Most Americans tend to think of private property simply as a home – the place where the family resides, stores their belongings, and finds shelter and safety from the elements. It’s where you live. It’s yours because you pay the mortgage and the taxes. Most people don’t give property ownership much more thought than that.
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The Georgia Public Service Commission could decide a high-profile case this week that pits long-time property owners against a railroad looking to seize land for a new rail spur.
The Sandersville Railroad, a Class III short-line railroad, petitioned the PSC to condemn land for a 4.5-mile-long spur. Regardless of how the PSC rules, its decision will likely be appealed to Fulton County Superior Court and beyond, possibly even to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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At least nine states will have pro-abortion constitutional amendment proposals on ballots in November, during a presidential election with high voter turnout, with some states facing lawsuits from conservatives and pro-life groups.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the question of abortion legalization back to the states, some states are facing ballot measures over whether to ensure that abortion is codified in state constitutions.
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Wading into the confusing abyss of administrative law, on June 28 the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, overruled the much-criticized 1984 decision in Chevron, restoring the bedrock principle — commanded by both Article III of the Constitution and Section 706 the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act — that it is the province of courts, not administrative agency bureaucrats, to interpret federal laws. This may sound like an easy ruling, but the issue had long bedeviled the Supreme Court. Even Justice Antonin Scalia, an administrative law expert, supported Chevron prior to his death in 2016. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, Chief Justice John Roberts sure-footedly dispatched Chevron.
If, as I wrote for The American Conservative in 2021, “Taming the administrative state is the issue of our time,” why did the Supreme Court unanimously (albeit with a bare six-member quorum) decide in Chevron to defer to administrative agencies interpretations of ambiguous statutes, and why did conservatives — at least initially — support the decision? In a word, politics. In 1984, the President in charge of the executive branch was Ronald Reagan, and the D.C. Circuit — where most administrative law cases are decided — was (and had been for decades) controlled by liberal activist judges. President Reagan’s deputy solicitor general, Paul Bator, argued the Chevron case, successfully urging the Court to overturn a D.C. Circuit decision (written by then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg) that had invalidated EPA regulations interpreting the Clean Air Act. Thus, in the beginning, “Chevron deference” meant deferring to Reagan’s agency heads and their de-regulatory agenda.
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President Joe Biden Monday night said the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the president has “absolute immunity” when acting in his core constitutional duties is “a dangerous precedent” that “undermines the rule of law of this nation.”
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision ruled that the “president’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity.”
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The editor-in-chief and publisher of The Tennessee Star was ordered to appear in court last week and threatened with charges of contempt after his newspaper reported on an anonymously leaked collection of documents authored by Nashville mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale. Michael Patrick Leahy was joined by his attorneys in court on Monday for a “show-cause hearing,” where the journalist was asked by Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles to demonstrate why his outlet’s reporting does not subject him to contempt proceedings and sanctions.
On March 27, 2023, Hale (born Audrey Elizabeth Hale) entered the Covenant School armed with three semiautomatic guns and murdered six people, including three 9-year-old children. Hale, who was eventually shot and killed by police in the school, was a transgender man and former student at Covenant who harbored extremist sentiments on race, gender, and politics. The massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee history.
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Several election lawsuits filed recently with significant impact on the 2024 presidential election have been decided in favor of election integrity proponents, ensuring laws remain enforced ahead of the November election.
The lawsuits filed focused on candidate eligibility, different changes in law, and alleged violations of election laws. Most of them have resulted in wins for election integrity, while two are ongoing.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law established by Congress requiring the deportation of foreign nationals who illegally enter the country.
The court ruled on three consolidated cases in Campos-Chaves v Garland that were on appeal in the Fifth and Ninth circuits, where the appellate courts issued conflicting rulings.
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President Joe Biden’s new student loan forgiveness plan has legal experts divided, with some citing similar problems to his previous plan struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education Plan is an income-based student loan repayment plan that provides full loan forgiveness in certain cases.
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Republican U.S. senators introduced a bill that would ban student loan forgiveness for protestors convicted of a crime while protesting on U.S. college campuses.
