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Tag: Supreme Court of the United States

  • Supreme Court allows EPA to enforce power plant emission limits

    Supreme Court allows EPA to enforce power plant emission limits

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    Supreme Court allows EPA to enforce power plant emission limits – CBS News


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    On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said it will allow the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce new greenhouse gas emissions limits for power plants. Professor at Columbia’s Climate School Michael Gerrard joins “The Daily Report” to discuss.

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  • Members of Congress call on companies to retain DEI programs as court cases grind on

    Members of Congress call on companies to retain DEI programs as court cases grind on

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    NEW YORK (AP) — A group of Democrats in Congress appealed to the largest U.S. companies Tuesday to hold onto their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, saying such efforts give everyone a fair chance at achieving the American dream.

    The 49 House members, led by U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, shared their views in a letter emailed to the leaders of the Fortune 1000. The move follows several major corporations saying in recent months that they would end or curtail their DEI initiatives.

    “Inclusion is a core American value, and a great business practice,” the lawmakers wrote. “By embracing this value, you create safer and fairer workplaces without sacrificing quality or financial success.”

    A handful of U.S. companies, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, Lowes and Molson Coors, dialed back their DEI initiatives over the summer. The retreats came in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing affirmative action in college admissions and after conservative activists targeted the prominent American brands over their diversity policies and programs.

    DEI policies typically are intended as a counterweight to discriminatory practices. Critics argue that education, government and business programs which single out participants based on factors such as race, gender and sexual orientation are unfair and the same opportunities should be afforded to everyone.

    “They create toxic environments. They divide people,” Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, said of diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives.

    The opponents have had several legislative and legal victories, and dozens more cases are working their way through the courts.

    “These efforts to roll back rights are happening everywhere. They’re happening at the workplace. They’re happening in state legislatures,” Garcia told The Associated Press. “And it needs to stop. And we’ve got to push back and be vocal. We can’t just sit by and allow this to happen.”

    The lawmakers’ letter states that growing numbers of American consumers spend their money with businesses that champion inclusion and are unlikely to continue supporting companies that they see backing down on commitments to bring people together.

    “Continual progress towards more equal policies and benefits decreases the risk that anyone – employees and consumers – will experience discrimination, bias, and other threats to their safety and well-being,” the letter says.

    The letter comes on the heels of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announcing that it filed 110 lawsuits in the past year alleging that employers sexually harassed teenagers, discriminated against workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity, engaged in patterns of discrimination and violated the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, among other violations.

    The lawsuits represent a small fraction of the complaints lodged with the EEOC. The agency received more than 81,000 charges of workplace discrimination in fiscal year 2023, which was a 10% increase over 2022, EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said.

    For every complaint, the EEOC notified the employer and launched an investigation. Many involved allegations of racial harassment or religious discrimination, Burrows said.

    “Most people don’t even report internally, much less to the federal government, when they experience discrimination, so unfortunately, it’s the tip of the iceberg,” Burrows told the AP.

    She and other commissioners strongly support diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs “because it is in so many ways an antidote to the kinds of practices that lead us to have to go to court,” Burrows said.

    The Manhattan Institute’s Shapiro counters that DEI programs have little to do with civil rights law.

    “The pushback against it is not a pushback against anti-discrimination laws or anything that existed really before 10 years ago or so,” he said. “DEI is divisive. It views people and issues through lenses of identity, classifies people based on privilege hierarchies and intersectional matrices, and is antithetical to a productive working environment.”

    Meanwhile, lawsuits claiming reverse discrimination may be gaining momentum. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided it would hear a lawsuit filed by Marlean Ames, who claims she was discriminated against in her job at the Ohio Department of Youth Services because she was straight.

    “It’s a case that people are expecting will open the courthouse doors to more reverse discrimination suits,” said Jason Schwartz, co-chairman of the labor & employment practice group at Gibson Dunn.

    Circuit courts have disagreed over whether to hold reverse discrimination cases to a higher standard. Some have ruled that if a person from a majority group brings a discrimination case, they have to show more evidence of discrimination than a person from a minority group who files a similar case.

    “The Supreme Court’s interest in that case signals some potential that they’re going to lower the bar,” Schwartz said. “We already see a really massive uptick in these reverse discrimination cases.”

    Groups such as the American Alliance for Equal Rights have pushed back on affirmative action policies at universities and diversity, equity and inclusion policies run by corporations.

    Recently, the Atlanta-based Fearless Fund had to shut down a grant contest for Black women business owners as part of a settlement with the American Alliance for Equal Rights, which argued that race-based programs should be open to everyone, regardless of race.

    “There’s been such an intense focus on all of the risk emanating from the anti-DEI side,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law. “But I do worry sometimes that organizations may be over-correcting for that or worrying a little bit too much about that at the expense of the other side of the equation.”

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  • Supreme Court to weigh legality of Biden administration’s ghost guns rule

    Supreme Court to weigh legality of Biden administration’s ghost guns rule

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    Washington — The Supreme Court will convene Tuesday to consider a challenge to the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate untraceable firearms known as ghost guns, as major American cities report the measure seems to have caused a reduction in the use of these weapons within their borders.

    The court fight involves a 2022 regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that sought to ensure the difficult-to-trace weapons known as ghost guns are subject to the same requirements as commercial firearms sales. The issue before the justices is not whether Second Amendment rights were violated, but rather if the Biden administration went too far when it issued the rule.

    The case may sound similar to one before the high court in its last term that involved a ban on bump stocks put in place during the Trump administration. In that instance, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority invalidated the regulation that outlawed the devices, finding that the ATF exceeded its authority by issuing a rule that classified a bump stock as a “machine gun.”

    But legal experts say the Supreme Court’s ruling four months ago may not be a harbinger of whether the ghost gun regulation will fall, and in this case, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, two members of the court’s conservative wing, will be the key members to watch.

    “The government has a much stronger case here that the products the challengers are selling should be covered under a plain reading of the Gun Control Act,” said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel and legal director at Giffords Law Center, which is urging the Supreme Court to uphold the rule. “The products are readily convertible into firearms.”

    The ghost gun regulation

    The 2022 measure at the heart of the case clarified the definition of “firearm” in the Gun Control Act of 1968 to include a weapon parts kit that can be readily assembled into an operational firearm and the incomplete frame of a handgun and receiver of a rifle. The 56-year-old law regulates the commercial firearms market, and it lays out requirements for gunmakers, sellers and purchasers.

    The rule is intended to address a proliferation of crimes using ghost guns, which can be made from 3D printers or kits and parts available to buy online. In a four-year span from 2017 to 2021, there was a roughly tenfold increase in the number of ghost guns submitted to the ATF by law enforcement agencies for tracing, according to the Biden administration.

    But ghost guns don’t have serial numbers or transfer records, as required for commercially sold firearms, which makes it difficult for the ATF to trace them to their buyers. The Biden administration argues this makes ghost guns attractive to those who legally cannot buy firearms or plan to use them in crimes.

