Supreme Court (US)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump officials renew opposition to ruling on Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador

      by

      The Trump administration on Sunday evening doubled down on its assertion that a federal judge cannot force it to bring back to the United States a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.In a brief legal filing, the Justice Department reiterated its view that courts lack the ability to dictate steps that the White House should take in seeking to return the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to U.S. soil, because the president alone has broad powers to handle foreign policy.“The federal courts have no authority to direct the executive branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner,” lawyers for the department wrote. “That is the ‘exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”The position taken by Trump officials was not the first time they had tried to defy efforts compelling them to seek Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador. Still, their continued recalcitrance meant that Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, would for now remain at the CECOT prison in El Salvador, where he was sent with scores of other migrants on March 15.The administration’s stubbornness was also likely to heighten tensions between the White House and the judge overseeing the case, Paula Xinis. Judge Xinis has scheduled a hearing to discuss next steps in the matter on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Maryland.The conflict has persisted even though the Supreme Court last week unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” Mr. Abrego Garcia’s release from Salvadoran custody. Trump officials have in fact already admitted that they made an “administrative error” when they put Mr. Abrego Garcia on the plane to El Salvador in the first place.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

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. ‘Continues to Delay, Obfuscate and Flout’ Courts in Return of Deported Man, Lawyers Say

      by

      Lawyers for a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to a prison in El Salvador assailed the Trump administration on Friday for trying to delay its explanation for how it plans to bring him back, calling the move a “stunning display of arrogance and cruelty.”“The government continues to delay, obfuscate and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk,” the lawyers wrote in court papers filed in the case.On Thursday evening, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Trump officials needed to “facilitate” the return to the United States of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran migrant who flown from Texas to El Salvador on March 15.The officials have already acknowledged that they made an “administrative error” when they put Mr. Abrego Garcia on the plane despite a previous court order that had expressly prohibited sending him back to his homeland.As part of its ruling, the Supreme Court told the administration that it should be prepared to “share what it can concerning the steps it has taken” to get Mr. Abrego Garcia back on U.S. soil as well as “the prospect of further steps” it intends to take.Echoing the justices’ demand, Judge Paula Xinis, who is handling the case in Federal District Court in Maryland, told the Justice Department to submit to her by 9:30 a.m. on Friday a written declaration of what the administration had already done and what it planned to do in its efforts to retrieve Mr. Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. Judge Xinis also set a hearing for 1 p.m. on Friday to discuss the next steps in the case.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

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Appeals Court Clears Path for Trump to Resume Firing Probationary Workers

      by

      The Trump administration is once again free to fire probationary employees. For now.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a 2-to-1 decision, sided with the government on Wednesday to block a lower-court ruling in Maryland that had led to the reinstatement of thousands of federal workers who had been fired in February.The purge of the employees had marked one of the first stages of President Trump’s plan to rapidly downsize the civil service and overhaul or eliminate entire offices and programs. Since then, the status of the workers has been tied up in legal battles over whether the firings had been carried out lawfully.The Wednesday appeals court decision came a day after the Supreme Court blocked a similar ruling in California reining in the government in a separate case. There is now no court order in place to stop the government from firing probationary employees.Both courts ruled on narrow issues of standing: whether the probationary firings harmed the plaintiffs so much that they had the right to sue in district court. In California, nonprofit organizations sued the government over the firings at six agencies because they said they benefited from the services the federal workers provided. In Maryland, 19 states and the District of Columbia sued 20 federal agencies, arguing that the government was obligated to give them notice when personnel actions could abruptly and significantly increase demand for unemployment benefits.It was not immediately clear what the latest decision meant for the thousands of fired probationary employees, nearly all of whom had been recently reinstated as a result of district court orders. The back-and-forth has left the employees in a state of limbo, wondering if they will be fired again after having just been rehired.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

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Lawyers for Venezuelans Challenge Alien Enemies Act Deportations in Texas

      by

      Broadening their efforts to stop the Trump administration from using a rarely invoked wartime statute to carry out deportations, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday asked a federal judge in Texas to bar the White House from using the law to send Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador.The filings by the A.C.L.U., submitted in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas, were in direct response to a Supreme Court decision on Monday. That ruling permitted the migrants to challenge efforts to deport them under the wartime law, known as the Alien Enemies Act, but only in the place they were being held.The three Venezuelans identified in the Texas filings — albeit only by their initials — had already secured a court order from a federal judge in Washington last month shielding them from being flown to El Salvador under President Trump’s invocation of the act. But the Supreme Court, in its ruling, vacated the order by that judge, James E. Boasberg, saying that the A.C.L.U.’s case on behalf of the men should have been filed in Texas, not Washington.On Tuesday, the A.C.L.U. filed a similar case in New York, noting that two of the Venezuelans subject to Mr. Trump’s proclamation had been moved from a detention center in Texas to one in the town of Goshen, in Orange County, N.Y. An emergency hearing has been scheduled in that case for Wednesday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan.Mr. Trump’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants have set off one of the most contentious legal battles of his second term. It began last month, after the president invoked the act, which has been used only three times since it was passed in 1798, to authorize the deportation of people he claims were members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang.The A.C.L.U. immediately challenged Mr. Trump’s use of the act in court filings in Washington, even as the administration rushed more than 100 Venezuelan migrants on to planes to El Salvador. Once there, they were put in a megaprison called CECOT, known for its brutal conditions.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

