The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty sentence for Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The 6-3 ruling overturns a federal appeals court decision to void the sentence.
That 2020 ruling by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturned Tsarnaev’s federal death penalty and instead sentenced the Kyrgyzstan-born terrorist to life without parole.
The appeals court said the trial judge improperly excluded evidence that showed Dzhokhar was heavily influenced by his older brother, Tamerlan.
FILE – This file photo released April 19, 2013, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing attack.
On April 15, 2013, the brothers placed two homemade “pressure cooker” bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon that exploded as runners of the 42-kilometer (26-mile) race arrived.
The attack killed three spectators and injured more than 260 others.
A massive manhunt ensued. Three days later, the brothers shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer. On April 19, Tamerlan died after the gun battle with police. Dzhokhar, who had been shot, escaped. He surrendered to police later that evening after they found him hiding in a boat stored on a trailer.
The lower court also found that his trial could have been tainted by jurors who had already made up their minds because of the publicity surrounding the high-profile case that kept Americans glued to their televisions for days.
“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes. The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.
In his dissent, retiring Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, “In my view, the Court of Appeals acted lawfully in holding that the District Court should have allowed Dzhokhar to introduce this evidence.”
Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will begin March 21 and end March 24, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Wednesday.
“As I have said from the time that Justice Breyer announced his retirement, the Committee will undertake a fair and timely process to consider Judge Jackson’s nomination,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrote. “I look forward to Judge Jackson’s appearance before the Committee and to respectful and dignified hearings.”
If approved by the Senate, the current federal appellate judge will make history as the first Black woman to sit on the country’s top court.
At her 2021 confirmation hearing for the appellate court, she said, “I’ve experienced life in perhaps a different way than some of my colleagues because of who I am, and that might be valuable — I hope it would be valuable if I was confirmed.”
During the 2020 presidential campaign, U.S. President Joe Biden promised to nominate an African American woman to the highest court.
Jackson, a liberal whose nomination is supported by progressive groups, would replace another liberal, Justice Stephen Breyer, who intends to retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term.
The Supreme Court is hearing a case its conservative majority could use to hobble Biden administration efforts to combat climate change.
The administration already is dealing with congressional refusal to enact the climate change proposals in President Joe Biden’s Build Better Back plan.
Now the justices, in arguments Monday, are taking up an appeal from 19 mostly Republican-led states and coal companies over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
The court took on the case even though there is no current EPA plan in place to deal with carbon output from power plants, a development that has alarmed environmental groups. They worry that the court could preemptively undermine whatever plan Biden’s team develops to address power plant emissions. Biden has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade.
A broad ruling by the court also could weaken regulatory efforts that extend well beyond the environment, including consumer protections, workplace safety and public health. Several conservative justices have criticized what they see as the unchecked power of federal agencies.
Those concerns were evident in the court’s orders throwing out two Biden administration policies aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19. Last summer, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority ended a pause on evictions over unpaid rent. In January, the same six justices blocked a requirement that workers at large employers be vaccinated or test regularly and wear a mask on the job.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, speaking at a recent event in Washington, cast the power plant case as about who should make the rules. “Should it be unelected bureaucrats, or should it be the people’s representatives in Congress?” Morrisey said. West Virginia is leading the states opposed to broad EPA authority.
But David Doniger, a climate change expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Supreme Court’s consideration of the issue is premature, a view shared by the administration.
He said the administration’s opponents are advancing “horror stories about extreme regulations the EPA may issue in the future. The EPA is writing a new rule on a clean slate.”
The power plant case has a long and complicated history that begins with the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. That plan would have required states to reduce emissions from the generation of electricity, mainly by shifting away from coal-fired plants.
But that plan never took effect. Acting in a lawsuit filed by West Virginia and others, the Supreme Court blocked it in 2016 by a 5-4 vote, with conservatives in the majority.
With the plan on hold, the legal fight over it continued. But after President Donald Trump took office, the EPA repealed the Obama-era plan. The agency argued that its authority to reduce carbon emissions was limited and it devised a new plan that sharply reduced the federal government’s role in the issue.