    To address the spike in these untraceable firearms, the Biden administration issued its rule regulating ghost guns, which it said allow anyone with “basic tools and rudimentary skills” to build a fully functional firearm in less than 30 minutes.

    By amending the definition of a firearm under federal law to cover weapons parts kits, the rule requires the manufacturers and sellers of ghost guns to be licensed, mark their products with serial numbers, run background checks of buyers and keep transfer records, as commercial makers and sellers of firearms must do.

    A group of 20 major cities, including Baltimore, Boston and Chicago, said in filing the rule is starting to curb the prevalence of ghost guns in their municipalities and around the country. In New York, for example, ghost-gun recoveries dropped last year for the first time in four years, and in Baltimore, they decreased in 2023 for the first time since 2019.

    If it is left intact, the cities said they believe “the problem of ghost guns will be further ameliorated over time.”

    Garland v. VanDerStok

    The Biden administration’s rule doesn’t prohibit people who can legally have guns from buying weapon parts kits or making a firearm at home. But after the new requirements took effect, a group of gun owners, advocacy groups and the makers of weapon parts kits challenged the legality of the rule, arguing that the ATF’s definition of firearm exceeds the one written by Congress decades ago.

    A federal district judge invalidated the rule last year, finding that the ATF cannot regulate the firearm components in keeping with federal law. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed, concluding that the rule exceeded Congress’ limits on agency authority.

    The Supreme Court agreed to review the 5th Circuit’s decision, and when it did, it had already been asked to provide emergency relief in an earlier stage of litigation. In August 2023, the high court divided 5-4 in agreeing to halt the district court’s order striking down the ghost gun rule. Roberts and Barrett joined with the three liberal justices to allow the Biden administration to enforce the measure, and it will remain in place until the Supreme Court issues its decision, likely by the end of June 2025.

    Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, said the court’s earlier action provides “some clues about how the justices may be thinking.”

    Because four conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh —  noted their opposition to letting the ATF enforce the regulation last year, he said it’s a “pretty clear indication” they would vote to uphold the 5th Circuit’s ruling invalidating the measure.

    “That suggests it could be a 5-4 decision upholding the rule or at least in part, and key votes would be the chief justice and Justice Barrett,” Willinger said. “It seems like there’s more of an intuitive case that these gun assembly kits are firearms in natural parlance.”

    The Biden administration has likened an assembled ghost gun to Ikea furniture, and said the Swedish furniture giant couldn’t get away with not paying a hypothetical tax on the sale of tables, chairs, couches and bookshelves by saying it sells “furniture parts kits” that have to be assembled by the buyer.

    “So too with guns: A company in the business of selling kits that can be assembled into working firearms in minutes — and that are designed, marketed, and used for that express purpose — is in the business of selling firearms,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who argues on behalf of the government before the Supreme Court, wrote in a filing for the justices. 

    She warned that affirming the 5th Circuit’s decision would transform the 1968 law’s definition of firearm into an invitation to skirt its requirements, since felons, minors and others who can’t legally have guns could just buy and build them from online parts retailers and circumvent a background check.

    “Anyone seeking an untraceable gun for use in crime could do the same thing, evading the act’s serialization and record-keeping requirements,” Prelogar said. “As it has done before, the court should decline to adopt such a self-defeating construction of the act.”

    But the challengers have argued that the changes made by the ATF when it issued the regulation two years ago are “inconsistent” with the definition of a firearm. An incomplete collection of parts isn’t a “weapon,” they wrote in a Supreme Court filing, and it’s up to Congress, not the ATF, to decide whether privately made guns should be regulated.

    “The expected result of ATF’s Rule was not simply to regulate this industry but to destroy it,” lawyers for Jennifer VanDerStok, a Texas woman who owns firearms components and challenged the measure, wrote.

    The retailers and advocacy groups put forth their own comparison for the parts kits used to make ghost guns, juxtaposing the components a hobbyist would buy to build their own firearms with the tools and materials that a hardware store would sell with plans for a woodworking project.

    “By turning to the market for assistance with making firearms, modern do-it-yourselfers are similar to their Founding-era forebears,” they argued. “The government’s regulations will make this much more difficult.”

    But Willinger, of Duke, said the statute at issue in this case is better for the government, because it includes language about things that “may be readily converted to a firearm.”

    The Supreme Court has through numerous recent decisions sought to rein in federal agencies that it believes have exceeded the authority granted by Congress, including in the bump stock case and when it struck down President Biden’s plan to provide sweeping relief from student loan debt last year. 

    But the most significant of its decisions on regulatory power was its overturning of a 40-year-old decision that required courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of an unclear law passed by Congress if it is reasonable.

    Pucino, of Giffords, said that if the Supreme Court adds the ghost guns regulation to that string of decisions, it could not only hamstring future administrations who may seek to impose firearms restrictions unilaterally but also empower a subset of the gun industry that is selling its products outside of the regulatory system already in place.

    Pointing to the explosion of crimes involving ghost guns, he said “the very system of regulating guns in this country for the purpose of keeping them out of the hands of criminal actors” is at stake in this case.

    A decision is expected by the end of June 2025.

    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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  • How presidential immunity ruling impacts Trump’s election interference case

    How presidential immunity ruling impacts Trump’s election interference case

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    How presidential immunity ruling impacts Trump’s election interference case – CBS News


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    Special counsel Jack Smith’s unsealed court filing revealed new evidence in the federal election interference case against former President Donald Trump. Over the summer, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump has immunity for official acts conducted as president. CBS News legal contributor Jessica Levinson breaks down the decision’s impact on Trump’s case.

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  • FACT FOCUS: A look back at some of the questionable claims made during the Democratic convention

    FACT FOCUS: A look back at some of the questionable claims made during the Democratic convention

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    The Democrats’ star-studded, four-day convention drew to a close as Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the party’s nomination for president. The festivities were high on entertainment and praise for Harris and running mate Tim Walz. But while most speakers stuck to the script — and the facts — the convention was not without false information or statements that begged for additional context.

    Here’s a look at the facts around some of those claims.

    Trump’s views on an abortion ban

    VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS said Trump would “ban medication abortion and enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congress.”

    THE FACTS: While Trump has said in the past that he would support a national ban on abortion, he said Thursday morning on Fox & Friends: “I would never. There will not be a federal ban. This is now back in the states where it belongs.”

    In April, he said he would leave the issue up to the states in a video on his Truth Social platform.

    Days later, asked by a reporter upon arriving in Atlanta whether he would sign a national abortion ban, Trump shook his head and said “no.”

    But just a month earlier Trump suggested he’d support a national ban on abortion around 15 weeks of pregnancy. He also often brags about appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion.

