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    Supreme Court Sides With Teenager in School Disability Discrimination Case

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    Disability rights groups had followed the case closely, warning that arguments by the school district could threaten broader protections for people with disabilities.The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a teenage girl with epilepsy and her parents who had sued a Minnesota school district, claiming that her school had failed to provide reasonable accommodations, which made it difficult for her to receive instruction.The case hinged on what standard of proof was required to show discrimination by public schools in education-related disability lawsuits.In a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court held that the student and her family needed to show only that the school system had acted with “deliberate indifference” to her educational needs when they sued.That is the same standard that applies when people sue other institutions for discrimination based on disability.The school district argued that a higher standard — a stringent requirement that the institution had acted with “bad faith or gross misjudgment” — should apply. Had the district prevailed, the new standard might have applied broadly to all kinds disability rights claims filed under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.That argument had unnerved some disability rights groups, which had cautioned that a ruling for the school could make it much harder for Americans with disabilities to successfully bring court challenges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Defense Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia Ask Judge to Release Him Pretrial

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      The request came as lawyers in Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s separate civil case were poised to ask a different judge to hold the Trump administration in contempt for sidestepping one of her orders.Defense lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who was recently brought back to the United States to face a federal indictment after being wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador, said in court papers on Wednesday that he should remain free from custody as he awaits trial.The papers, filed in Federal District Court in Nashville, amounted to the opening salvo of efforts by the defense lawyers to challenge the charges that were filed last week against Mr. Abrego Garcia.“With no legal process whatsoever, the United States government illegally detained and deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and shipped him to the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) in El Salvador, one of the most violent, inhumane prisons in the world,” the lawyers wrote.“The government now asks this court to detain him further,” they went on, asking Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who is handling the criminal case, to deny the request. Judge Crenshaw is set to hold a hearing on Friday to arraign Mr. Abrego Garcia and to hear arguments about whether to detain him before the trial.Mr. Abrego Garcia, a metalworker who was living in Maryland when he was arrested on March 12 and summarily deported three days later to El Salvador, had for weeks been trying through lawyers representing him in a separate civil case to enforce a court order instructing the Trump administration to take active measures toward securing his freedom.But after the administration repeatedly sought to sidestep and delay complying with that order, the Justice Department abruptly changed course. Top department officials announced on Friday that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been brought back to the United States to stand trial on charges of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle thousands of undocumented immigrants across the country as a member of the violent street gang MS-13.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump, Bashing the Federalist Society, Asserts Autonomy on Judge Picks

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      The president has grown increasingly angry at court rulings blocking parts of his agenda, including by judges he appointed.President Trump appears to be declaring independence from outside constraints on how he nominates judges, signaling that he is looking for loyalists who will uphold his agenda and denouncing the conservative legal network that helped him remake the federal judiciary in his first term.Late Thursday, after a ruling struck down his tariffs on most imported goods, Mr. Trump attacked the Federalist Society, leaders of which heavily influenced his selection of judges during his first presidency.“I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations,” Mr. Trump asserted on social media. “This is something that cannot be forgotten!”Hours earlier Thursday, the Justice Department severely undercut the traditional role of the American Bar Association in vetting judicial nominees. A day before, Mr. Trump picked a loyalist who has no deep ties to the conservative legal movement for a life-tenured appeals court seat, explaining that his pick could be counted on to rule in ways aligned with his agenda.Together, the moves suggest that Mr. Trump may be pivoting toward greater personal involvement and a more idiosyncratic process for selecting future nominees. Such a shift would fit with his second-term pattern of steamrolling the guardrails that sometimes constrained how he exercised power during his first presidency.But it could also give pause to judges who may be weighing taking senior status, giving Mr. Trump an opportunity to fill their seats. Conservatives have been eyeing in particular the seats of the Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas, who will turn 77 next month, and Samuel A. Alito, 75.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration, for Now, to End Biden-Era Migrant Program