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Case in Texas Could Shed More Light on Invocation of Alien Enemies Act

      by

      Immigration lawyers are reacting to the Supreme Court’s ruling, which declared that any legal challenges to the Trump administration’s plan to use a wartime statute to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants have to be filed where the men are being held.And as they scrambled to adjust on Tuesday, their efforts could be guided by a similar case that is underway in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas. It was filed last month by Daniel Zacarias Matos, a Venezuelan migrant who claimed that the administration tried to deport him — without a hearing or an order of removal — under President Trump’s recent proclamation invoking the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act.In mid-March, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., who is handling the case, issued an order stopping Mr. Zacarias Matos from being deported until he could look deeper into the matter. His lawyers and lawyers for the Justice Department are expected to file dueling court papers this month laying out the details of what happened.While the facts in Mr. Zacarias Matos’s case do not line up exactly with those in the cases of the Venezuelan migrants directly affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling, they could shed light on some of those proceedings as they start to move forward, most likely one by one.According to court papers, Mr. Zacarias Matos came to the United States with his 8-year-old daughter in December 2023, seeking asylum from Venezuela. Federal immigration agents took him into custody in October at the El Paso County Jail after he was arrested on charges of violating the terms of his probation on two, now-dismissed misdemeanor charges, court papers show.Early last month, the papers say, Mr. Zacarias Matos was sent to the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, where the administration was holding scores of Venezuelan migrants they were planning to deport to a prison in El Salvador under the expansive powers of the Alien Enemies Act.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

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Read the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Venezuelan Migrants

      by

      Cite as: 604 U. S.
      (2025)
      9
      SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
      whether its March 15 deportations complied with the Dis-
      trict Court’s orders, it simultaneously sought permission to
      resume summary deportations under the Proclamation.
      The District Court, first, denied the Government’s motion
      to vacate its temporary restraining order, rejecting the as-
      sertion that “the President’s authority and discretion under
      the [Alien Enemies Act] is not a proper subject for judicial
      scrutiny.” App. to BIO 71a. At the very least, the District
      Court concluded, the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed” on
      their claim that, “before they may be deported, they are en-
      titled to individualized hearings to determine whether the
      Act applies to them at all.” 2025 WL 890401, *2. The D. C.
      Circuit, too, denied the Government a requested stay and
      kept in place the District Court’s pause on deportations un-
      der the Alien Enemies Act pending further proceedings.
      2025 WL 914682, *1 (per curiam) (Mar. 26, 2025).
      It is only this Court that sees reason to vacate, for the
      second time this week, a temporary restraining order
      standing “on its last legs.” Department of Education, 604
      U. S., at (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1). Not
      content to wait until tomorrow, when the District Court will
      have a chance to consider full preliminary injunction brief-
      ing at a scheduled hearing, this Court intervenes to relieve
      the Government of its obligation under the order.
      II
      Begin with that upon which all nine Members of this
      Court agree. The Court’s order today dictates, in no uncer-
      tain terms, that “individual[s] subject to detention and re-
      moval under the [Alien Enemies Act are] entitled to judicial
      review’ as to ‘questions of interpretation and constitution-
      ality’ of the Act as well as whether he or she ‘is in fact an
      alien enemy fourteen years of age or older.”” Ante, at 2
      (quoting Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U. S. 160, 163–164, 172,
      n. 17 (1948)). Therefore, under today’s order, courts below More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court Rules Against Makers of Flavored Vapes Popular With Teens

      by

      The justices said the Food and Drug Administration had acted lawfully in rejecting applications from makers of flavored liquids used in e-cigarettes.The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration had acted lawfully in rejecting applications from two manufacturers of flavored liquids used in e-cigarettes with names like Jimmy the Juice Man Peachy Strawberry, Signature Series Mom’s Pistachio and Suicide Bunny Mother’s Milk and Cookies.In a unanimous decision written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the justices upheld an F.D.A. order that prohibited retailers from marketing flavored tobacco products. The court rejected claims that the agency had unfairly switched its requirements during the application process.Justice Alito wrote that the agency’s denials of the applications were “sufficiently consistent” with agency guidance on tobacco regulations. The justices rejected a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that the agency had acted arbitrarily and capriciously, finding that the F.D.A. had not tried to change the rules in the middle of the approval process.A 2009 law, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, requires makers of new tobacco products to obtain authorization from the F.D.A. According to the law, the manufacturers’ applications must demonstrate that their products are “appropriate for the protection of the public health.”The agency has denied many applications under the law, including the two at issue in the case before the justices, saying the flavored liquids presented a “known and substantial risk to youth.”The appeals court ruled last year that the agency had changed the rules in the middle of the application process, accusing it of “regulatory switcheroos” that sent the companies “on a wild-goose chase.” More formally, the court said the agency’s actions had been arbitrary and capricious.In asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, Food and Drug Administration v. Wages and White Lion Investments, No. 23-1038, the agency’s lawyers cited another appeals court that had reached the opposite conclusion. The Fifth Circuit’s decision “has far-reaching consequences for public health and threatens to undermine the Tobacco Control Act’s central objective of ‘ensuring that another generation of Americans does not become addicted to nicotine and tobacco products,’” they wrote, quoting from the other appeals court’s decision. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Deportation Fight Reaches Supreme Court

      by

      The Trump administration asked the justices to allow it to use a wartime law to continue deportations of Venezuelans with little or no due process.The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to use a rarely invoked wartime law to continue to deport Venezuelans with little to no due process.The emergency application arrived at the court after a federal appeals court kept in place a temporary block on the deportations. In its application to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the administration argued that the matter was too urgent to wait for the case to wind its way through the lower courts.In the government’s application, acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris said the case presented “fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country.”“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the president,” Ms. Harris wrote. “The Republic cannot afford a different choice.”The case will offer a major early test for how the nation’s highest court will confront President Trump’s aggressive efforts to deport of millions of migrants and his hostile posture toward the courts. Mr. Trump has called for impeaching a lower-court judge who paused his deportations.The case hinges on the legality of an executive order signed by Mr. Trump that invokes the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The order uses the law to target people believed to be Venezuelan gang members in the United States.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