    Trump has previously supported a federal ban on abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy. In a letter to anti-abortion leaders during his 2016 campaign, Trump expressed his commitment to this view by vowing to sign the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

    The Republican presidential nominee advocated for the bill again in 2018, at that year’s annual March for Life festival in Washington. The bill, which included exceptions for saving the life of a pregnant woman, as well as rape or incest, was passed by the House in 2017, but failed to move forward in the Senate.

    Trump told CBS News on Monday that he would not enforce the Comstock Act to restrict the sale of abortion medication by mail. The act, originally passed in 1873, was revived in an effort to block the mailing of mifepristone, the pill used in more than half of U.S. abortions.

    Trump and Project 2025

    COLORADO REP. JASON CROW: “Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would abandon our troops, abandon our veterans, our allies and our principles.”

    THE FACTS: Many speakers at the convention have linked Trump to Project 2025. Trump has repeatedly disavowed the conservative initiative, saying on social media he hasn’t read it and doesn’t know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the “severe right” and some of the things in it are “seriously extreme.” He has also denied knowing who is behind the plan.

    Project 2025 has also said it is not tied to a specific candidate or campaign. And yet, it is connected in many ways to Trump’s orbit. Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior officials from the Trump administration. The project’s former director is Paul Dans, who served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump.

    Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt was featured in one of Project 2025’s videos. John McEntee, a former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is a senior adviser. McEntee told the conservative news site The Daily Wire earlier this year that Project 2025’s team would integrate a lot of its work with the campaign after the summer when Trump would announce his transition team.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, penned the forward of a yet unreleased book written by Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, which created Project 2025.

    __ CROW again: “Trump plans to do Putin’s bidding by abandoning Ukraine and walking away from our NATO allies. In chapters two and three, he plans to fire our national security and military professionals and then replace them with MAGA loyalists.”

    THE FACTS: In regards to the Russia-Ukraine war, Project 2025 lays out three schools of thought about U.S. involvement, one of them being that it should not continue. However, it does not advocate for any one over the other.

    Crow’s claim that national security and military professionals will be replaced with Trump supporters does ring true. Among its recommendations are that senior CIA leaders “must commit to carrying out the President’s agenda and be willing to take calculated risks.” It also states that the National Security Council should be made up of “personnel with technical expertise and experience as well as an alignment to the President’s declared national security policy priorities.”

    Trump’s alleged comments about those captured or killed in military service

    ARIZONA SEN. MARK KELLY: “Trump thinks that Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice are suckers and losers.”

    THE FACTS: Kelly was among many DNC speakers who brought up similar claims. He was referencing allegations first reported in The Atlantic on Sept. 3, 2020, that Trump made disparaging remarks about members of the U.S. military who have been captured or killed, including referring to the American war dead at a World War I cemetery outside Paris in 2018 as “suckers” and “losers.”

    But the truth is that it hasn’t been proven definitively, one way or the other, whether Trump actually made these comments.

    The Republican presidential nominee said the day the Atlantic story came out that it is “totally false,” calling it “a disgraceful situation” by a “terrible magazine.”

    Speaking to reporters after he returned to Washington from a campaign rally in Pennsylvania soon after, Trump said: “I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes. There is nobody that respects them more. No animal — nobody — what animal would say such a thing?”

    And yet, a senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of the events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of his remarks to The Associated Press after the Atlantic story was published, including the ones about “suckers” and “losers.”

    Walz’s accomplishments as governor

    MINNESOTA SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR, touting Tim Walz’s accomplishments as governor of the state: “Tim has delivered — paid leave, school lunches and the biggest tax cut in Minnesota history.”

    THE FACTS: Over the last two years, Walz has indeed signed legislation to create a paid family and medical leave program in Minnesota, and for free school breakfasts and lunches for all students regardless of income.

    Walz also signed what his administration and Democratic legislative leaders have touted as the largest tax cut in state history, about $3 billion worth as part of the two-year budget approved last year. It included a one-time refundable tax credit of $260 for single filers and up to $1,300 for a family with three children. It also established a child tax credit of up to $1,750 per child for lower-income families, subject to income limits. In addition, it exempted more people from state taxes on Social Security income, but left the tax in place for higher-income seniors.

    But critics take issue with his characterization of it as the biggest tax cut in state history. The Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank, points out that low-income Minnesotans don’t pay the state income tax, so in its view giving them tax credits amounts to income redistribution and welfare — not tax cuts.

    Republican legislators tried to hold out for permanent tax cuts for everyone, but Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature and went for targeted relief instead.

    Bill Clinton’s keeping score

    FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON on Wednesday: “Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created 51 million new jobs. I swear I checked this three times. Even I couldn’t believe it. What’s the score? Democrats 50, Republicans one.”

    THE FACTS: The math shows Clinton is technically right, but the underlying story is more nuanced. There were four recessions since the end of the Cold War — each of them beginning during the Republican presidencies of George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump. That’s the simplest explanation for the trend outlined by Clinton.

    Let’s get precise: The U.S. economy has added almost 51.6 million jobs since January 1989, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That includes a net 1.3 million jobs added under Republicans.

    It’s worth noting that this simple scoreboard is incomplete. There can be reasons for a recession that have nothing to do necessarily with the president — as market economies can have minds of their own. There can be bad policy choices in previous administrations that led to downturns happening later. And job growth generally comes from the combination of rising populations, improvements in workers’ skills and the actions of private employers. The U.S. economy is big and diverse enough that areas in the industrial Midwest struggled even as parts of the Sunbelt boomed.

    After George H.W. Bush endured a brief downturn, the economy recovered and 2.3 million jobs were added during his term. But Americans still felt the economy was poor and elected Clinton.

    Growth jumped during Clinton’s eight years as more women entered the labor force and 22.9 million jobs were added. But shortly after he left office, the tech bubble in the stock market burst and the U.S. economy entered into a brief recession. The economy shed jobs for a little over two years, then mounted a comeback only to slam headfirst into the mortgage bust and the 2008 financial crisis that produced the Great Recession and mass layoffs. Still, over eight years, George W. Bush added a little over 2.1 million jobs because the U.S. population was still growing.

    Democrat Barack Obama inherited the disastrous economy in early 2009 and endured a grindingly slow but successful recovery. The U.S. economy added 11.3 million jobs.

    Trump took the presidency and promised an unprecedented economic boom. The job market continued to build on its health during Obama’s final four years, only to get crushed by the coronavirus pandemic as shutdowns for health reasons led to unemployment. As a result, the country had 3.1 million fewer jobs when his term ended.

    President Joe Biden oversaw a recovery with additional pandemic aid and other investments that accelerated hiring, but it was accompanied by higher inflation that left much of the public feeling pessimistic about the economy. Still, his presidency — still ongoing — has added more than 15.8 million jobs.

    Whether Trump said women should be punished for having abortions

    ALEXIS MCGILL JOHNSON, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, on Wednesday: “Do we want a president who said women should be punished for having abortions?”

