the Control of the United States Supreme Court” (Penguin Press), gained critical acclaim and became an instant New York Times Bestseller.

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  • Woman says she was removed from DC book festival over ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ costume – WTOP News

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    An Alexandria woman said she was removed from a talk featuring Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the National Book Festival in D.C. because she wore a “Handmaid’s Tale” costume.

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    Woman says she was removed from DC’s National Book Festival over costume

    An Alexandria woman said she was removed from a talk featuring Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the National Book Festival in D.C. because she wore a “Handmaid’s Tale” costume.

    Shawna Flener, a self-described “huge reader” with a TikTok following focused on books, attended the event Saturday, Sept. 6. She said the costume was part of a silent statement in response to the conservative justice’s presence at the festival.

    “I was very much looking forward to the festival, but a lot of people were upset, me included, about Amy Coney Barrett being there and being, you know, one of the featured authors,” Flener said.

    While Flener said she was genuinely interested in hearing the justice speak, she also wanted to express a viewpoint through her attire — a red cloak and white bonnet inspired by Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel.

    “The Handmaid’s Tale is a very classic and well-known symbol of this cautionary tale, right? You know? And what happens when women lose bodily autonomy,” she said. “It was definitely a statement about that and the direction I feel our country is headed.”

    Flener said she entered the auditorium and was directed by staff toward available seats near the front. Before she could sit down, she said an officer told her she couldn’t sit there and directed her to the side of the room. While standing there, she quietly opened and began reading her book.

    “Absolutely not out loud. No, quietly. This was whenever I was already asked to step to the side, which I immediately complied with, and went to the side,” she said.

    She said a security officer then asked her to put the book away, and another told her she could not remain in the session.

    Flener was escorted outside the auditorium and began recording her interactions with security and a D.C. police officer. She said she was told the Supreme Court Police Department had decided she could not reenter the session. One guard referenced an “incident.”

    Because no video was taken inside the auditorium, there is no documentation of what occurred during that portion of the event.

    @shawnainchapterland I just got kicked out of the National Book Festival, happening in Washington DC without saying a word (aside from responding to security and the police.) #booktok #nationalbookfestival ♬ original sound – Shawna

    In the videos she shared, Flener can be heard asking for clarification on why she was barred from returning. A security guard tells her D.C. police would be called if she attempted to reenter.

    Flener said she was initially told she could wait outside, but after trying to reenter, she was escorted out of the convention center entirely.

    “The person in question passed by all the seats in the Main Stage auditorium and approached the stage, and that’s when she was politely intercepted by Supreme Court Police and escorted out by security guards. She was offered an opportunity to remain at the festival but not in that session. She persistently tried to regain entry to the Main Stage. After that, she was escorted out,” the Library of Congress, which hosted the event, said in a statement to WTOP.

    Flener offered a different account, saying she did not attempt to approach the stage and that she was following staff directions. She also said she was not given a real opportunity to remain at the festival.

    “I think I have the right to express that viewpoint in a public space, which is where I was, and I believe that fact that I was permitted to enter the event,” Flener said.

    She said she still doesn’t know who made the final decision to remove her from the festival — whether it was the Library of Congress, event management or law enforcement.

    WTOP reached out to the Supreme Court Police for comment but did not receive a response.

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  • Amy Coney Barrett Wrote a Book for People Who Already Like Amy Coney Barrett

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    Amy Coney Barrett has very little in common with her fellow justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all of whom preceded her as authors of bestselling memoirs that, in one way or another, illuminate how they or their families surmounted poverty, discrimination, and other societal barriers on their way to the pinnacle of American law. All three saw the law’s impact firsthand in the trenches, as lawyers—working in government or defending people from it in court. Many found their stories compelling precisely because these authors traced their paths without dwelling much on how they think about their current, far more isolating jobs. Their remembrances stopped, in other words, at or near the Supreme Court steps.

    That’s not what Barrett set out to do with her first book, Listening to the Law, which is less about her rise from the legal academy than an apologia about the institution she now inhabits—which, without explaining itself, just yesterday greenlit an effort by the Trump administration to racially profile Latino workers on the basis of their looks, their language, and where they work or seek work. “If I leave you with a better understanding of the Court’s role, how the Constitution shapes American life, and how I think about my job, I will have achieved my goal,” she writes.