New York, 21 other mainly Democratic states, the District of Columbia and some of the nation’s largest cities sued over the Trump plan. The federal appeals court in Washington ruled against both the repeal and the new plan, and its decision left nothing in effect while the new administration drafted a new policy.
Adding to the unusual nature of the high court’s involvement, the reductions sought in the Obama plan by 2030 already have been achieved through the market-driven closure of hundreds of coal plants.
The Biden administration has no intention of reviving the Clean Power Plan, one reason Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, argues the court should dismiss the case.
Some of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving 40 million people, are supporting the Biden administration along with prominent businesses that include Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla.
If approved by the Senate, federal appellate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, will make history as the first Black woman to sit on the country’s top court.
Jackson would bring new perspective to the job, and at age 51, she may serve for decades to come. However, there is little reason to think she can do much to change the court’s conservative trajectory and ideological balance in the short run.
Still, having a Black woman on the court may affect the other justices’ thinking in subtle ways. At her 2021 confirmation hearing for the appellate court, she said, “I’ve experienced life in perhaps a different way than some of my colleagues because of who I am, and that might be valuable — I hope it would be valuable if I was confirmed.”
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Florida, Jackson graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High School. She studied government at Harvard University, graduating in 1992. She also received her law degree from Harvard in 1996.
Earlier in her career, Jackson worked as an assistant federal public defender in the nation’s capital, where she worked on appellate cases, and served as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission for many years.
President Barack Obama nominated Jackson for a district court judgeship in the District of Columbia near the end of his first term as president, and she was confirmed in early 2013. He also interviewed her as a potential Supreme Court nominee after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
In a statement, the White House cited Jackson’s “broad experience across the legal profession” as a reason Biden nominated her for the court.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks after President Joe Biden announced Jackson as his nominee to the Supreme Court in the Cross Hall of the White House, Feb. 25, 2022, in Washington.
“President Biden sought a candidate with exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character and unwavering dedication to the rule of law,” the White House said.
It added, “The president sought an individual who is committed to equal justice under the law and who understands the profound impact that the Supreme Court’s decisions have on the lives of the American people.”
Confirmation for appeals court
The Senate voted 53-44 last year to confirm Jackson after Biden nominated her to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with three Republican senators backing her.
At Jackson’s confirmation hearing last year, Republicans asked her whether race plays a role in her methodology to deciding cases. She said it did not. “I’m methodically and intentionally setting aside personal views, any other inappropriate considerations, and I would think that race would be the kind of thing that would be inappropriate to inject in my evaluation of a case,” she said without skipping a beat.
At her 2021 confirmation hearing, she connected her family’s professions — her parents worked in public schools — to her decision to work as a public defender. “I come from a background of public service. My parents were in public service, my brother was a police officer and [was] in the military,” she said, “and being in the public defenders office felt very much like the opportunity to help with my skills and talents.”
Jackson, a liberal whose nomination is supported by progressive groups, would replace another liberal, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who intends to retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term. Republicans Friday sought to cast Jackson as a pawn of left-wing activist groups.
Her ascension would do little to shift the dynamics of a court that is dominated by six Republican appointees.
In any case, new justices often take time to find their footing. In a 2006 interview with Breyer, who joined the court in 1994, he said, “I was frightened to death for the first three years.”
The Civil Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice revoked the sanction of 5 days of arrest against Mayor William Dau Chamat, ordered by the Ninth Civil Court of the Circuit for the alleged breach of the relocation of the Zenú Indigenous Council, and protected the right to due process of the local president.
The office nullified the incident of contempt promoted by Casam Inversiones SAS and the order through which the Ninth Civil Court opened the incidental procedure.
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Sanction the Mayor without analyzing arguments put forward by the administration
The Civil Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice notes that the Ninth Civil Court proceeded to sanction the Mayor without analyzing the arguments presented by the administration and the particular circumstances of the case in question.