    THE FACTS: Asked whether he would be comfortable with states deciding to punish women who access abortions after the procedure is banned, Trump said in an April interview with Time magazine: “The states are going to say. It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.”

    Trump said outright during his 2016 campaign that women who get illegal abortions should receive “some form of punishment.” The comment came during a heated exchange with MSNBC host Chris Matthews at a town hall taping in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

    But Trump quickly did an about-face. His campaign sought within hours to take back his comment in two separate statements, ultimately saying he believes abortion providers — not their patients — should be the ones punished.

    The first statement said he believed the issue should rest with state governments, while the second entirely rejected the idea that a woman should face repercussions for undergoing an illegal abortion.

    “If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in the second statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

    Trump faced backlash from both abortion-rights supporters and anti-abortion activists, The Associated Press reported at the time.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin in New York, Josh Boak in Chicago and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, contributed to this report.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • Supreme Court allows execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, denying bid for delay

    Supreme Court allows execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, denying bid for delay

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    Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid to stop the execution of Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams, who was convicted in the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle in a St. Louis suburb.

    Williams, who has maintained his innocence, is set to be put to death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT. 

    Earlier efforts to halt the execution were denied Monday by the Missouri Supreme Court and Republican Gov. Mike Parson. His execution is the third in Missouri this year, and among five taking place nationwide across a seven-day span if the remaining three are carried out on schedule, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have granted the request to halt the execution.

    “Tonight, Missouri will execute an innocent man … The victim’s family opposes his execution. Jurors, who originally sentenced him to death, now oppose his execution. The prosecutor’s office that convicted and sentenced him to death has now admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams’ life,” said attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project in a statement. “That is not justice. And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur.” 

    Williams had been faced with execution twice before following his 2001 conviction for the murder of Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. First, in 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court halted execution plans and appointed a special master to review DNA testing on the handle of the murder weapon, the butcher knife that was used to stab Gayle 43 times and was left lodged in her neck.

    Williams’ attorneys said DNA experts who reviewed the results determined that he was not the source of DNA found on the knife. But the special master sent the case back to the Missouri Supreme Court, and a second execution date was set for August 2017.

    Then, hours before Williams was set to be executed, then-Gov. Eric Greitens called it off and appointed a panel of five retired judges to investigate the DNA evidence. The board, however, was dissolved by Parson in June 2023 and never issued its final report.

    Faced with the DNA evidence and other new information in Williams’ case, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell sought to toss out the conviction on numerous grounds, including the results of the DNA testing and constitutional violations during the jury selection process. 

    But the night before an evidentiary hearing was set to take place, Bell’s office received new test results indicating DNA on the knife handle was consistent with that of a prosecutor who worked on Williams’ case and a former investigator with the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

    Williams’ attorneys said in a filing that the DNA results confirmed they handled the knife without gloves, contaminating the evidence. 

    With the DNA evidence spoiled, Williams and Bell, the prosecuting attorney, reached an agreement under which Williams would enter a no-contest plea to murder in the first degree with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

    Gayle’s family indicated they did not support executing Williams, according to court filings, and in August, a judge signed off on the agreement. But Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, objected to the plea.

    The state supreme court went on to block the plan and ordered an evidentiary hearing on Williams’ claims of innocence.

    During the proceeding last month, a trial attorney who tried the 2001 case said that he removed one Black prospective juror because he looked like Williams. When asked whether he struck the juror because of his race, the prosecutor, Keith Larner said, “No. Absolutely not,” according to court records. Larner said that he believed the jury, composed of 11 White people and one Black person, was fair. 

    The prosecutor also acknowledged that he handled the murder weapon without gloves at least five times during witness preparation sessions before the trial, as he believed the investigation into Gayle’s killing was finished.

    At the end of the hearing, the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office told the court that it conceded the “constitutional error of mishandling evidence” in Williams’ trial, and said “clear and convincing evidence” of numerous constitutional errors in his prosecution were presented.

    Still, on Sept. 12, the judge declined to toss out Williams’ conviction and sentence. The Missouri Supreme Court then denied relief.

    In urging the Supreme Court to intervene, Williams’ lawyers had asked the justices to wait until they have decided another death penalty case involving an Oklahoma inmate, which they said raises the same issues. The high court is poised to hear arguments Oct. 9 in Richard Glossip’s effort to toss out his conviction due to concerns about the fairness of his trial.

    “The ever-present undercurrent of residual doubt as to Mr. Williams’ innocence plagues this case, even as his execution looms,” his attorneys wrote in a filing with the high court. “Mr. Williams’ conviction and death sentence were secured through a trial riddled with constitutional errors, racism, and bad faith, much of which only came to light recently.”

    They called his conviction a “grave miscarriage of justice” and said executing him would be an “unthinkable, irreversible travesty.”

    Top officials in Missouri opposed the request to call off the execution, claiming that Williams has engaged in a “strategy of extreme delay” in bringing the claims and accusing him of attempting to “manufacture another emergency through dilatory tactics.”

    “The state of Missouri, crime victims, for whom the case goes on for decades without resolution, and the criminal justice system are all harmed by endless litigation of meritless claims,” Bailey wrote in a filing with the Supreme Court.

    Williams’ was charged more than a year after Gayle’s death. Prosecutors claim that he broke into her home in University City, a suburb of St. Louis, and, after hearing water running in the shower upstairs, found a butcher knife and waited. After Gayle came down the stairs, Williams attacked and stabbed her 43 times, then left with her purse and husband’s laptop, law enforcement officials said.

    Prosecutors said Williams also took a jacket that he used to conceal the blood on his shirt. His girlfriend later noticed that he was wearing a jacket despite the summer weather, and after he removed it, saw that Williams’ shirt was bloody, according to court filings.

    The girlfriend also testified that she saw the laptop in the car and the purse in its trunk, and claimed Williams confessed to killing Gayle, according to court records. Roughly 10 months after Gayle’s death, and after her family offered reward money, a man named Henry Cole, who was a cellmate with Williams when he was in jail on unrelated charges, claimed he confessed to murdering Gayle, prosecutors said.

    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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  • Hawaii can ban guns on beaches, an appeals court says

    Hawaii can ban guns on beaches, an appeals court says

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    HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii can enforce a law banning firearms on its world-famous beaches, a U.S. appeals court panel ruled Friday.

    Three Maui residents sued to block a 2023 state law prohibiting carrying a firearm on the sand and in other places deemed sensitive, including banks, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. They argued that Hawaii went too far with its wide-ranging ban.

    A U.S. district court judge in Honolulu granted a preliminary injunction against the rule last year and Hawaii appealed. On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals published an opinion reversing the lower court ruling on beaches, parks, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. The panel affirmed the ruling for banks and certain parking lots.

    “The record supports the conclusion that modern-day beaches in Hawaii, particularly in urban or resort areas, often resemble modern-day parks,” more so than beaches at the founding of the nation, the unanimous ruling said.