    Treatises about the law or how judges wrestle with it don’t normally burn up the charts, and so this is a big bet for Penguin Random House, which reportedly offered Barrett a $2 million book deal for pulling back the curtain.

    She doesn’t pull back much. Entire sections are devoted to legal history, constitutional debates, and how framers and justices of yesteryear interpreted the Constitution. Neither does she reckon with how she and the current six-justice supermajority on the Supreme Court have upended decades of constitutional law and people’s settled expectations since her arrival there in 2020, right after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg—a law professor who helped transform the Constitution before she set out to teach it. Suppose Barrett’s high opinion of the high court were the controlling, final word (luckily, it isn’t): a person who isn’t already a big supporter of its actions might think everything there is fine. They wouldn’t know that its legitimacy and public support remain near historic lows.

    Below are six takeaways from Listening to the Law, which comes with an appendix reprinting the entire Constitution of the United States, should readers ever make it that far:

    Neither a Democrat nor a Republican. History is written by the victors, and one thread throughout Listening to the Law is the idea that the Supreme Court, which has been steadily ruling for Donald Trump since he took office a second time, does everything according to the law rather than the politics of the issues or the parties that appear before it. Recounting the day of her swearing-in ceremony as associate justice, which was delayed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she marvels at how her commission—the presidential document that appoints her to the position—bore Trump’s signature but was delivered by President Joe Biden’s deputy attorney general, the second in command at the Justice Department. “Once a judge is on the bench, she is a United States judge, not a Democrat or Republican official beholden to a particular administration or party,” Barrett writes.

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  • Justice Amy Coney Barrett responds to criticism that the Supreme Court is allowing Trump to expand his power

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    Amy Coney Barrett had been teaching full-time for nearly two decades, at Notre Dame’s campus in South Bend, Indiana, until she was selected by President Donald Trump, in 2020, to serve on the Supreme Court. Now, she’s traded the classroom for the courtroom, although she continues to teach a weeklong seminar on Constitutional Law. 

    In her first television interview since she filled the seat left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barrett was asked whether she believed the Court has shifted to the right. “I think shifting to the right, or shifting to the left, I think those are other people’s labels, and that’s other people’s game,” she said. “I don’t think of it that way. You know, I just decide the cases as they come. I’ve been criticized by both the right and the left.”

    Justice Barrett’s legal philosophy and personal story are the focus of her new book, “Listening to the Law,” out on September 9. In it, she writes that, for her, the past five years have not been easy since joining the Supreme Court: “I’m happiest with my old friends who knew me before I became Justice Barrett, and I am wistful when we’re back in South Bend.”

    Sentinel


    But she does not regret joining the High Court. “No, I don’t regret it,” she said. “And I think it’s really important work, and I’m proud to serve. And we do have a good life in Washington, and we have friends in Washington. But there is something nice about our old life.”

    Observers at the Supreme Court describe the 53-year-old mother of seven as “the most influential justice” on the court today. Among the most notable instances of that was her vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned nearly 50 years of precedent surrounding the right to an abortion.

    For the minority’s dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote:

    “[T]he Court may face questions about the application of abortion regulations to medical care most people view as quite different from abortion. What about the morning-after pill? IUDs? In vitro fertilization? And how about the use of dilation and evacuation or medication for miscarriage management?”

    Asked whether she sees those issues coming about now as a result of Dobbs, Barrett replied, “Those are issues inherent in medical practice. And sure, they surround pregnancy care and the care of women. And those are issues that are left now to the democratic process. And the states are working those out. We have not had those cases on our docket.”

    But, Barrett added, “Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states. And all of these kinds of questions – decisions that you mention that require medical judgments – are not ones that our Constitution connects to the courts, you know, to decide how far into pregnancy the right of abortion might extend. You know, the court was in the business of drawing a lot of those lines before, and what Dobbs says is that those calls are properly left to the democratic process. And the states have been working those out. There’s been a lot of legislative activity and a lot of state constitutional activity since the decision in Dobbs was rendered.”

    For some, Dobbs raised concerns about the future of other rights. In an appearance on the Raging Moderates podcast last month, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicted that the Court “will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion.”

    Barrett said, “Well, I think people who criticize the Court or who are outside, say a lot of different things. But again, the point that I make in the book is that we have to tune those things out.”