The ruling indicates that “It is evident that the summoned judicial authorities incurred an outrage that merits the interference of this guardianship judge, since in an attempt to dispatch the incident in question they decided to sanction the plaintiff here, as Mayor of Cartagena , without ruling on the allegations brought by the territorial entity from the very moment it learned of the initiation of that action.
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The Civil Cassation Chamber of the Court also highlights that, although the guardianship gave 5 months to carry out the procedures for the transfer, the District managed to demonstrate that the mayor is not the only one responsible for the materialization of the ruling, however, the court was silent about it.
“Therefore, the improper foundation of the incidental procedure is palpable, while the summoned judges deprived themselves of linking the persons indicated by the previously requested and, provided this, of thoroughly analyzing their objections, refusing to examine that particular circumstance, which, by the way, if fully justified, would be enough to free the accused from subjective responsibility, totally or partially; from where, in truth, it was omitted to establish the true subjective responsibility in the alleged non-compliance with the guardianship sentence in question, ”indicates the Court’s ruling.
It is not legal for the District buy the property
For this reason, the Supreme Court gives the Court 48 hours to issue a new decision, this time fully attending to all the considerations of the case.
It is noteworthy that since the administration of Salvemos Juntos a Cartagena, all the necessary steps have been taken to comply with the relocation of the Zenú Indigenous Council, however, it has not been made effective since, despite the fact that in 2021 the District Council granted the powers to the Mayor to make the transfer, one of the conditions was to have an appraisal of the property, which was contracted with the IGAC; however, the appraisal process carried out by the aforementioned entity was not completed before the term expired and the powers granted expired.
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In this sense, it is up to the administration to once again request the powers to continue with the necessary procedures for the acquisition of the property to which the Zenú Indigenous Council will be transferred, once the sessions of the District Council begin on March 1, 2022. Before the date, it is not legally possible for the District to purchase the property.
Cartagena
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U.S. President Joe Biden has made a final decision on who he will pick to be his first Supreme Court nominee, U.S. media reported Thursday night.
The president promised during his 2020 campaign to elevate the first Black woman to America’s highest bench, which he reiterated after Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, announced his retirement in late January.
CNN first reported that Biden had made his decision, which was later confirmed by CBS News, both citing sources familiar with the process.
The cable network added that the decision could come as soon as Friday but no later than Monday, the day before Biden’s State of the Union address.
The White House has been tight-lipped about who it will choose to replace Breyer, a liberal stalwart who plans to retire in June at the end of the court’s current term.
Among the favorites are U.S. Circuit Court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, South Carolina judge Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court judge Leondra Kruger.
Biden has previously said he planned on making a decision by the end of February.
Asked whether the Russian invasion of Ukraine had altered that timelines, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday Biden was “still on track to make an announcement before the end of the month.”
The selection of a Supreme Court justice involves extensive background checks to prevent unwelcome surprises during televised Senate nomination hearings.
If Biden’s pick can successfully pass the evenly divided Senate, she will become the third African American on the Supreme Court — after Justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas (who is still on the court). She would be the first Black woman.
President Joe Biden has interviewed at least three candidates for the Supreme Court, according to a person familiar with the matter, and the White House is reiterating that he remains on track to make a final selection by Monday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Biden had not decided whom to nominate. But the president has interviewed Judges Ketanji Brown Jackson, J. Michelle Childs and Leondra Kruger, according to a person familiar with the matter. A second person familiar said Biden had interviewed at least three candidates for the post. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the process.
FILE – Ketanji Brown Jackson, now a federal appeals court judge, is a potential Supreme Court nominee.
Biden has pledged to nominate the first Black woman to the high court by the end of the month to fill the vacancy being created by the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. It was not clear whether any additional candidates have been interviewed by the president.
Psaki declined to discuss whether Biden had conducted interviews but insisted the president was “on track” to make the selection despite rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Jackson was nominated by President Barack Obama to be a district judge. Biden elevated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Early in her career, she was also a law clerk for Breyer.
FILE – U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs is pictured Feb. 18, 2022, in Columbia, S.C. Childs, 55, is reportedly under consideration for an open slot on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Childs, a federal judge in South Carolina, has been nominated but not yet confirmed to serve on the same circuit court. Her name has surfaced partly because she is a favorite among some high-profile lawmakers, including Representative James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat.