    Hawaii, which has long had some of the nation’s toughest firearm restrictions and lowest rates of gun violence, has been wrestling with how to square its gun laws with a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the right to bear arms. The high court found that people have a constitutional right to carry weapons in public and that measures to restrict that right must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

    “I’m disappointed that the 9th Circuit did not look at our … challenge to rural parks and beaches,” which can be dangerous and require people to protect themselves, said Alan Beck, an attorney representing the Maui residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition. He plans to ask for a review by a fuller panel of judges, he said.

    The Hawaii attorney general’s office issued a statement noting that the 9th Circuit also upheld a rule prohibiting the carrying of firearms on private property owned by another without their consent.

    “This is a significant decision recognizing that the state’s public safety measures are consistent with our nation’s historical tradition,” Hawaii Solicitor General Kalikoʻonālani Fernandes said in the statement.

    The ruling also applies to a similar challenge to a California ban on carrying guns in certain public places, upholding an injunction on enforcing restrictions on firearms at hospitals, similar medical facilities, public transit, gatherings that require a permit, places of worship, financial institutions, parking areas and similar areas connected to those places.

    As in Hawaii, the ruling allows California to enforce bans in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and in parks. It also allows California bans for other places including casinos, stadiums and amusement parks.

    The California attorney general’s office said it was reviewing the decision.

    Residents carrying guns in public is still fairly new to Hawaii. Before the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision expanded gun rights nationwide, Hawaii’s county police chiefs made it virtually impossible to carry a gun by rarely issuing permits to do so — either for open carry or concealed carry. Gun owners were only allowed to keep firearms in their homes or to bring them — unloaded and locked up — to shooting ranges, hunting areas and places such as repair shops.

    That ruling prompted the state to retool its gun laws, with Democratic Gov. Josh Green signing legislation to allow more people to carry concealed firearms.

    It also prompted Hawaii and California to pass laws restricting guns in places that are deemed sensitive.

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  • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on journey to Supreme Court

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on journey to Supreme Court

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    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on journey to Supreme Court – CBS News


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    Ahead of the release of her new book, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared on “CBS Sunday Morning” in her first broadcast interview since joining the high court. The rest of the interview will stream Thursday night on “Person to Person with Norah O’Donnell.”

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  • Supreme Court maintains block on entirety of Biden administration’s new Title IX rule

    Supreme Court maintains block on entirety of Biden administration’s new Title IX rule

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    Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday declined to let the Biden administration enforce portions of a new rule that includes protections from discrimination for transgender students under Title IX while legal proceedings continue.

    The high court left intact two separate orders from federal courts in Kentucky and Louisiana, which blocked the Department of Education from enforcing the entirety of the rule across 10 states. The Justice Department had asked the Supreme Court to put part of the decisions on hold, but it declined the requests.

    Four of the nine justices would have let part of the rules take effect, according to the order, but all members of the court agreed that the key disputed changes, including the new definition of “sex discrimination” to include “gender identity” and the restrictions on same-sex spaces, could remain blocked.  

    The measure at issue in the disputes was announced by the Biden administration in April and expanded Title IX’s protections to LGBTQ students. The landmark 50-year-old law prohibits education entities that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. The rule took effect Aug. 1, but only in less than half of the states. Federal judges have temporarily blocked it in 26 states as a result of legal challenges.

    The court fights before the Supreme Court involved two groups of states that challenged three provisions of the rule: The first recognizes that Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination covers gender identity; the second broadens the definition of “hostile-environment harassment” to include harassment based on gender identity; and the third clarifies that a school violates Title IX when it prohibits transgender students from using restrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity.

    One case was brought by four states, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho, as well as the Louisiana Department of Education. The second was filed by six states, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and West Virginia. 

    In June, federal district courts in Louisiana and Kentucky found the states were likely to succeed in their cases and blocked enforcement of the entire rule across the 10 states involved in the litigation. The Biden administration asked federal appeals courts in both cases to allow it to temporarily enforce part of the rule — the provisions that were not challenged — but each declined the requests in divided decisions.

    In seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court, the Justice Department argued that the district court’s injunctions are “grossly overbroad” because they block “dozens” of the rule’s provisions that weren’t challenged by the states, and that the lower court therefore did not find were likely unlawful.

    “The district court’s injunction would block the department from implementing dozens of provisions of an important rule effectuating Title IX, a vital civil rights law protecting millions of students against sex discrimination,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in both requests.

    She said the April 2024 rule is an “omnibus” measure, and most of it does not address gender identity. Instead, its provisions include clarifications to definitions of more than a dozen terms, including “complaint,” “elementary school” and “postsecondary institution.”

    While acknowledging the challenges to federal regulations before they’re enforced are common, she accused lower courts of taking a “blunderbuss approach” to preliminary relief in these cases.

    “The harm is particularly acute here because Title IX is one of the core federal civil rights statutes that guarantees nondiscrimination in the nation’s education system,” Prelogar wrote. “If the court does not grant the requested stay, the department will be unable to vindicate the critical protections of that statute in a wide swath of the country.”

    But in the challenge from Louisiana involving the four states, Republican officials told the Supreme Court in a filing that the Biden administration’s rule would “radically impact” schools, teachers and families. 

    They claimed the Education Department took Title IX and its “promise of equal educational opportunities for both sexes and transformed it into a 423-page mandate” that requires covered entities to allow male students in girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities, and teachers and students to use a transgender individual’s preferred pronouns. 

    “The Department cannot seriously contest that a partial stay would sow widespread confusion. Teachers would only have days, at most, before school starts, to understand their obligations under the judicially blue-penciled rule,” the Republican attorneys general wrote. “And that uncertainty and harm would equally affect parents and students.”

    They said there is uncertainty about how a practically blocked rule would operate, leaving parents unable to make decisions about whether to send their children to public school.

    In a separate filing in the Kentucky case, officials from the six states accused the Biden administration of forcing schools to spend “immense sums” to comply with the new rule in just three months.

    They warned the court not to “unleash eleventh-hour havoc — and needless diversion of valuable resources — on schools, students, and sovereign states.”

    In addition to the Louisiana and Kentucky cases, a number of other challenges to the Biden administration’s Title IX rule are pending in the lower courts. 

    The Education Department’s Title IX overhaul comes amid a swell of laws enacted in Republican-led states in recent years that are aimed at transgender youth. More than 20 states restrict treatments like puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapy or surgeries for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. The constitutionality of one of those laws, from Tennessee, will be reviewed by the Supreme Court in the fall.

    At least 11 states have laws on the books that bar transgender people from using bathrooms and other facilities consistent with their gender identity in schools, and 25 states prohibit transgender girls from competing on their schools’ female sports teams.

    Jan Crawford

    contributed to this report.

    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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  • Could Biden’s proposal for Supreme Court reform boost 2024 turnout?

