Free Republic

Washington — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that it is illegal for an employer to fire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, delivering a major victory in the fight for civil rights for LGBT people. The court's 6-3 ruling extends the scope of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion, to include LGBT people. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored the majority's opinion, joined the liberal wing of the bench in ruling that "an employer who fires an...

Many on the left have accused originalism of being nothing but a cover for conservatives’ preferred policy outcomes, but Vermeule’s proposal illustrates how restrained originalists have been. “The Republic” often alarms first-time readers. Not only is Plato’s dialogic style foreign to us, the character of Socrates makes bizarre and even wicked proposals as he outlines a supposed ideal polity, such as a communism not only of property, but also of wives and children. Many readers, including some philosophers, have taken Plato literally and seriously, and therefore condemned him as a proto-totalitarian. Something similar seems to have happened in response to...

With three conservatives and three liberals signing on to the originalist ruling in Ramos v. Louisiana, we see more evidence that the 'living Constitution' school of thought is in decline. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that for defendants to be convicted of crimes, juries must decide their guilt unanimously, not by a simple majority or any other fraction. If that seems obvious, it may be because in the federal judiciary and the courts of 48 states, this is already the law and has been for a long time. Oregon and Louisiana were, until this week, the only outliers. In applying...

A group of black pastors has started a petition to urge Congress to censure Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., over his remarks about two Supreme Court justices last week. Schumer has been under fire from Republicans and some Democrats for comments aimed at conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh during a pro-choice rally that many perceived to be threats. "Those remarks, made during a rally at the Supreme Court on a pending case, were clearly intended to influence the decision on that case," a petition from the Coalition of African American Pastors addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch...

Next week—for the first time since Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh joined the bench—the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving abortion. On the docket is June Medical Services v. Russo, a constitutional challenge to a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the abortion takes place. Life Legal submitted amicus briefs in support of the pro-life law, and we’ll be there on March 4 to watch the Supreme Court argument in this critical case. You can read the brief we filed on behalf of Abby...

WASHINGTON - - The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal of the federal ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic firearms to fire rapidly like machine guns. The justices did not comment in declining to review a lower court-ruling that upheld the ban, which took effect nearly a year ago. President Donald Trump said that the government would move to ban bump stocks, following a 2017 shooting in Las Vegas in which a gunman attached bump stocks to assault-style rifles he used to shoot concertgoers from his hotel room. By using the devices, which allow shots to be...

Is the era of Big Judicial Activism over? It might just be. Supreme Court Justic Neil Gorsuch, in a ruling about denying green cards to migrants who come here to be "public charges," something that's plainly laid out in U.S. law as illegal, threw in a special warning to activist judges, all leftists, who have been beavering away to rule from the bench, warning them that he's tired of their shenanigans. It's a specter to behold - a big lion on the Supreme Court who not only cares about rule of law, but is now warning the leftists out there...

WASHINGTON — A bare majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely Tuesday to let the Trump administration follow through on its plan to shut down DACA, the federal program that has allowed nearly 800,000 young people, known as dreamers, to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S. With hundreds of DACA supporters rallying outside — so many that police shut down the street in front of the Supreme Court — the justices heard nearly an hour and a half of oral arguments. Based on their questions, it appeared that the court's five conservatives were inclined to rule that the...

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch responded to critics who might think that it is the job of judges to fix politics in an interview with CNN released Tuesday. "Do you really want me to rule the country?" he asked. "It is a raucous republic and the battle of ideas is what our founders had in mind," he continued. What they didn't have in mind "was nine old people in Washington sitting in robes telling everybody else how to live." Gorsuch was appointed by President Trump in 2017 to fill the seat vacated by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. He told...

Justice Neil Gorsuch has two rules for his law clerks. “Rule No. 1: Don’t make stuff up,” he tells them. “Rule No. 2: When people beg, and say, ‘Oh, the consequences are so important,’ and when they say, ‘You’re a terrible, terrible, terrible person if you don’t,’ just refer back to Rule No. 1. And we’ll be fine.” He is sitting in a wood-and-leather chair in his Supreme Court chambers. He’s discussing originalism, the idea that the Constitution’s meaning is the same in 2019 as in 1788. “Our Founders deliberately chose a written constitution,” he says. “Its writtenness was important...