Kruger, a graduate of Harvard University and Yale University’s law school, was previously a Supreme Court clerk and argued a dozen cases before the justices as a lawyer for the federal government before becoming a justice on the California Supreme Court.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is signaling he wants a fair fight over Biden’s pick, discouraging those within his GOP ranks who are eager to interject a broader debate over race into the confirmation process.
FILE – Leondra Kruger, an associate justice of the Supreme Court of California, is pictured in San Francisco, Feb. 3, 2022. Kruger is among those whose names have been floated as a possible replacement for retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
Speaking Tuesday in Kentucky, McConnell distanced himself from GOP senators and others who have criticized Biden for declaring his intent to nominate a Black woman.
“I heard a couple of people say they thought it was inappropriate for the president to announce he was going to put an African American woman on the court. Honestly, I did not think that was inappropriate,” McConnell said.
The GOP leader drew on history to remind people that former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both promised to put women on the court — when Reagan tapped Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female justice and Trump chose Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “I’m not complaining about that,” McConnell said.
More to the point, Republicans are unable to stop Biden’s pick in the 50-50 Senate where Democrats have the majority with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. They want to allow the confirmation process to unfold without self-inflicted political drama so they can resume challenging the president on their preferred topics of the economy and the administration’s handling of COVID-19.
Republicans believe one way to show voters how they would govern is by drawing a contrast between this court battle and the controversy that exploded around Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, when the Trump nominee was accused of sexual assault, a claim he denied. Republicans believe Senate Democrats suffered with voters after those highly politicized public confirmation hearings.
“This confirmation will not occur like that,” McConnell said. He said he expects a confirmation process that Americans can be proud of. “We believe a Supreme Court nominee ought to be respectfully treated, thoroughly vetted and then voted upon.”
U.S. Supreme Court justices on Wednesday struggled over whether to let Republican state officials defend an immigration rule crafted by former President Donald Trump’s administration to bar permanent residency for immigrants deemed likely to need government benefits.
The justices heard oral arguments in an appeal by 13 Republican state attorneys general led by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich of a lower court’s ruling that rejected their bid to defend Trump’s rule, which expanded the scope of those considered likely to become a “public charge.”
President Joe Biden’s administration dropped the government’s defense of the policy, prompting the action by the states. The rule took effect in February 2020.
Liberal and conservative justices questioned why the administration rescinded the policy in March 2021 based on a November 2020 decision by U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman in Illinois ordering it vacated nationwide in another case, rather than undertaking a formal rulemaking process to replace it while it remained in effect.
Justice Elena Kagan suggested that the administration evaded requirements under a U.S. law called the Administrative Procedure Act and expressed doubt that the court should be “green-lighting” such behavior. Chief Justice John Roberts said circumventing that statute “is a pretty big deal.”
‘Not unprecedented’
Some justices noted that presidential administrations often stop defending in court certain policies they oppose.
“It’s very much not unprecedented,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said.
Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher raised some eyebrows when he told the justices that the government does not believe that federal administrative law gives judges the power to set aside policies on a nationwide basis, as Feinerman did in this case — a position aligning with that of the Trump administration.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wondered how that admission should affect the case, given that the Biden administration’s decision to rescind Trump’s rule “is premised on what it admits to be an unlawful order” by Feinerman.
The Supreme Court in a separate dispute is weighing whether to let Kentucky’s Republican attorney general defend a restrictive abortion law in his state that was struck down by lower courts, after its Democratic governor dropped the case.
Biden’s administration six days ago announced a new “fair and humane” public charge rule that it said would avoid penalizing people for seeking medical attention and other services. The fact that a new federal rule already has been devised raises questions about what type of remedy would be available to the state officials even if they win and get to defend Trump’s policy.
Brnovich was joined by officials from Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.
Past guidelines
U.S. guidelines in place for the past two decades had said immigrants likely to become primarily dependent on direct cash assistance or long-term institutionalization — in a nursing home, for example — at public expense would be barred from legal permanent residency, known as a “green card.”