    Could Biden’s proposal for Supreme Court reform boost 2024 turnout?

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    Could Biden’s proposal for Supreme Court reform boost 2024 turnout? – CBS News


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    As Vice President Kamala Harris’ allies rallied in Pennsylvania on Monday, President Biden made the case for Supreme Court reform in Austin, Texas. Pennsylvania Democratic State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta joins “America Decides” with his reaction. Then, Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, and Josh Gerstein, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, join with further analysis.

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  • After years of fighting Iowa’s strict abortion law, clinics also prepared to follow it

    After years of fighting Iowa’s strict abortion law, clinics also prepared to follow it

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    AMES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa’s law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy goes into effect Monday, a drastic change that enrages — but doesn’t surprise — Sarah Traxler.

    When Traxler, an OB-GYN based in Minnesota and the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States, went to high school in a conservative Louisiana town in the 1990s, she saw abortion rights losing ground even then, decades before the U.S. Supreme Court and Iowa’s high court would say there isn’t a constitutional right to abortion.

    “The protections of Roe have just been chipped away at slowly through time,” she told The Associated Press.

    At 8 a.m. Monday in Iowa, the state will join more than a dozen others where abortion access has been sharply curbed in the roughly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

    It’s an outcome Iowa’s abortion providers have been fighting but still prepared for, shoring up abortion access in neighboring states and drawing on the lessons learned where bans went into effect more swiftly.

    States with restrictive laws are “glimpses of our future,” Traxler said. Even with the ability to prepare, she told reporters Friday, “this transition is devastating and tragic for the people of Iowa.”

    Iowa’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved the law last year, but a judge blocked it from being enforced shortly after the measure went into effect because of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood and the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City.

    The Iowa Supreme Court reiterated in June that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in the state and ordered the hold to be lifted. The district court judge’s July 22 orders set July 29 as the first day of enforcement.

    The law prohibits abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, which is roughly at six weeks of pregnancy and before many know they are pregnant. There are limited exceptions in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality or when the life of the mother is in danger. Previously, abortion in Iowa was legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 44% of the 3,761 total abortions in Iowa in 2021 occurred at or before six weeks. Only six abortions were at the 21-week mark or later.

    Alex Sharp, senior health center manager who runs the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic closest to Des Moines, said staff members overbooked schedules this week, moving up appointments for people seeking abortions who likely would be past the legal limit as of Monday.

    Still, that wasn’t an option for everyone. Almost a third of the people Sharp spoke to said they couldn’t get off work or find daycare before next week. Those patients could work with staff members to find appointments out of state, she said.

    Across the country, the status of abortion has changed constantly since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, with trigger laws immediately going into effect, states passing new restrictions or expansions of access and court battles putting those on hold.

    In states with restrictions, the main abortion options are getting pills via telehealth or underground networks and traveling, vastly driving up demand in states with more access.

    The Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, projected last month that about 20,000 abortions were performed in Kansas in 2023, or 152% more than in 2020. Near Iowa, Illinois saw a 71% increase and Minnesota went up 49%. Providers there expect to see more influx after Monday.

    When the first restrictive laws went into effect, like in Texas, providers had to essentially “figure it out as we went,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman’s Health. And even though providers across the country have learned how to work within the limits, “I don’t ever want us to have this seem normal.”

    Hagstrom Miller has been talking with leaders at the independent Emma Goldman Clinic about accepting referrals at the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in Minnesota, where 20% of abortion appointments go to out-of-state travelers, she said. That percentage is expected to increase under Iowa’s new law.

    The region’s Planned Parenthood affiliate also has been making investments for over a year to prepare for Monday. A location added last year in Mankato, Minnesota, is only an hour’s drive from Iowa and recently began providing medication abortion. Just over the state line in Omaha, Nebraska, a facility is quadrupling exam rooms and adding staff.

    Maggie DeWitte, who has worked for decades to advocate against abortion access in Iowa, said it’s to be expected after Dobbs that while some states work to regulate or even eliminate abortion, others are going to be less restrictive.

    “We certainly hope that women would not travel out of state, but we know that that is going to happen,” she said. “So that just has to continue our education efforts to those women to let them know that there are other options out there.”

    Many people don’t know the law was passed or is going into effect, making those conservations even more sensitive. Staff members have had to tell patients they are too far along and it’s too late unless they travel and miss more work, Planned Parenthood’s Sharp said.

    It’s been difficult, she said, even though clinics are as ready as they can be for Monday.

    “We are prepared operationally for it,” Sharp said, “but not emotionally or mentally for it, at all.”

    ___

    Mark Vancleave in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

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  • 7/1: The Daily Report with John Dickerson

    7/1: The Daily Report with John Dickerson

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    7/1: The Daily Report with John Dickerson – CBS News


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    John Dickerson reports on the Supreme Court ruling on Donald Trump’s presidential immunity claim, the latest on Hurricane Beryl as it slams parts of the Caribbean as a Category 4 storm, and why illegal crossings at the southern border dropped to a three-year low last month.

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  • Trump seeks to overturn criminal conviction, citing Supreme Court immunity decision

    Trump seeks to overturn criminal conviction, citing Supreme Court immunity decision

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    Supreme Court says Trump has some immunity


    The Supreme Court says Trump has some immunity. What happens now?

    08:22

    Donald Trump is trying to leverage a Supreme Court decision holding that presidents are immune from federal prosecution for official actions to overturn his conviction in a New York State criminal case.

    A letter to the judge presiding over the New York case is not yet public. It was filed Monday after the Supreme Court’s landmark holding further slowed the former president’s criminal cases. 

    A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment when asked about Trump’s effort to overturn the conviction, which was first reported by The New York Times.

    Trump’s criminal case in New York is the only one of four against him to go to trial. On May 30, a unanimous jury concluded Trump was guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an effort to cover up reimbursements for a “hush money” payment to an adult film star. Trump signed off on falsifying the records while he was in the White House in 2017.

    Monday’s Supreme Court decision extended broad immunity from criminal prosecutions to former presidents for their official conduct. But the issue of whether Trump was engaged in official acts has already been litigated in his New York case.

    Trump sought in 2023 to move the case from state to federal jurisdiction. His lawyers argued that the allegations involved official acts within the color of his presidential duties.

    That argument was rejected by a federal judge who wrote that Trump failed to show that his conduct was “for or relating to any act performed by or for the President under color of the official acts of a president.”

    “The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the president’s official duties.”

    Trump initially appealed that decision, but later dropped it. 

    His case went to trial in April, and soon after the jury’s unanimous decision finding him guilty, Trump vowed to appeal the conviction.

    Trump is scheduled to be sentenced July 11. Prosecutors were expected to file a sentencing recommendation Monday. That filing has not been made public.