    She also notes in her book that the rights to marry and engage in sexual intimacy, to use birth control, and to raise children are, in her words, “fundamental.”

    “Yes,” Barrett said. “Again, I’m describing what our doctrine is. And that is what we’ve said.”

    Ruling on Trump’s policies

    At issue now: cases on the “emergency docket,” challenging Mr. Trump’s executive orders. The nation’s highest court has routinely allowed the president’s policies (including on immigration and mass layoffs of federal workers) to temporarily proceed.

    Barrett was asked to respond to Court observers who say that Mr. Trump is pushing the boundaries of executive power, even overreaching, and that the Supreme Court is not providing an adequate check on that.

    “The Supreme Court, you know – and I can speak for myself and the way that I make these decisions – it’s not our job to survey and decide whether, you know, the current occupant of an office in this particular moment is, you know, to form a political view. You know, that’s the job of journalists, that’s the job of other politicians, or that’s the job of the people. But our job is to decide these legal questions.

    “And so, in the cases that we’ve decided, what I can say, and what I try to explain in the book, is that we’re trying to get the law right,” she said.

    One White House policy that has faced pushback from federal courts is the president’s deployment of National Guard troops in U.S. cities, such as Los Angeles and Chicago. On August 26, Mr. Trump said, “Not that I don’t have – I would – the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country is in danger — and it is in danger in these cities — I can do it.”

    Asked if she thought the president is right when he says he has unlimited power to deploy the National Guard in any state, Barrett replied, “So, we don’t have any cases pending before us that I’m aware of. I would not be surprised if there are some cases pending below. And so, I can’t answer that question. But actually, this is a good opportunity for me to say why I can’t answer that question, because it’s something I cover in the book. Any particular legal issue, I mean, I might be sitting there with my kids and watching TV, and I might have an idea about it. But if I’m going to decide something as a judge, it really has to happen in the context of a particular case, because judges have to approach things with an open mind on a specific set of facts. We read briefs. I listen to oral argument. I talk to my law clerks. I write out notes. I look at the cases. I talk to my colleagues. And at any step of that process, I might change my mind from my initial reaction. In fact, I often do.

    amy-coney-barrett-interview-1280.jpg

    Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. 

    CBS News


    “And so not only should I not, but I don’t think you would want me to be in a position where I would just shoot from the hip and say, ‘Oh yeah. I think that’s constitutional,’ or, ‘Oh no. I think that’s not.’ That really kind of the opposite of the judicial rule,” she said.

    “But you are a scholar of the Constitution,” O’Donnell said, “so I do also want to ask you, do you believe that the power to impose tariffs is something the Constitution gives to the president, or is that left to Congress?”

    “Ugh, and I have to give the same answer again, because that one actually is pending in the courts, and we may well (dare I say likely will) see that case,” Barrett replied. “And so, same thing goes. You know, that’s the kind of thing that’s a wait-and-see. I’m not trying to hide the ball. And I’m sure that not only you, but probably others would be interested in, you know, what I think about that question. I don’t know what I think about that question yet, I can honestly say. You know, stay tuned. If that case comes before us, and after I dive in and read all the relevant authorities, then I’ll draw a conclusion.”

    It’s that philosophy that makes Barrett the most closely-watched justice in this upcoming term – and for years to come.

    Reflecting on her lifetime appointment, Barrett laughed, “Well, while I do feel older by the day, I haven’t gotten so old I’m actually thinking about retirement just yet.”

    WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Justice Amy Coney Barrett (Video)



    Extended interview: Justice Amy Coney Barrett

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    READ AN EXCERPT: “Listening to the Law” by Amy Coney Barrett
    In this excerpt from the Supreme Court Justice’s memoir, Amy Coney Barrett writes of the decision she and her family made to “burn the boats” upon being asked to serve on the High Court.

          
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    Story produced by Julie Morse. Editor: Remington Korper.

    Norah O’Donnell

    Norah O’Donnell is CBS News’ senior correspondent and a 60 Minutes contributing correspondent. O’Donnell is also the host of CBS News 24/7’s “Person to Person,” where she brings interviews that go beyond the headlines through thoughtful conversation. She is a multiple Emmy Award-winning journalist with nearly three decades of experience covering the biggest stories in the world and conducting impactful, news-making interviews.

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  • Extended interview: Justice Amy Coney Barrett

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    Extended interview: Justice Amy Coney Barrett – CBS News










































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    Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke with CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell for her first television interview since joining the Supreme Court.