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in a newly released interview laments a lack of civility in the country while demurring on political questions involving President Trump. Gorsuch told The Associated Press for a story published Saturday that Americans should remember that their political opponents “love this country as much as we do." snip Gorsuch has conducted a series of interviews as the 52-year-old conservative justice makes the rounds to promote his new book, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It,” which is slated for release Tuesday. snip As one of the court’s most conservative members, Gorsuch praised federal judges who...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Wednesday night defended Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch as "very decent" and "very smart" individuals after one of her former law clerks suggested that new nominees lack personal decency. Ginsburg's comments turned heads on social media, given the contentious and bitterly personal confirmation hearings last year that Kavanaugh said "destroyed" his family. At an hourlong question-and-answer session, Duke Law professor Neil Siegel lamented that "nominees for the Supreme Court are not chosen primarily anymore for independence, legal ability, personal decency, and I wonder if that’s a loss for all of us."

Chief Justice Roberts, joined by the four liberal justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor), declared that “the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the Secretary gave for his decision.” The “sole stated reason” for adding the citizenship question to the census, he observed, “seems to have been contrived.” Federal agencies must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public.” Otherwise, judicial review becomes “an empty ritual.” In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, correctly called the...

- A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that a federal law requiring longer prison sentences for using a gun during a "crime of violence" is unconstitutionally vague. The court voted 5-4 stating the law "provides no reliable way" to determine which offenses qualify as crimes of violence. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion on behalf of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. "In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all," Gorsuch wrote. "Only the people's elected representatives in Congress have the power to write new federal criminal laws. And when...

The Supreme Court on Monday found that a criminal defendant can be sentenced for violating his supervised release, even if the release expires while he is incarcerated ahead of facing new charges. The justices, divided in the 5-4 decision, ruled against Jason Mont's argument that a district court shouldn't be able to charge him for violating his release because the term had expired at the time of the new sentencing. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sided with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh in the majority. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer...

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Native American man who was convicted of hunting off-season in Bighorn National Forest. Neil Gorsuch joined the four liberal justices in Herrera v. Wyoming, holding that an 1868 treaty between the U.S. and the Native American Crow Tribe granted the tribe the right to hunt in "unoccupied lands," and that the treaty did not expire when Wyoming became a state in 1890. Crow Tribe member Clayvin Herrera was charged with off-season hunting in 2014, but he argued that the 151-year-old treaty protected his ability to hunt at that time....

Former Attorney General Eric Holder has suggested to his fellow Democrats that one way to put their stamp on American history, especially in light of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's and President Trump's agenda, is to expand the Supreme Court. He made the farfetched proposal last week at Yale Law School and Columbia University. "Given the Merrick Garland situation, the question of legitimacy is one that I think we should actually talk about," Holder said. "We should be talking even about expanding the number of people who serve on the Supreme Court, if there is a Democratic President and a...

Over the past year, the federal government’s lead Supreme Court litigator has repeatedly attempted to expedite Trump administration cases by using an unorthodox maneuver, one that legal experts say is rarely successful. Solicitor General Noel Francisco has requested on eight separate occasions, twice in the same case, that justices bypass the regional federal appeals court and instead review the ruling by a lower district court. Those requests, known as petitions for a writ of certiorari before judgment, stemmed from challenges to President Trump’s restrictions on transgender people serving in the military, its decision to wind down the Deferred Action for...

Daniel Cameron is a native of Hardin County, where he returns most Sundays, after church, for dinner with his mom. He graduated from John Hardin High School and earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Louisville, where he was a member of the football team and a McConnell Scholar. Daniel would go on to earn his law degree at the Brandeis School of Law, where he was a member of the law review and President of the Student Bar Association. After graduating from law school, Daniel clerked for the Honorable Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, a U.S. District Court Judge...

Kevin Daley | Supreme Court Reporter 2957 Justice Neil Gorsuch has made pleas for good faith and civility a watch word of his early tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, regularly decrying the decline of respect in civic life. Gorsuch’s latest entreaty came Wednesday when he made a brief opening statement at a Supreme Court Historical Society lecture on former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. According to SCOTUSblog, Gorsuch lamented that decency, good will, and kindness are “under assault in our society right now, and in our profession,” and feared that appeals to dignity have become blasé. He went on...