    Graham Kates

    Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at KatesG@cbsnews.com or grahamkates@protonmail.com

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  • The ethical quandary facing the Supreme Court (and America)

    The ethical quandary facing the Supreme Court (and America)

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    This past week, the Supreme Court handed down a series of major opinions: on the powers of federal agencies, on homeless encampments, and on the January 6 storming of the Capitol.

    But when it comes to the Supreme Court, Americans have some major opinions of their own – that our confidence in the Court, the main tool it has to enforce its authority, has eroded.

    It’s true that, according to Pew Research, our trust in the Supreme Court has never been lower.

    favorable-views-of-supreme-court-pew-research.jpg

    Pew Research


    Most Americans disagreed with the Court’s decisions on abortion and unlimited campaign donations, and then we got headlines about justices receiving gifts. 

    According to investigations by ProPublica, The New York Times and others, Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted more than $4 million worth of gifts from conservative billionaires, including destination vacations, private jet and helicopter flights, VIP passes to sports events, $150,000 in tuition money, and a $267,000 motor home.

    And then there was Justice Samuel Alito’s private-jet flight to a $1,000-a-night Alaskan fishing lodge, courtesy of conservative hedge fund owner Paul Singer, whose business later came before the Supreme Court at least 10 times.

    Now, it is legal for justices to receive gifts of meals and lodging, provided they publicly disclose the gifts on a financial disclosure form. But Alito and Thomas did not disclose these gifts, at least until they were made public. Both justices deny any wrongdoing.

    According to Harvard Law School professor and retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, “These are not errors. These are, ‘I have a right to do this, and you can’t stop me.’”

    Gertner notes that liberal judges have transgressed, too. Last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s staff was caught aggressively pushing book sales at her appearances. But Gertner said, “This is so totally different. The dimensions of that don’t remotely compare with what Justice Thomas has done.”

    Then, there’s the business of the spouses. Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, attended the January 6 Trump rally, and later texted Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, encouraging Meadows to fight to overturn the election. Citing Trump allies’ claims of fraud, Ginni Thomas texted Meadows on November 19, 2020: “Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

    Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Bomgardner, made news, too, when The New York Times published a photo of an upside-down American flag flying outside Alito’s home in the days after the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Alito responded, “I had nothing whatsoever to do with the flying of that flag. … I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused.”

    To Judge Gertner, it’s obvious that both Alito and Thomas should recuse themselves from cases that involve the January 6 uprising. “The notion that one can say, ‘Well, it was my wife, wasn’t me,’ is flat-out absurd, and really casts doubt on his honesty,” she said.

    But Robert Ray, a former White House Independent Counsel who represented Trump during the former president’s first impeachment, said, “Oh now, come now! A justice’s spouse, just like anybody else, has a First Amendment right to be participating independently of the political process. My impression has been that what most people are really upset about isn’t so much the ethics of Supreme Court justices. What they really are concerned about is they don’t like the outcome of particular cases that they really, really, really care about.”

    Pogue asked Gertner, “It seems like what Alito is saying is, ‘You guys are just coming after me ’cause you don’t like my decisions.’ So, would the same thing apply if it were liberal judges?”

    “It did apply!” Gertner replied. “Abe Fortas resigned from the court.”

    In the 1960s, Justice Abe Fortas received $20,000 from a foundation. “He actually had returned the $20,000 several months later, [but] when that came out, there was immediate, bipartisan condemnation of it,” said Georgetown Law School professor Cliff Sloan, who has written two books about Supreme Court history. “This was such a controversy that it ultimately led to Justice Fortas resigning from the Supreme Court.”

    Here’s what the law says: “Any justice … shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

    But “reasonably” means one thing if you’re conservative, and something else if you’re liberal.

    Robert Ray said, “Would a reasonable person question the judge’s impartiality, and I think with regard to January 6th and Ginni Thomas’s activities, for example, I think the answer clearly is no.” Meanwhile, Judge Gertner said, “You have to recuse yourself, based on the appearance of partiality. And that’s a concern, not that you actually are partial, but that it will appear that way to the public that you serve.”

    So, who breaks the tie? Who’s the judge of the judges? Turns out, nobody! 

    Sloan said, “There is absolutely no enforcement mechanism for Supreme Court justices right now. It’s just left up to each justice’s own determination about his or her own propriety.” 

    But haven’t all nine justices now signed a new Supreme Court Code of Ethics? Yes, said Sloan: “They signed a Supreme Court Code of Ethics. And they made very clear that each justice will continue to make his or her own decision, and there is no other enforcement mechanism. And that is just a gaping fundamental hole with the entire structure.”

    There are plenty of ideas for addressing the Court’s trust problem. Maybe there should be term limits. Maybe there should be more than nine justices. Maybe an inspector general should oversee the Court.

    And of course, there’s always the nuclear option: Impeachment. Ray said, “If it’s really a problem, and nobody’s doing anything about it, there’s a clear constitutional remedy: It’s impeachment. That’s the remedy, period.”

    But any of those proposals would require both parties in Congress to work together, and that’s unlikely.

    And yet, according to Gertner, something has to change. “If the public doesn’t believe in the legitimacy of courts, then the fabric of the rule of law begins to become undone,” she said.

    In Sloan’s view, “It could lead to massive defiance of the courts and great kind of civil unrest.”

    But if Congress won’t take action, where does that leave us? Ray says, just trust them; they’ve gotten the message.  “People are paying attention now,” he said, “and I think the Supreme Court knows that people are paying attention. I can imagine that in every one of those nine households, this issue inside the family has been discussed about how to conduct themselves in the future to avoid the problem.”

    But Sloan believes that self-policing will never be enough, noting, “James Madison, in ‘The Federalist Papers,’ famously said that if men were angels, government would not be necessary. And I would hope that somehow, everybody could step back from the current controversies, to restore respect and trust in the Supreme Court.”

         
    For more Info:

         
    Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Ed Givnish. 

    David Pogue


    headshot-600-david-pogue.jpg

    David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on “CBS Sunday Morning,” where he’s been a correspondent since 2002. Pogue hosts the CBS News podcast “Unsung Science.” He’s also a New York Times bestselling author, a five-time TED speaker, and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS. For 13 years, he wrote a New York Times tech column every week – and for 10 years, a Scientific American column every month.

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  • Mass. leaders react to blocking of Purdue Pharma payout

    Mass. leaders react to blocking of Purdue Pharma payout

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    Beacon Hill leaders are pledging to push for money from OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that nullified a $6 billion settlement with the Sackler family over their alleged role in fueling a nationwide opioid crisis.

    On Thursday, the high court rejected a controversial settlement that would have sent hundreds of millions of dollars to Massachusetts, New Hampshire and other states for treatment programs and victims of the opioid epidemic, but that also shielded the Sacklers from any future lawsuits.

    Gov. Maura Healey, who in 2018 as attorney general filed the first lawsuit against Purdue and the Sacklers, said she will continue to push for relief for the families “who have been hurt in this crisis and for the communities that desperately need these resources for prevention, treatment and recovery.”