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  • Justice Amy Coney Barrett says she has

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    Washington — Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she sharply responded to a dissenting opinion from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in a recent ruling on nationwide injunctions because Jackson had made a “spirited argument” that “merited a spirited response.”

    Barrett discussed the majority opinion she authored in a conversation with CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell, her first television interview since joining the Supreme Court in 2020. The justice has written a new book, called “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution,” that will hit shelves Sept. 9.

    The Supreme Court’s ruling in June limited the ability of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which are orders that block enforcement of a policy universally, not just against the plaintiffs in a case. The decision came in a trio of challenges to President Trump’s executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship.

    The constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship plan was not before the court, though the justices are likely to be confronted with that question soon.

    The Supreme Court divided 6-3 in the case, with the three liberal justices in dissent. Jackson, the newest member of the court, joined the principle dissenting opinion authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and wrote her own.

    Writing for the majority, Barrett referenced Jackson several times by name. Barrett wrote that her colleague’s “position is difficult to pin down” and “goes far beyond the mainstream defense of universal injunctions.”

    “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Barrett wrote. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”

    Asked about her response to Jackson, Barrett said she mentioned her fellow justice by name because she wrote a solo dissent that was not joined by either of the two liberal justices, Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan.

    “I did draft the opinion and I think sometimes arguments that are, you know — you match the tone that’s appropriate for the moment,” Barrett said. “And Justice Jackson made a formal, a very — she made a spirited argument, and so I thought it merited a spirited response. But it is about the merits, it was about the case. I have great respect for Justice Jackson.”

    Barrett quoted her former boss, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who was known for his own sharp opinions and who would say “I attack ideas. I don’t attack people.”

    “That is the spirit in which, you know, I write my opinions,” she said.

    Asked if there was any “beef” with Jackson, Barrett replied, “Of course not. No.”

    “One thing I want people to know about the court is that it’s a place where we can have disagreements, but still get along, because we can have disagreements that really are confined to the page, that are confined to cases,” she said. “And so we can debate ideas, sometimes vigorously, as you pointed out, but it doesn’t inhibit us in our ability to be colleagues and friends.”

    Melissa Quinn

    Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.

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  • Book excerpt:

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    We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.

    Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett was serving on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Indiana when she was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Trump in 2020. In her new memoir, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution” (to be published September 9 by Sentinel), Barrett writes of the decision she and her family made to “burn the boats” upon being asked to serve on the High Court.

    Read an excerpt below, and don’t miss Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Justice Barrett on “CBS Sunday Morning” September 7!

    “Listening to the Law” by Amy Coney Barrett

    Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.

    I really loved my job on the Seventh Circuit and settled into the rhythm of hearing arguments and writing opinions. But after a few years, life took another turn: the White House counsel, who runs the judicial selection process for the president, invited me on behalf of President Trump to interview for a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Though I was deeply honored, I thought hard about whether to go forward. I knew that if I was chosen, both the confirmation process and the work of serving on the Court would require sacrifices, particularly from my family. Unlike my job on the Seventh Circuit, this one would require a move to Washington, D.C. We had a good life, wonderful friends, and close family in South Bend. We were attached to our old Prairie-style home, which was a short walk to campus for tailgates during football season—a fall family high- light. The move would mean changes for Jesse’s career and new schools for the children. We knew that public criticism was sure to come. And if I was nominated and confirmed, there would be a long-term loss of privacy for all of us. Public service was appealing, but the changes to our personal life were not.

    In fact, I felt a pit in my stomach when I considered what might lie ahead. I had been considered for a seat on the Court two years earlier, when Justice Anthony Kennedy retired. Being a finalist had thrust me into the spotlight, which (to put it mildly) was not enjoyable. There had been an avalanche of news stories and social media posts—true and untrue, kind and cruel. It was difficult to have my life so publicly picked apart. There had also been a loss of physical privacy. Multiple camera crews parked outside our house and followed me by car when I pulled out of the driveway. I had one experience, funny only in retrospect, of realizing that I had been followed to church on a Sunday morning. I spent the whole Mass, not in prayer, but plotting an escape—a plan that culminated in my sneaking out a side door, scaling a fence in high heels, and—to the surprise of the associate pastor sitting on the rectory porch—dropping into the priests’ vegetable garden. (He was a happy co-conspirator; he took my keys and retrieved my car from the parking lot, allowing me to avoid the camera after all.) The scrutiny had affected my family too—given the number of strangers who had started walking past and driving by our house, Jesse and I were reluctant to let our kids play in the yard. It was not an experience I was eager to repeat.