Trump’s policy expanded this to anyone deemed likely to receive a wider range of even non-cash federal benefits such as the Medicaid health care program, housing and food assistance for more than an aggregate of 12 months over any 36-month period.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided in 2020 that Trump’s policy impermissibly expanded the definition of who counts as a “public charge.” Other courts made similar rulings.
During the time the policy was enforced, the government issued only three denials of admission under it, according to court filings, all of which have since been reversed.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is expected by the end of June.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday took up a major new legal fight pitting religious beliefs against LGBT rights, agreeing to hear an evangelical Christian web designer’s free speech claim that she cannot be forced under a Colorado anti-discrimination law to produce websites for same-sex marriages.
The justices agreed to hear Denver-area business owner Lorie Smith’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling rejecting her bid for an exemption from a Colorado law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and certain other factors. The case follows the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in favor of a Christian Denver-area baker who refused on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
Smith’s case gives the justices an opportunity to answer a question that has been raised in other disputes including the baker case but never definitively resolved: can people refuse service to customers in violation of public accommodation laws based on the idea that fulfilling a creative act such as designing a website or baking a cake is a form of free speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that anti-discrimination laws, like Colorado’s, apply to all businesses selling goods and services. Companies cannot turn away LGBT customers just because of who they are,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat.
Colorado’s anti-discrimination law bars anyone from refusing “goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations” based among other things on sexual orientation, age, race, gender and religion. Colorado is among 21 U.S. states that have measures explicitly barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations.
These laws pose “a clear and present danger to every American’s constitutionally protected freedoms and the very existence of a diverse and free nation,” said Kristen Waggoner, general counsel of the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Smith.
“Colorado has weaponized its law to silence speech it disagrees with, to compel speech it approves of, and to punish anyone who dares to dissent,” Waggoner added.
The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has become increasingly supportive of religious rights and related free speech claims in recent years even as it has backed LGBT rights in other cases.
The justices declined to take up a separate question concerning whether Smith has a religious rights claim, also under the First Amendment. Smith had asked the court to overturn its important 1990 ruling that limited the ability of people to cite their religious beliefs in seeking exemptions from laws that apply to everyone.
Smith runs a web design business called 303 Creative that she wants to operate in accordance with her Christian faith. She believes that marriage should be limited to opposite-sex couples, a view shared by many conservative Christians.
Before adding wedding websites to the services she offered customers, Smith sued Colorado’s civil rights commission and other officials in 2016 because of her concern she would be punished under the anti-discrimination law.
Smith’s lawyers have said that any state action punishing her for refusing to design websites for gay weddings violates her right to religious expression and her free speech rights.
Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel at LGBT rights group Lambda Legal, said the Supreme Court should “reaffirm and apply longstanding constitutional precedent that our freedoms of religion and speech are not a license to discriminate when operating a business.”
Colorado officials have said they never investigated Smith’s company and saw no evidence that anyone ever actually asked her to design a website for a same-sex wedding. Lower courts backed Colorado, including the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a July 2021 ruling.
The justices are set to hear oral arguments and decide the case in the Supreme Court’s next term, which begins in October and ends in June 2023.
The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015 and in 2020 expanded protections for LGBT workers under federal law. The Supreme Court has struggled to resolve cases in which conservative religious opposition to LGBT rights has clashed with situations in which LGBT people are seeking to exercise their own rights.
Smith’s appeal arises from a dispute similar to the one that prompted the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling on narrow legal grounds siding with a Colorado baker named Jack Phillips. The court said in that case that Colorado’s civil rights commission, which imposed sanctions on Phillips for discrimination, was motivated by anti-religious bias.
Similar legal fights involving other small business including a wedding photographer and a calligrapher owners have been waged in other states.
Iran’s supreme leader vowed Thursday that his country would ramp up development of its civilian nuclear program, as major world powers continued delicate talks in Vienna to revive Tehran’s landmark nuclear deal.
In a televised speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the importance of nuclear energy for Iran, while again asserting that it had no interest in nuclear weapons.