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      The Trump administration had asked the court to allow it to end deportation protections for more than 500,000 people facing dire humanitarian crises in their home countries.The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration, for now, to revoke a Biden-era humanitarian program intended to give temporary residency to more than 500,000 immigrants from countries facing war and political turmoil.The court’s order was unsigned and provided no reasoning, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, saying the majority had not given enough consideration to “the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”The ruling, which exposes some migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti to possible deportation, is the latest in a series of emergency orders by the justices in recent weeks responding to a flurry of applications asking the court to weigh in on the administration’s attempts to unwind Biden-era immigration policies.Friday’s ruling focused on former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s expansion of a legal mechanism for immigration called humanitarian parole, in which migrants from countries facing instability are allowed to enter the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they have a private sponsor to take responsibility for them.Earlier this month, the justices allowed the Trump administration to remove deportation protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Court Tariffs Ruling Upends Trump’s Trade Strategy

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      The administration immediately petitioned a court to allow the United States to continue imposing stiff tariffs.One day after a federal court declared many of his tariffs to be illegal, President Trump and his top aides on Thursday rushed to resuscitate the centerpiece of the administration’s trade agenda, seeking to restore their ability to use the threat of eye-watering import taxes to force other nations into submission.Shortly after the ruling, the administration petitioned a court to allow it to continue imposing its tariffs, reflecting a persistent fear throughout the White House that a defeat could severely undercut its capacity to wage a global trade war.Since taking office, Mr. Trump had relied on a federal emergency powers law as a form of political leverage, hoping to use sky-high duties — or just the mere threat of them — to force other governments to make trade concessions to the United States.But the little-known and highly specialized U.S. Court of International Trade dealt an early yet significant blow to that strategy late Wednesday. The bipartisan panel of judges, one of whom had been appointed by Mr. Trump, ruled that the law did not grant the president “unbounded authority” to impose tariffs on nearly every country, as Mr. Trump had sought.The Trump administration quickly petitioned the court to pause any enforcement of its order as it pursues an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. If judges ultimately grant the requested stay, Mr. Trump could, for now, maintain many of the tariffs he has imposed on China, Canada and Mexico and preserve the threat of “reciprocal” rates, which he announced on most nations and then suspended in early April.“I’m sure, when we appeal, this decision will be overturned,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an appearance Thursday on Fox Business.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Marshals’ Data Shows Spike in Threats Against Federal Judges

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      Data gathered by the law enforcement agency responsible for judicial security showed 162 judges faced threats between March 1 and April 14.Threats against federal judges have risen drastically since President Trump took office, according to internal data compiled by the U.S. Marshals Service.In the five-month period leading up to March 1 of this year, 80 individual judges had received threats, the data shows.Then, over the next six weeks, an additional 162 judges received threats, a dramatic increase. That spike in threats coincided with a flood of harsh rhetoric — often from Mr. Trump himself — criticizing judges who have ruled against the administration and, in some cases, calling on Congress to impeach them.Many judges have already spoken out, worrying about the possibility of violence and urging political leaders to tone things down.Since mid-April, the pace of the threats has slowed slightly, the data shows. Between April 14 and May 27, it shows 35 additional individual judges received threats. Still, the total number of judges threatened this fiscal year — 277 — represents roughly a third of the judiciary.The threat data was not released publicly but was provided to The New York Times by Judge Esther Salas of Federal District Court for New Jersey, who said she obtained it from the Marshals Service, which is tasked by law with overseeing security for the judiciary.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Emil Bove, Top Justice Dept. Official, Is Considered for Circuit Court Nomination