    Jesse and I had a very brief time to make one of the biggest decisions in our marriage. His position was full support on one condition: if we did it, we had to “burn the boats.” The phrase comes from a military strategy used by Alexander the Great, who, after landing on the shores of enemy territory, ordered his men to burn the ships they had come in. With the option of exit gone, there was no choice but to forge ahead, no matter the challenge. Likewise for us. There would be difficulties in store, some we could anticipate and others we couldn’t. Jesse wisely thought that it would be unsustainable to face the difficulties—whether in the confirmation process or beyond—if we gave ourselves the option to look back, wishing that we could unwind what we had done. There would be no second-guessing and no turning back to our comfortable life in South Bend.

    So despite what might seem like a self-evident decision from the outside, saying yes to the interview, and then to the nomination, was not an easy call. I had just watched Brett Kavanaugh, whom I knew and respected, undergo a brutal confirmation process, and I was afraid of what I might face. I was reluctant to give up the good life we had for one that might prove to be less happy. Yet it seemed cowardly to bow out because we didn’t want to make the sacrifice. As I later told the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe deeply in the rule of law and the Supreme Court’s role in preserving it; I also think that Americans of all backgrounds deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written. It seemed strange to hold those views and be unwilling to serve, given that any nominee would face the same hardships. I accepted the interview and flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Trump. He announced my nomination on September 26, 2020, and the Senate confirmed me a month later. I have served as an associate justice since.

          
    From “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution” by Amy Coney Barrett, to be published on September 9, 2025 by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Amy Coney Barrett.

    Get the book here:

    “Listening to the Law” by Amy Coney Barrett

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  • Justice Amy Coney Barrett on same-sex marriage and abortion

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    Justice Amy Coney Barrett tells CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell the Supreme Court should not “be imposing its own values on the American people.” The statement comes as part of her first television interview since joining the high court in 2020, ahead of the release of her new book, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.”

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  • Supreme Court rulings could completely change gun control

    Supreme Court rulings could completely change gun control

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    Two Supreme Court cases could completely change gun control laws, one affecting who can legally own a firearm and the other defining what modifications may be made to existing weaponry.

    The rulings, to be given sometime this term, could affect hundreds of thousands of people under restraining orders, their alleged victims and half a million gun owners.

    ‘United States vs. Rahimi’: Restraining Orders & Gun Rights

    One of the cases involves Zackey Rahimi, an alleged small-time marijuana and cocaine dealer, who was having an argument with his girlfriend in an Arlington, Texas, car park in December 2019.

    As he became aggressive, she tried to flee but Rahimi grabbed her wrist and knocked her to the ground.

    “He then dragged her back to his car, picked her up, and pushed her inside, causing her to hit her head on the dashboard. Realizing that a bystander had seen him, he retrieved a gun and fired a shot,” according to a Solicitor General petition to the Supreme Court.

    While he was firing the shot, his girlfriend, identified only as C.M. in court documents, escaped from the car and ran.

    Police mugshot of Zackey Rahimi, who won the right to own a gun after an appeal court struck down a law that banned people under restraining orders from gun possession. The government is now challenging that decision before the U.S Supreme Court.
    Arlington Police Department, Texas

    Rahimi later called her and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone about the assault. In February 2020, a Texas state court granted C.M. a restraining order, which was valid for two years. The order also suspended Rahimi’s handgun license and warned him that possessing a firearm while the order remained in effect may be a felony.

    “Rahimi, however, defied the restraining order. In August 2020, he tried to communicate with C.M. on social media and approached her house in the middle of the night, prompting state police to arrest him for violating the order,” the Solicitor General petition states.

    In November 2020, he threatened another woman with a gun and was charged in Texas with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

    The following month, after someone who had bought drugs from him “started talking trash” on social media, the Solicitor General petition states, Rahimi went to the man’s home and fired an AR-15 rifle into it.