Khamenei’s remarks seemed clearly aimed at the countries involved in the Vienna talks.
“Enemies are making cruel moves against our nuclear energy issue, [putting] sanctions on nuclear energy that they know is peaceful,” he said. “They do not want Iran to achieve this great and significant progress.”
The accord, which former President Donald Trump abandoned nearly four years ago, granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, tweeted late Wednesday that the parties were “closer than ever” to an agreement.
But talks have repeatedly stalled in recent months as Iranian negotiators press hard-line demands, exasperating Western diplomats.
Khamenei, who so far has largely stayed silent on the negotiations, called claims that Iran was pursuing a bomb “nonsense,” saying they were meant to deprive Iran of its legitimate right to nuclear power.
“If we do not pursue [peaceful nuclear energy] today, tomorrow will be late,” he said.
Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful. But the country’s steps away from its obligations under the 2015 accord have alarmed its archenemy Israel and world powers.
Tehran has since started enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short technical step from the 90% needed to make a bomb — and spinning far more advanced centrifuges than those permitted under the deal.
The Supreme Court on Monday put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power. The high court order boosts Republican chances to hold six of the state’s seven seats in the House of Representatives.
The court’s action, by a 5-4 vote, means the upcoming elections will be conducted under a map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature that contains one majority-Black district, represented by a Black Democrat, in a state in which more than a quarter of the population is Black.
A three-judge lower court, including two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, had ruled that the state had likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters by not creating a second district in which they made up a majority, or close to it.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, part of the conservative majority, said the lower court acted too close to the 2022 election cycle.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined his three more liberal colleagues in dissent.
The justices will at some later date decide whether the map produced by the state violates the landmark voting rights law, a case that could call into question “decades of this Court’s precedent about Section 2 of the VRA,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent.
That decision presumably will govern elections in 2024 through the end of the decade in Alabama and could affect minority political representation elsewhere in the country, too.
Alabama lawmakers redrew the state’s congressional districts following the results of the 2020 census. Several groups of voters sued, arguing that the new maps diluted the voting power of Black residents.
In a unanimous ruling in late January, the three judges said that the groups were likely to succeed in showing that the state had violated the Voting Rights Act. As a result, the panel ordered lawmakers to redraw the districts so Black voters would be a majority, or close to it, in two districts, not one. The ruling ran more than 200 pages.
The panel wrote that “we do not regard the question … as a close one.”
Alabama asked the Supreme Court to put the ruling on hold while it appeals, and the justices agreed. The state argued that it drew the new map guided by race-neutral principles and that the new map is similar to past maps.
More than a dozen mostly Republican-led states had filed a brief urging the justices to side with Alabama and allow it to use the maps it originally drew.
Deuel Ross, a lawyer for Alabamians who sued, called the state’s congressional districts “a textbook case of a Voting Rights Act violation” and said the high court’s decision to intervene is disheartening.
The facts are clear, Ross, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Alabama’s current congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act,” he said. “The litigation will continue, and we are confident that Black Alabamians will eventually have the congressional map they deserve — one that fairly represents all voters.”
Roberts, who typically votes against consideration of race, wrote that he shares some of Alabama’s concerns, but still would have let the redrawn districts govern the 2022 election and have future elections governed by the ultimate outcome in the case.
Kavanaugh, writing to explain his vote, stressed that the court has repeatedly declined in the past to change the rules close to an election.
“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled. Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others. It is one thing for a State on its own to toy with its election laws close to a State’s elections. But it is quite another thing for a federal court to swoop in and re-do a State’s election laws in the period close to an election,” he wrote in an opinion Alito joined.
Taking issue with Kavanaugh, Kagan noted that the lower court ruled months before any votes will be cast.
She criticized the conservatives for using the emergency application process known as the shadow docket “to signal or make changes in the law, without anything approaching full briefing and argument.”
María Ángeles Sánchez Conde took office on Monday as Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, replacing the late Juan Ignacio Campos, making her the first woman to hold this position.
