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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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      Supreme Court Revives Suit From Victims of Botched F.B.I. Raid

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      Lower courts ruled in favor of agents who had used a battering ram and a flash-bang grenade in mistakenly raiding the home of an Atlanta couple.The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously revived a suit from a couple whose home was mistakenly raided by the F.B.I., giving them a fresh opportunity to try to persuade lower courts that they should be able to sue the federal government for the harm they suffered.The case, Martin v. United States, No. 24-362, arose from a raid very early on a fall morning in 2017, when F.B.I. agents used a battering ram to knock down the front door of the home of the couple, Hilliard Toi Cliatt and Curtrina Martin. Guns drawn, the agents set off a flash-bang grenade and charged inside.The couple barricaded themselves in a closet. The agents dragged Mr. Cliatt out at gunpoint and handcuffed him. They told Ms. Martin to keep her hands up as she pleaded to see her 7-year-old son, who had been asleep in another room.As they questioned Mr. Cliatt, he gave his address. It was different from the one the agents had a warrant to enter.One of the agents, Lawrence Guerra, had earlier identified the correct house, which he said looked similar and was nearby, on a different street. But on the morning of the raid, he said he went to the wrong house because he had been misdirected by his GPS device.The couple sued for false arrest, false imprisonment, assault, battery and other claims but lost in the lower courts on a variety of grounds, notably that government officials’ actions are protected from lawsuits when they perform a duty that involves discretion.The case turned on the Federal Tort Claims Act, which sometimes allows suits against the government notwithstanding the doctrine of sovereign immunity. A 1974 amendment to the law made it easier to sue over wrong-house raids after notorious ones in Collinsville, Ill. But the law is subject to a tangled series of exceptions and provisos. More

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      As Energy Costs Surge, Eastern Governors Blame a Grid Manager

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      For decades, a little-known nonprofit organization has played a central role in keeping the lights on for 65 million people in the Eastern United States.Even some governors and lawmakers acknowledge that they were not fully aware of how much influence the organization, PJM, has on the cost and reliability of energy in 13 states. The electrical grid it manages is the largest in the United States.But now some elected leaders have concluded that decisions made by PJM are one of the main reasons utility bills have soared in recent years. They said the organization had been slow to add new solar, wind and battery projects that could help lower the cost of electricity. And they say the grid manager is paying existing power plants too much to supply electricity to their states.Some governors have been so incensed that they have sued PJM, drafted or signed laws to force changes at the organization, or threatened to pull their states out of the regional electric grid.The Democratic governors of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sharply criticized the organization in recent interviews with The New York Times and in written statements. And the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, called on the organization to fire its chief executive in a letter obtained by The Times.“PJM has lost the plot,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said in an interview. In another interview, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said about PJM, “I am angry.”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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      Gun Deaths of Children Rose in States That Loosened Gun Laws, Study Finds

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      Researchers looked at firearm fatalities in the 13 years immediately after the Supreme Court limited local governments’ ability to restrict gun ownership.Firearm deaths of children and teenagers rose significantly in states that enacted more permissive gun laws after the Supreme Court in 2010 limited local governments’ ability to restrict gun ownership, a new study has found.In states that maintained stricter laws, firearm deaths were stable after the ruling, the researchers reported, and in some, they even declined.Guns are the leading cause of death in the United States for people under 18. Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room doctor at Massachusetts General Brigham Hospital in Boston, who was the study’s lead author, said he was dismayed to find that most of the children’s deaths were homicides and suicides.“It’s surprising how few of these are accidents,” Dr. Faust said. “I always thought that a lot of pediatric mortality from guns is that somebody got into the wrong place, and I still think safe storage is important, but it’s mostly homicides and suicides.”John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, called the study “political propaganda masquerading as scientific research.”The study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, examined the 13-year period after the June 2010 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment, which protects an individual’s right to bear arms, applies to state and local gun-control laws. The decision effectively limited the ability of state and local governments to regulate firearms.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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      Justice Jackson Just Helped Reset the D.E.I. Debate

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      At the heart of the debate over diversity, equity and inclusion is a question: How much should the law treat a person as an individual rather than as a member of a group?For a very long time, American law and American institutions answered that question unequivocally. People were defined primarily by the group they belonged to, and if they happened to be Black or Native American or a woman, they were going to enjoy fewer rights, fewer privileges and fewer opportunities than the people who belonged to the categories white and male.That was — and remains — a grievous injustice. At a minimum, justice demands that a nation and its institutions cease and desist from malicious discrimination. But doesn’t justice demand more? Doesn’t it also require that a nation and its institutions actually try to provide assistance to targeted groups to help increase diversity in employment and education and help targeted groups overcome the systemic effects of centuries of discrimination?On Thursday, the Supreme Court unanimously decided a case that was directly relevant to the latter question, and while the outcome wasn’t surprising, the court’s unanimity — and the identity of the author of the court’s opinion — certainly was.The facts of the case, Ames v. Ohio, are simple. In 2004, the Ohio Department of Youth Services hired a heterosexual woman named Marlean Ames to work as an executive secretary. By 2019, she’d worked her way up to program administrator and set her sights higher — applying for a management position in the agency’s Office of Quality and Improvement.The department interviewed Ames for the job but decided to hire someone else, a lesbian. The department then demoted Ames and replaced her with a gay man. Believing she’d been discriminated against on the basis of her sexual orientation, she filed suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.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’s Pledge to Not Tax Overtime Could Become Federal Law