    The next day, after colliding with another vehicle, he got out of his car, shot at the other driver, fled, returned to the scene, fired more shots at the other car, and fled again. Three days later, Rahimi fired a gun in the air in a residential neighborhood in the presence of young children.

    A few weeks after that, a truck flashed its headlights at Rahimi to caution him against speeding. In response, Rahimi slammed his brakes, cut across the highway, followed the truck off an exit, and fired multiple shots at another car that had been traveling behind the truck. Finally, in early January 2021, Rahimi pulled out a gun and fired multiple shots in the air after a friend’s credit card was declined at a fast-food restaurant, the Solicitor General notes.

    coney barrett
    Amy Coney Barrett on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on October, 1, 2020. Justice Coney Barrett drew attention to the terms of Zackey Rahimi’s restraining order during Supreme Court oral arguments in Rahimi’s gun rights case on November 3, 2023.
    Greg Nash/Getty Images

    The petition, filed in March 2023, notes that a later police search of Rahimi’s room “uncovered a .45-caliber pistol, a .308-caliber rifle, pistol and rifle magazines, ammunition, approximately $20,000 in cash, and a copy of the restraining order.”

    To the seeming disbelief of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Rahimi won his right to gun ownership after a Texas federal appeal court struck down a 1994 law that prohibits people under a restraining order from owning a gun.

    “That holding was profoundly mistaken,” the Solicitor General’s petition told the Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear a government appeal to the Texas court’s decision.

    In oral arguments on November 3, Coney Barrett appeared to have barely disguised contempt for Rahimi, whatever her view of the Second Amendment arguments. When Justice Clarence Thomas asked Rahimi’s lawyers how criminal danger could be determined by a civil restraining order, Coney Barrett pulled out a copy of Rahimi’s restraining order and read from it.

    She said Rahimi was instructed to stay at least 200 feet away from his girlfriend and child because of the physical risk he posed to their safety.

    Rahimi is one of two major cases that will help shape gun control law, legal analysts believe.

    ‘Cargill v. Garland’: Bump Stock Ban

    The other is Cargill v. Garland, on the issue of whether a bump stock device is a “machine gun” because it is designed and intended for use in converting a rifle into a rapid-fire machine gun.

    A bump stock is attached to a semi-automatic firearm to enable it to fire bullets more rapidly.

    The case is a challenge to a regulation issued after America’s worst-ever mass shooting, in which 60 people were killed and over 850 were injured at a county music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.

    The killer, Stephen Paddock, had used semi-automatic rifles equipped with bump stocks while firing at the music festival from his hotel room.

    Amid public outrage, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives [ATF] issued a rule concluding that bump stocks are machine guns and ordered that anyone who owned one should destroy it or drop it at a nearby ATF office to avoid facing criminal penalties.

    bump stock restraining order supreme court
    Stock images. The Supreme Court will hear two cases this term that could completely change gun control laws.
    George Frey / Stringer / designer491/Getty Images

    That order is now being challenged by Michael Cargill, an army veteran and Texas gun shop owner, who says he purchased two bump stocks and that the ban violates his Second Amendment rights.

    The New Civil Liberties Alliance, which supports Cargill’s Supreme Court challenge, said the bump stock ban affects over 500,000 gun owners.

    According to New York University constitutional law professor, Peter Shane, Rahimi and Cargill could help bring clarity to gun ownership after the confusion caused by last year’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the Supreme Court urged lower courts to ensure that gun laws are “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition.”

    “There are a lot of gun regulations on the books throughout the country. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decision in Bruen has generated huge uncertainty as to what kinds of regulation are permissible,” Shane told Newsweek.

    Justice Clarence Thomas’s decision for the majority in Bruen caused major confusion, especially as it urged lower courts to look to historic precedent without defining that precedent. His ruling struck down New York’s 1911 Sullivan Act, which required a person applying for a concealed pistol permit to show “special cause” for doing so.

    Thomas wrote that, for a gun law to be constitutional, “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition”—a phrase that has been interpreted in many ways by the lower courts.

    Research by Jacob Charles, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, shows that 12 state and federal laws have been struck down, either completely or in part, since the Bruen decision, with little consistency in how it has been interpreted.

    Writing in the Duke Law Journal last January, Charles was highly critical of the historic legacy approach of Bruen, which he says is “an extension of an increasingly historically-focused Supreme Court” that “imbues an absent past with more explanatory power than it can bear.”