The act was held at the headquarters of the high court before the Government Chamber of the Supreme Court, in which María Ángeles Sánchez Conde was sponsored by the prosecutor of the Sala Pilar Fernández Valcarce.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Sunday that the country’s poor economic situation was not only due to international sanctions but also to government mismanagement.
“Wrong decisions and shortcomings” were part of the reason for the Islamic republic’s “unsatisfactory” economic data, he said about the decade from March 2011 to last year.
Indicators such as “GDP growth, capital formation, inflation, housing and liquidity growth were not satisfactory,” Khamenei said.
“The main cause of these problems is not only sanctions, but also wrong decisions and shortcomings,” he told a meeting with economic officials.
“If the authorities had cooperated more with the producers in these 10 years, the damage would have been less, and the successes would have been greater,” he added in an implicit attack on former president Hassan Rouhani’s governments from 2013 to 2021.
Iran, which last year elected President Ebrahim Raisi, has been hit by severe economic sanctions imposed in 2018 by the United States, and has seen its inflation rate surge to close to 60 percent.
Khamenei criticized the high prices and low quality of some home-made products, especially cars.
He also charged that “despite the government’s support,” the price of some domestically-produced home appliances had doubled.
Iran has witnessed a number of protest rallies in the past few weeks by civil servants, including from the judiciary, against tough economic conditions.
Regarding companies operating despite the sanctions, Khamenei said that “we have successful examples and businesses that did not wait for the lifting of sanctions.”
Iran has been negotiating in Vienna — directly with Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, and indirectly with the United States — to revive its tattered 2015 nuclear deal.
The landmark agreement offered Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
But the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump and reimposed biting economic sanctions on Iran.
The Supreme Court this week announced that it would hear two cases challenging the practice by some U.S. universities of using the race of an applicant as one of the factors that affect admissions.
The announcement, six years after the court upheld the use of affirmative action in a case involving the University of Texas at Austin, is another signal that the high court’s new conservative majority is willing to wade into thorny issues on the fault lines of U.S. politics.
The court said it would combine two cases — one brought against Harvard University and another against the University of North Carolina. The central question identified by the court in both cases is whether it should overturn its own ruling from 2003 in the case Grutter v. Bollinger, which the court upheld in 2016, that allowed universities to use race as a factor in admissions decisions.
FILE – People remove belongings on campus at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., March 18, 2020.
Both cases were brought by an organization called Students for Fair Admissions. In a statement, the group’s president, Edward Blum, said, “In a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation like ours, the college admissions bar cannot be raised for some races and ethnic groups but lowered for others. Our nation cannot remedy past discrimination and racial preferences with new discrimination and different racial preferences.”
Blum’s organization claims that Harvard and the University of North Carolina effectively discriminate against Asian American and white students to the extent that they give any preference to members of other groups, notably African Americans, when making admissions decisions.
The Harvard case comes to the Supreme Court on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, which found that the university’s admissions system, while “not perfect,” was not racially discriminatory.
‘Merit’ v. ‘accidents of life’
Supporters of affirmative action point out that many of the factors typically considered “merit” by advocates of completely race-blind admissions cannot be reliably disentangled from privilege. Do students who achieve excellent grades and test scores with the aid of college-educated parents, or of tutors hired by their parents, truly exhibit more merit than students who achieved slightly lower marks without any outside assistance?
“Those built-in advantages ought to not count as merit. Those aren’t merit,” said Michael A. Olivas, the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law (Emeritus) at the University of Houston Law Center.
FILE – People walk through the gates leading to Harvard Yard, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 13, 2018.
“Those are accidents of life,” Olivas told VOA. “Children can take advantage of opportunities, but the opportunity structures are unequally distributed in our society, and higher education is probably the best manifestation of that.”
The current college admission system may be imperfect, Olivas said. However, he added, “As (Former British Prime Minister Winston) Churchill once said of democracy, I think it’s the worst of all systems, except for the alternatives. What would you substitute in the alternative?”
Multiple flashpoints
The court’s decision to take on an affirmative action case creates another potential flashpoint in the so-called “culture wars” that dominate political discourse in the United States.