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      When President Trump first floated the idea of “no tax on overtime” at a campaign rally last year, he did not elaborate on how it would work. Could anyone who works more than 40 hours a week claim a tax break? Would overtime pay really be completely tax-free?The answer to both questions, as it turns out, is no.Under the sprawling domestic policy bill that Republicans pushed through the House and are preparing to steer through the Senate, the tax break would be limited. It would be available only to Americans who, under federal law, must be paid at a time-and-a-half rate for working any time exceeding 40 hours in a week. That’s a broad group that includes almost all Americans who are paid an hourly wage, but many salaried workers would not be eligible.And the tax relief would not be total. Americans would still owe payroll taxes, and potentially state income taxes, on their overtime pay. Federal income taxes would be eliminated on those wages, but only on the earnings attributable to the 50-percent bump in pay — only a third of the money made while working overtime.Even with those limitations, both critics and supporters of the idea believe the tax break could reshape the American labor market. The White House Council of Economic Advisers expects that the policy will motivate Americans to work more and help strengthen the economy.Skeptics think the change would primarily drive people to reclassify their earnings or even change jobs in order to file for overtime. They worry that if enough people sought jobs that offer overtime, wages in those positions could eventually fall.“Ultimately, it’s going to create unintended consequences that incentivize certain behaviors in the labor market and thus create winners and losers from that,” said Emmet Bowling, a labor policy analyst at the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. “Hourly jobs might become more desirable because of this tax deduction.”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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      Republican Policy Bill Would Add $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says

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      The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is all but certain to inflame an already intense debate inside the G.O.P. about the fiscal consequences of their bill to enact President Trump’s agenda.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that the broad Republican bill to cut taxes and slash some federal programs would add $2.4 trillion to the already soaring national debt over the next decade, in an analysis that was all but certain to inflame concerns that President Trump’s domestic agenda would lead to excessive government borrowing.The C.B.O. analysis focused on the version of the bill that passed the House late last month, but the cost estimate could change as Republicans in the Senate begin to put their imprint on the legislation. G.O.P. lawmakers there want to deepen some of the bill’s tax cuts, while others are pressing to pare back some its cuts to Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, and clean-energy tax incentives.Conservatives and Wall Street investors had already expressed grave concerns that the measure would swell federal deficits, and some Senate Republicans have said they cannot back the legislation in its current form. That could derail the bill’s progress, given that the party can afford to lose no more than three votes in the Senate if all Democrats vote against it.The legislation had long been expected to add significantly to the debt, given the enormous cost of extending the tax cuts that Republicans first put into place in 2017, the central pillar of the bill. Hard-right lawmakers demanded that the party use their total control of Washington to also slash spending and contain the cost of the legislation, but the C.B.O.’s estimate was a reminder that the party fell well short of covering the roughly $3.8 trillion cost of extending the tax cut.In the House version of the bill, Republicans also turned to some well-worn gimmicks in a bid to lower the sticker price of the legislation. Several of the bill’s tax cut provisions, including Mr. Trump’s campaign pledges to not tax tips and overtime pay, would last for only a few years. Those cuts could become far more costly if they were continued.In recent weeks, some analysts on Wall Street have started to voice their worry about the consequences of the legislation, given the nation’s already-precarious fiscal situation. Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States last month, the last of the major rating firms to cast some doubt on the country’s ability to pay its bills.To defend their legislation, some Republicans and White House aides have taken to attacking the C.B.O. as politically motivated and unreliable. But several nonpartisan independent groups that have analyzed the bill have also concluded that it would add significantly to the federal debt. 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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      Supreme Court Curbs Scope of Environmental Reviews

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      The question for the justices was whether an agency had complied with a federal law by issuing a 3,600-page report on the impact of a proposed railway in Utah.The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that a federal agency had done enough to consider the environmental impact of a proposed 88-mile railway in Utah. The ruling limits the scope of environmental reviews required by federal law in all sorts of settings.The proposed railway would connect oil fields in the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah to a national rail network that runs next to the Colorado River and then to refineries on the Gulf Coast.“An agency may weigh environmental consequences as the agency reasonably sees fit,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for five justices. The court’s three liberal members agreed with the decision’s bottom line but on narrower grounds. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was recused.The Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that regulates rail transportation, approved the Utah project in 2021 after conducting a review that yielded a 3,600-page report. Environmental groups and a Colorado county sued, saying the report had not taken account of some ways in which the railway could do harm to the environment.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled for the challengers.The environmental impact statements required by a 1970 federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act, can be quite elaborate. Paul D. Clement, a lawyer representing seven Utah counties that support the project, told the justices when the case was argued in December that the law was “the single most litigated environmental statute.”He added that the board had acted responsibly.“It consulted with dozens of agencies, considered every proximate effect and ordered 91 mitigation measures,” he said, referring to measures intended to, among other things, dampen noise pollution and protect wildlife. “Eighty-eight miles of track should not require more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis.”William M. Jay, a lawyer for the challengers, said at the argument that the report did not consider all the reasonably foreseeable results of the project, like oil spills and sparks that can cause wildfires, as required by the federal law.The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colo., No. 23-975, was argued before an eight-member court after Justice Gorsuch recused himself, apparently over concerns that his ties to Philip F. Anschutz gave rise to a conflict of interest. Neither Mr. Anschutz, a billionaire and Republican donor, nor his companies are parties to the case, and the letter announcing Justice Gorsuch’s recusal gave no reasons.But the proposed railway could benefit companies in which Mr. Anschutz has an interest. Justice Gorsuch represented Mr. Anschutz and his companies as a lawyer, benefited from his support when he was being considered for a seat on an appeals court and once served as a keynote speaker at an annual party at his ranch. More