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A Georgia Public Service Commission hearing officer has ruled a railroad can take private land from several Sparta property owners, saying its proposed rail spur “serves a legitimate public purpose.”
The Sandersville Railroad, a Class III short line railroad that has served the area since 1893, petitioned the PSC on March 8, 2023, to condemn land for a proposed 4.5-mile-long spur. The railroad subsequently moved to condemn additional land.
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Former President Donald Trump called for special counsel Jack Smith to be sanctioned or censured for “attacking” the judge in Trump’s classified documents case.
Trump’s comments on Thursday come after Smith and his team of prosecutors made it clear they think Judge Aileen Cannon’s latest ruling was based on “an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise.” Prosecutors objected to Cannon’s order to produce proposed jury instructions under two different legal scenarios. Smith said both legal scenarios were flawed.
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When you watch a political ad, often you’ll see a disclaimer of who the ad was paid for by, usually a political action committee, but what about the donors to the committee? Or the donor’s donors?
That’s the bridge that a San Francisco campaign finance law seeks to cross — now being challenged at the U.S. Supreme Court in No on E v. Chiu — and to prohibit an incredibly common practice in campaign finance, which are donations from anonymous sources.
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Donald Trump filed his brief Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court to defend his argument that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution. Noting the lack of historical precedent and dire ramifications for the future, Trump’s attorneys warned that “a denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future President with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents.”
Oral arguments on the groundbreaking question are set for April 25; a final opinion, which could be announced in late May or sometime in June before the current SCOTUS term ends, represents a do-or-die situation for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment against the former president for the events of January 6 and his alleged attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. The case is now on hold awaiting a decision by SCOTUS.
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School districts around the country are facing issues with how they handle their social media accounts, and the debate has reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Denver Public Schools recently reviewed its social media policy that doesn’t allow employees to restrict comments on social media or limit who can see them.
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by Noah Slayter An organization that operates pro-life pregnancy centers in New Jersey asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case involving what the centers’ petition calls an “improper” and “unlawful” subpoena by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal firm known as ADF, filed a petition with…
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In their latest attack on the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court, House Democrats are urging Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a case involving former President Donald Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s Republican primary ballot.
Their reasoning is simple, but dangerously misguided: Because Thomas’ wife, Ginni, has expressed opinions about Trump and the 2020 election, he should be barred from adjudicating any case involving Trump and elections.
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The Oregon Supreme Court declined Friday to hear a bid to remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot, saying it wanted to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the matter.
The bid was filed by Free Speech For People, a liberal advocacy group late last year.
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U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is urging the cautious use of artificial intelligence, and he predicts it will “significantly” impact the legal field.
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The Colorado Republican Party is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case where the state Supreme Court ruled to remove Donald Trump from the 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot.
The appeal automatically places the former president on the March 5, 2024, primary ballot when certification takes place on Jan. 5, 2024, due to a stipulation in the Colorado Supreme Court ruling, according to a news release from Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold. However, if the U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear the case or if it affirms the Colorado Supreme Court, Trump would not appear on the ballot.
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The Colorado Supreme Court, acting as supplicants for the enemies of Donald Trump seeking the most extreme remedy for driving the former president into the ditch, may have just unwittingly gifted the former president a Rocky Mountain high – in the polls.
This time, four left-wing Colorado justices attempting to kneecap Trump were not even going to wait on due process – the very foundation of law – to effectively declare Trump guilty of insurrection, a crime for which he has not, repeat not, even been charged. After believing their attempts to wipe Trump off the ballot would be a knockout punch, it is the left that is about to get walloped to the canvas with a right hook.
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In the first half of 2023, roughly 32,000 babies were born in states that implemented abortion restrictions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, a 2.3% increase, according to a new analysis.
In the first six months of 2023, “births rose by an average of 2.3 percent in states enforcing total abortion bans,” leading to an estimated 32,000 births that might have otherwise been aborted, according to a new analysis published by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics initiated by the Deutsche Post Foundation.