So far this term, the court has heard arguments in an abortion case that many experts believe will lead to the overturning or gutting of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which determined that states are not allowed to outlaw access to abortion services
The court has also heard arguments in a controversial gun rights case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., v. Bruen, which could result in the invalidation of numerous state-level gun laws that restrict the ability of individuals to carry firearms outside of their homes.
Decisions in the abortion and gun rights cases are expected in the coming months. The affirmative action case will not be heard until the court’s next term begins in October.
The court has already ruled on some controversial cases during its current term.
Earlier this month, it blocked the Biden administration’s effort to require all businesses with 100 or more employees to require workers to be vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 or have a masking and testing policy.
Last August, the court required the Biden administration to reinstitute the controversial Remain in Mexico program initiated by the Trump administration, which required asylum-seekers stopped at the southern border to remain outside U.S. territory while their applications are processed.
Energized conservative majority
Because former President Donald Trump was able to appoint three new members to the court during his four years in office, the ideological makeup of the court shifted dramatically in a short time. The 5-4 conservative majority that existed during former President Barack Obama’s final term in office often produced rulings friendly to the political left, when a centrist conservative crossed over to vote with the court’s liberal bloc, including a landmark 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
However, the court is now solidly conservative by a margin of 6-3.
“You have a very strong working majority of conservative voices in the court now,” said Frederick M. Lawrence, a distinguished lecturer at Georgetown Law Center and the former president of Brandeis University. “By any objective measure, this is the most conservative court in the country in roughly a century.”
Lawrence said it would not be unreasonable to expect the court to begin revisiting many decisions made by previous incarnations of the court which American conservatives have long opposed.
“There are at least some justices of that conservative group who have very strong views about what the law ought to be, what the court has done over the past quarter-century or half-century, and what they’re trying to roll back,” he told VOA.
While liberal groups brace for likely defeats, setbacks and reversals, conservatives are eager to continue advancing legal cases that could draw the high court’s attention and, they hope, result in sweeping decisions favorable to their side.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said it will hear two cases that could determine if race can be used as a factor for college admission.
The cases, brought by the conservative group Students for Fair Admissions, targets Harvard, the country’s oldest private school, and the University of North Carolina, one of the nation’s oldest public schools.
FILE – People walk past an entrance to Widener Library, behind, on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., July 16, 2019.
The group maintains Harvard discriminates by using a quota-like system that disproportionately rejects qualified Asian applicants thus violating their civil rights.
“Harvard’s mistreatment of Asian-American applicants is appalling,” the plaintiffs wrote in their brief in the Harvard case. “That Harvard engages in racial balancing and ignores race-neutral alternatives also proves that Harvard does not use race as a last resort.”
Harvard says race is only one consideration for admission.
“Harvard does not automatically award race-based tips but rather considers race only in a flexible and non-mechanical way; consideration of race benefits only highly qualified candidates; and Harvard does not discriminate against Asian-American applicants,” the school wrote the court in its brief.
At UNC, Students for Fair Admissions is demanding a colorblind admissions process.
“Public schools have no legitimate interest in maintaining a precise racial balance,” Students for Fair Admissions wrote in its brief to the court.
Both cases are seen as landmark challenges to affirmative action policies in university admissions. Affirmative action seeks to address disadvantages and discrimination certain groups have historically faced in America and ensure equal access of opportunity in education, employment and other areas.
UNC Charlotte’s website says it enrolls “a diverse, competitive class of scholars” each year and that the university prides itself “on being one of the most diverse public universities” in the state. The site adds: “Having a diverse student body gives our students the opportunity to learn from other students from different backgrounds and cultures … to create a holistic and informed academic and social experience.”
Institutions of higher learning that prioritize achieving racially-diverse student bodies have at times been accused of watering down admissions criteria for certain minority applicants and, in effect, penalizing more qualified applicants from other groups.
Chief Justice John Roberts has been an outspoken critic of affirmative action, famously declaring in a 2006 opinion, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
The cases will likely be heard during the Supreme Court’s 2022 term, which starts in October.
Some information in this report comes from Reuters.