    “Today’s decision will never erase the role that Purdue and the Sacklers had in creating the opioid crisis, destroying the lives of American families, and exploiting a broken legal system to protect their billions,” Healey said in a statement.

    Attorney General Andrea Campbell vowed that the Sacklers “must and will be held responsible, and, in the wake of this decision, we will use every power available to us to make sure that occurs.”

    “It is no secret that members of the Sackler family, through their control of Purdue, fueled the opioid crisis, devastating countless lives in the pursuit of profit,” she said.

    The deal rejected by the high court was to be financed largely by the company being converted into a public benefits corporation, with profits used to fight the opioid crisis. The Sacklers were supposed to kick in up to $6 billion, but would be shielded from any future civil liability claims.

    In a statement, the Sackler family suggested they will likely pursue negotiations to settle claims by state attorneys general and other parties to the now-defunct deal.

    “The unfortunate reality is that the alternative is costly and chaotic legal proceedings in courtrooms across the country,” they said in a statement. “While we are confident that we would prevail in any future litigation given the profound misrepresentations about our families and the opioid crisis, we continue to believe that a swift negotiated agreement to provide billions of dollars for people and communities in need is the best way forward.”

    The high court’s 5-4 rejection of the agreement focused on the limitations of the U.S. bankruptcy system.

    “The Sacklers seek greater relief than a bankruptcy discharge normally affords, for they hope to extinguish even claims for wrongful death and fraud, and they seek to do so without putting anything close to all their assets on the table,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority.

    “Describe the relief the Sacklers seek how you will, nothing in the bankruptcy code contemplates it,” he added.

    But in a minority opinion, Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined with Chief Justice John Roberts in declaring that the court’s decision will have a “devastating” impact on thousands of victims of the nation’s opioid crisis.

    “As a result, opioid victims are now deprived of the substantial monetary recovery that they long fought for and finally secured after years of litigation,” Kavanaugh wrote.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Cambridge, said the Supreme Court’s ruling closed a bankruptcy “loophole” that would have allowed the Sacklers to avoid more financial liability, but said “that doesn’t make things right for the millions of people who have lost loved ones to opioid overdoses.”

    “This is a first step toward accountability for the Sackler family,” she said. “It’s time for the Sacklers to pay up.”

    Healey’s 2018 lawsuit, which was signed onto by dozens of other states, alleged the Sacklers reaped billions of dollars as their company misled prescribers and patients in order to boost sales of their addictive medications.

    Massachusetts still is grappling with a deadly wave of addiction that has claimed thousands of lives from overdoses, despite a declining number of deaths.

    There were 2,125 opioid-related deaths in 2023, a 10% decline over the previous year, according to the state Department of Public Health.

    Experts say many of those addictions started with pain pills, usually prescribed by a doctor.

    Massachusetts was slated to get about $110 million from the deal with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, which would have added to hundreds of millions of dollars from other multistate settlements with opioid makers and distributors. The money is devoted for drug treatment and prevention efforts.

    Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.

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    By Christian M. Wade | Statehouse Reporter

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  • Senate Democrats seek meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts after Alito flag controversy

    Senate Democrats seek meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts after Alito flag controversy

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    Washington — Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin and subcommittee head Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse are seeking a meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts to discuss ethics issues at the Supreme Court after reports of flags flown outside Justice Samuel Alito’s homes sparked outrage.

    The request from Durbin and Whitehouse, both Democrats, comes on the heels of a pair of reports from the New York Times that revealed an upside down flag flew outside Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia home in mid-January 2021, and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was displayed outside his New Jersey vacation home in the summer of 2023.

    The presence of the flags led to backlash from Democrats, since both types of flags were carried by rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, and have become associated with the “Stop the Steal” movement.

    In a letter to Roberts sent Friday, Durbin and Whitehouse urged him to take steps to ensure Alito recuses himself from cases relating to the 2020 presidential election and Jan. 6 attack. The Supreme Court currently has two cases pending before it involving those matters: the first involves federal prosecutors’ use of an obstruction charge levied against those allegedly involved in the Jan. 6 assault; the second raises the question of whether former President Donald Trump is entitled to broad immunity from criminal charges stemming from his alleged efforts to subvert the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election.

    Alito participated in oral arguments in both cases, which were heard in April, and decisions from the Supreme Court are expected in the coming weeks. The court’s term is expected to wrap up by the end of June and early July and bring rulings in disputes involving abortion, guns and federal regulatory power.

    “By displaying the upside-down and ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flags outside his homes, Justice Alito actively engaged in political activity, failed to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and failed to act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary,” Durbin and Whitehouse said.

    cbsn-fusion-what-is-appeal-to-heaven-flag-reportedly-seen-alito-vacation-home-thumbnail.jpg

    The Democratic senators claimed the presence of the flags created reasonable doubt about his ability to be impartial and discharge his duties in the election and Jan.-related cases.

    “His recusal in these matters is both necessary and required,” they wrote.

    Durbin and Whitehouse also reiterated their call for the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct for justices, and they requested a meeting with Roberts “as soon as possible” to discuss steps to “address the Supreme Court’s ethics crisis.”

    “Until the court and the Judicial Conference take meaningful action to address this ongoing ethical crisis, we will continue our efforts to enact legislation to resolve this crisis,” the Democrats said.

    The Supreme Court adopted a set of ethics principles in November following reports about trips Justice Clarence Thomas and Alito accepted from wealthy Republican donors. The travel was not included on either of their financial disclosure forms, though both justices said they did not believe they were required to publicly report the trips. 

    The code of conduct instituted by the high court lacks an enforcement mechanism, and Senate Democrats have been pushing for legislation requiring the Supreme Court to adopt binding ethics rules to be taken up by the full Senate.

    The latest political firestorm involving the justices erupted last week after the New York Times published its first report on the upside down American flag seen outside Alito’s Virginia residence in early 2021. An upside down flag has been used to signal distress.

    He told the Times in a statement that he had “no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag” outside his home and said it had been “briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” 

    The Times then reported earlier this week that the “Appeal to Heaven flag, also called the Pine Tree flag, was seen outside his vacation home in New Jersey last summer.

    The flag dates back to the American Revolution and signified resistance to British colonization. It was often seen “on the seas as the ensign of the cruisers commissioned by General Washington,” according to a congressional report published in 2006.  The phrase “appeal to heaven” was used by 17th-century philosopher John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government.

    The Supreme Court did not return a request for comment on the “Appeal to Heaven” flag.

    Alito has come under pressure from Democrats to recuse himself from one other case, involving the constitutionality of an obscure tax, before the Supreme Court this term. He participated in interviews with an editor at the Wall Street Journal and a lawyer who represented the couple involved in the tax case, which was heard by the justices in December. Alito rebuffed the calls to step aside in the case and said in a statement there was “no valid reason” for his recusal.

    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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