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A group of 20 attorneys general want the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule a lower court’s restrictions on local governments enforcing homeless camping bans.
In their petition regarding Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, the attorneys general wrote that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong to prohibit state and local governments from enforcing laws that bar public spaces from being used as homeless encampments.
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Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard Leo, who served as an advisor in the selection process of former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointees, has been targeted in his home town in Maine by what a prominent Catholic leader calls “anti-Catholic bigots” in the wake of recent rulings by the High Court.
Activists have been protesting at Leo’s home in Northeast Harbor, tying him to Supreme Court rulings with which they disagree.
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The Supreme Court could hear a case questioning a California agency’s coordination with Twitter to censor election-related “misinformation.”
O’Handley v. Weber, which concerns the California Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity’s work with Twitter to monitor “false or misleading” election information, was appealed to the Supreme Court on June 8. The case raises questions similar to those posed in the free speech lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, now being appealed in the Fifth Circuit: Can the government lawfully induce private actors to censor protected speech?
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GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy unveiled a list of likely judicial appointments he’d make if elected in the 2024 presidential election.
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A nonprofit law center whose mission is to defend the constitutional rights of Americans has sent a letter to more than 150 medical schools throughout the country, calling upon them to end their race-based admissions policies in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down affirmative action.
Liberty Justice Center, which won a major victory for First Amendment rights in June 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that non-union government workers cannot be required to pay union fees as a condition of working in public service, has now announced efforts to inform the schools of their “legal obligation to end race-based admissions policies” in response to the Court’s recent ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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Many of those who are applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Thursday that struck down affirmative action are also warning that universities that have been steeped for decades in “equity” and “diversity” ideology are not likely to go quietly.
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The Georgia Republican Party (GAGOP) has applauded four recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court surrounding the topics of affirmative action, religious discrimination, and debt forgiveness.
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Christian groups applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that held “The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.”
Organizations, including the Catholic League, Family Research Council, and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, submitted friend of the court (amici) briefs in support of 303 Creative, the custom website design business owned by Lorie Smith.
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GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released a video statement Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s proposal to unilaterally cancel hundreds of billions in student loan debt.
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Secretary of the U.S. Education Department Miguel Cardona reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the use of race in weighing college admissions with the claim the ruling “takes our country decades backward” because such discrimination based on the color of skin has served as “a vital tool that colleges have used to create vibrant, diverse campus communities.”
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ProPublica launched a partisan “investigation,” this time targeting another conservative U.S. Supreme Court member.
As if on cue, mainstream media outlets jumped on the bandwagon, relishing in the prospect of free content for their publications — content that undermines conservative jurists, and conservative lawmakers by association. This is purely political payback for the Dobbs decision of 2022.
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St. Dominic Academy in Auburn, Maine filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the administration of Gov. Janet Mills (D) and the Maine Human Rights Commission that alleges the state has continued to “outmaneuver” the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin by excluding religious schools from its longstanding program whereby students residing in districts without a public school are given the opportunity to attend the public or private school of their family’s choosing.
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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) signed legislation Tuesday that has been condemned by the pro-life community as the most extreme abortion measure in the nation, one that creates a “fundamental right” to abortion at any time during pregnancy, and denies parents the right to know if their minor daughter undergoes an abortion.
Walz signed the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act to enshrine in state statute a “fundamental right” to abortion, without any restrictions, and to contraception, sterilization, fertility treatment.
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President Joe Biden signed the Democrats’ same-sex marriage bill amid fanfare and celebration, but an attorney-led Christian ministry that says it won nearly 50 cases defending marriage as between one man and one woman before the Obergefell decision asserts the passage of the legislation can now “actually create the perfect scenario to overturn” the Supreme Court’s 2015 5-4 ruling.
Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) Tuesday.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments starting next week in what could be a landmark case centered on a Colorado small business owner’s free speech rights.
Lorie Smith, owner of graphic design company 303 Creative in Littleton, Colo., is challenging the state’s public-accommodation law, which she argues is compelling her speech. Smith wishes to create wedding websites only for straight couples, citing her religious beliefs.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is leading a group of 21 attorneys general in an amicus brief regarding federal immigration law.