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      Emil Bove III has emerged as a top contender to fill a vacancy on the appeals court covering Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, people familiar with the matter said.President Trump is considering nominating Emil Bove III, a top Justice Department official responsible for enacting his immigration agenda and ordering the purge of career prosecutors, to be a federal appeals judge, according to people familiar with the matter.Mr. Bove, 44, is a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump and a longtime federal prosecutor in New York. He was the Justice Department official at the center of the Trump administration’s request earlier this year to dismiss a corruption case against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams.One of the department’s most formidable and feared political appointees in the second Trump administration, he has emerged as a top contender to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, those people said.There are two vacancies on the court — one based in New Jersey and one in Delaware. It is not clear which seat Mr. Bove is under consideration for. He has a property in Pennsylvania, and some conservatives have called for moving the Delaware-based seat to Pennsylvania.The people familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal matter that has not yet been publicly announced. They cautioned that the timing remains unclear, and the intentions could still shift.If Mr. Bove is nominated for the post, Democrats are all but certain to use his Senate confirmation process to scrutinize his role in some of the Justice Department’s most contentious actions since Mr. Trump took office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Courts Buck Trump Deportation Schemes, Focusing on Due Process Rights

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      The Trump administration’s aggressive push to deport migrants has run up against resistance from the judiciary.If there has been a common theme in the federal courts’ response to the fallout from President Trump’s aggressive deportation policies, it is that the White House cannot rush headlong into expelling people by sidestepping the fundamental principle of due process.In case after case, a legal bottom line is emerging: Immigrants should at least be given the opportunity to challenge their deportations, especially as Trump officials have claimed novel and extraordinary powers to remove them.The latest and clearest expression of that view came on Friday evening, when the Supreme Court chided the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day’s warning to a group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas it had been trying to deport under the expansive powers of an 18th-century wartime law.“Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal,” the justices wrote, “surely does not pass muster.”While many questions remain to be answered about Mr. Trump’s deportation plans, many legal scholars have hailed courts’ support of due process. At the same time, they have also expressed concern that such support was needed in the first place.“It’s great that courts are standing up for one of the most basic principles that underlie our constitutional order — that ‘persons’ (not ‘citizens’) are entitled to due process before being deprived of life, liberty, or property,” Michael Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote in an email. “It would be even better if the administration would simply cease violating such principles.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Several Supreme Court Justices Have Been Critical of Nationwide Injunctions

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      Across the ideological spectrum, justices have been troubled by rulings that touch everyone affected by a challenged law, regulation or executive action.Supreme Court justices across the ideological spectrum have said they are troubled by at least some nationwide injunctions, and several have long called for the court to address their proper scope.“It just can’t be right,” Justice Elena Kagan said in remarks in 2022 at Northwestern University’s law school, “that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.”It is one thing for federal trial judges to resolve the dispute before them in rulings that are binding on the parties to the case, several justices have said. It is another to issue nationwide injunctions — sometimes called “universal” injunctions — that apply to everyone affected by the challenged law, regulation or executive action.In 2018, in a concurring opinion in a decision upholding President Trump’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “universal injunctions are legally and historically dubious.” He added that “if federal courts continue to issue them, this court is duty bound to adjudicate their authority to do so.”In 2020, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justice Thomas, urged his colleagues to give lower courts guidance on when such injunctions were appropriate.“The routine issuance of universal injunctions is patently unworkable,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, “sowing chaos for litigants, the government, courts and all those affected by these conflicting decisions.”In 2023, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh issued a statement joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett when the court refused to revive a Florida law barring children from drag performances.“The question of whether a district court, after holding that a law violates the Constitution, may nonetheless enjoin the government from enforcing that law against nonparties to the litigation is an important question that could warrant our review in the future,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote.Justices Kagan, Thomas and Gorsuch all said that the availability of nationwide injunctions can spur forum shopping, the practice of filing lawsuits in friendly jurisdictions, as it takes only one judge to block a program even if several others reject similar challenges.“In the Trump years,” Justice Kagan said in 2022, “people used to go to the Northern District of California, and in the Biden years, they go to Texas.”Challengers in the birthright citizenship cases said that some issues, like school segregation and racial gerrymandering, required universal relief rather than case-by-case litigation. Birthright citizenship, they wrote, is also such an issue.“The universal injunction in this case preserves the uniformity of United States citizenship, an area in which nationwide consistency is vitally important,” lawyers for the challenger wrote. “Whether a child is a citizen of our nation should not depend on the state where she is born.”A nationwide injunction blocking Mr. Trump’s order, they wrote, “serves the public interest by preventing chaos and confusion.” More