The attorneys general are asking the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold a federal statute to enforce federal immigration law in United States v. Hansen.
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The Justice Department’s admission Monday it improperly collected attorney-client privileged documents during a court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate was quickly followed by assurances it was no big deal because the department has a process to segregate privileged material.
But that process — known as filter teams or “taint” teams — has itself been tainted by a string of recent legal controversies over the seizure of attorney-client privilege protected materials in other cases.
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A Fulton County Superior Court judge declined a request to block Georgia’s fetal heartbeat law that bans most abortions after six weeks.
Georgia lawmakers passed House Bill 481, the Living Infants Fairness Equality Act, in 2019. However, a federal judge initially blocked the law, commonly called the “Heartbeat Bill,” because the U.S. Supreme Court had previously upheld the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
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The Biden administration has ended a program used to expel migrants to Mexico as they await immigration proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement Monday.
The Trump-era policy, which is also known as “Remain in Mexico,” was long fought in the courts after the Texas attorney general sued the Biden administration for ending the program.
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The chairman of a top House education committee along with 64 Democrats are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to maintain “race-conscious admission policies” at Harvard University and University of North Carolina, according to a brief.
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a non-profit that fights race-based policies, petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, a ruling that kept race-conscious admissions polices in place at higher education institutions. U.S. House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott of Virginia filed an amicus brief asking SCOTUS to uphold affirmative action and dismiss the cases next term.
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Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, the abortion industry and its allies in the media and the medical field “are having to defend their actual position” regarding their claim that women are in danger as a result of the ruling, but “have no scientific evidence to back it up,” leaving them to “rely on spreading” lies, OB/GYN Dr. Christina Francis told The Star News Network in an interview Thursday.
Francis, a board member and CEO-elect of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), testified Tuesday before the House Committee on Energy & Commerce in a Democrat-led hearing titled “Roe Reversal: The Impacts of Taking Away the Constitutional Right to an Abortion.”
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A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court ruled unanimously Wednesday that Georgia’s 2019 Heartbeat law that bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected may take effect.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled the Georgia law (HB 481), known as the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act may proceed to take effect after a federal judge blocked it in a decision that found the law violated the right to abortion created by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973.
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Several congressional Democrats, including Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were arrested Tuesday outside of the U.S. Supreme Court during an abortion-rights protest for allegedly blocking traffic.
In total, U.S. Capitol Police arrested 34 people, including 16 members of Congress.
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Telemundo confirmed Friday the alleged rapist of a 10-year-old girl who underwent an abortion is in a “domestic relationship” with the victim’s mother who reportedly is also pregnant with his child.
“It is, in fact, a domestic relationship – and there are additional children in the household,” said Jorge Bonilla, director of Media Research Center (MRC) Latino. “Horrendous.”
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Nineteen attorneys general, led by Arizona AG Mark Brnovich, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case the Biden administration is fighting after a federal judge in Texas ruled against it last month.
Texas and Louisiana sued over a Department of Homeland Security directive altering deportation policy.
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As the political fallout over the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade continues, a hard-left activist group is offering cash payouts to D.C.-area workers who inform on the locations of conservative Supreme Court justices.
ShutDownDC issued the lucrative offer in a tweet last week, offering big payouts to “DC Service Industry Workers” who inform the group on the whereabouts of the justices.
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Joe Biden attempted to undermine the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision two weeks ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization by signing an executive order Friday that seeks to impose abortion on demand on the nation.
Pressed by radical pro-abortion leftists still reeling after the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the White House has produced a “fact sheet” about the executive order it claims will “protect access to reproductive health care services” until Congress enshrines the tenets of Roe into federal law.
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The president of the nation’s largest teachers’ union told union delegates at the start of the Representative Assembly (RA) Sunday that 2016 was the year of a “fateful election,” one that made clear the U.S. Supreme Court would become “radicalized.”
In her keynote address Sunday in Chicago, National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle targeted former President Donald Trump for his choices in appointing Supreme Court justices.
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