Ketanji Brown Jackson

Oct. 7 (UPI) — The Supreme Court‘s conservative justices signaled Tuesday they were likely to side with a Christian therapist who argued that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy violates her free speech rights.

The case stems from a lawsuit by Kaley Chiles, a licensed counselor whose practice is based in Christianity who says the Colorado law prevents her from assisting her minor clients who seek “to live a life consistent with their faith.”

Conversion therapy can include psychological, behavioral, physical and faith-based practices that are intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identification. Opponents point to evidence that it is harmful and leads to more serious psychological problems for people who experience it. Roughly half of states have banned it.

However, the court’s justices argued whether the conversion therapy banned by Colorado’s law is harmful to minors and if it was a violation of the Constitution’s free speech protections or regulation of medical treatment.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that Colorado’s law would mean different treatment for an adolescent male who approaches a licensed therapist hoping to lessen his attraction for other males versus another adolescent male who wants to feel something different.

“It looks like blatant viewpoint discrimination,” he said.

Colorado is one of 23 states that ban conversion therapy, which is the practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through therapy.

Critics call the technique a pseudoscience, and the American Psychological Association and several other mental health and LGBTQIA+ organizations have come out in opposition to its use.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said a Supreme Court ruling striking down Colorado’s law could imperil not only efforts to prevent conversion therapy but other healthcare treatments that medical experts say are harmful or ineffective.

“For centuries, states have regulated professional healthcare to protect patients from substandard treatment,” he said, according to NBC News. “Throughout that time, the First Amendment has never barred states’ ability to prohibit substandard care, regardless of whether it is carried out through words.”

James Campbell, the lawyer for Chiles argued that the studies showing the harms of conversation therapy are flawed because they lump together voluntary conversations between a client and therapist with coercive measures, like shock therapy.

Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal firm, is representing Chiles in the case.

Shannon Stevenson, the state’s solicitor general, argued that the harm in conversion therapy “comes from telling someone there’s something innate about yourself you can change.”

“Then you spend all kinds of time and effort trying to do that,” she said. “And you fail, but you bore the burden.

A lower court ruling said the Colorado law is a restriction on mental health treatment, not on speech. In a ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, justices said the ban aligned with medical consensus that conversion therapy is “ineffective and harmful” and “rationally serves” the interests of the state in protecting minors.

Stevenson reiterated that argument saying that “Colorado’s law regulates treatments only and because it enforces the professional standard of care,” not speech.

However, conservative members of the court didn’t seem to buy that argument.

“Just because they’re engaged in conduct doesn’t mean that their words aren’t protected,” Chief Justice John Roberts said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court’s liberals, brought up how the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. She asked if Colorado’s law wasn’t just the functional equivalent” of Tennessee’s law.

“I realized that there were two different constitutional provisions at issue, but the regulations work in basically the same way, and the question of scrutiny applies in both contexts,” she said. “So it just seems odd to me that we might have a different result here.”

Hashim Mooppan, a principal deputy solicitor general representing the Trump administration, argued that Tennessee’s law concerned drugs and medical treatment while Colorado’s law was focused on what is said during talk therapy sessions.

Oct. 3 (UPI) — The Trump administration can resume its deportation of Venezuelans after the Supreme Court again overturned a lower court’s block on ending the temporary protected status.

The Department of Homeland Security in August ended the TPS protection for about 300,000 “migrants” from Venezuela, which U.S. District Court for Northern California Judge Edward Chen blocked on Sept. 5.

Chen’s ruling is the second in which he blocked the Trump administration’s effort to end protected status for Venezuelans, which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld in August, The Hill reported.

The Supreme Court overturned Chen’s first ruling when the Trump administration sought an emergency hearing in May, according to The New York Times.

Chen, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, afterward said the Supreme Court ruling lacked detail and again blocked the Trump administration from ending the TPS protection.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the matter again and repeated its earlier ruling.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not,” the unsigned Supreme Court order says.

“The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here.”

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the emergency relief request by the Trump administration.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called the court’s ruling “another grave misuse of our emergency docket” in her dissenting opinion.

“We once again use our equitable power to allow this administration to disrupt as many lives as possible as quickly as possible,” Jackson said.

She accused the Supreme Court’s majority of GOP-appointed justices of “privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our government has promised them.”

Shortly before leaving office, former President Joe Biden on Jan. 17 extended the temporary protected status for Venezuelans for another two years.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the protected status within days of the Senate confirming her nomination on Jan. 25.

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2024. On Monday, the high court agreed to reconsider a 90-year precedent on removing independent regulators as Trump’s firing of FTC commissioner is allowed to move forward. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI. | License Photo

Sept. 22 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to revisit a 90-year precedent, preventing presidents from removing independent regulators without just cause. The high court, which is scheduled to hear the case in December, will allow President Donald Trump‘s firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter to move forward.

The case centers on Trump’s attempt to remove Slaughter, who has been with the FTC since 2018. While a decision is not expected until next summer, the court order allows Trump to fire Slaughter despite dissents from the court’s liberal judges.

“Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan, who was also joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the president, and thus to reshape the nation’s separation of powers,” Jackson added.

Earlier this month, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a brief administrative stay to an order by a district court that found Trump’s firing of the democratic FTC commissioner was illegal.

Attorney General Pam Bondi applauded Monday’s decision, saying it “secures a significant Supreme Court victory, protecting President Trump’s executive authority.”

“In a 6-3 decision, the Court stayed a lower court ruling which prevented the president from firing a member of the FTC’s board,” Bondi wrote Monday in a post on X. “This helps affirm our argument that the president, not a lower court judge, has hiring and firing power over executive officials.”

Trump fired Slaughter and another Democratic FTC commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, in March. Slaughter sued Trump of illegally firing her without just cause, despite congressional protections.

“It is of imperative importance that any doubts concerning the constitutionality of traditional independent agencies be resolved promptly,” Slaughter’s lawyers wrote in court.

The Supreme Court’s 1935 decision, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, upheld the FTC’s protections from removal as constitutional.

The Supreme Court has also allowed Trump to fire National Labor Relations Board member Gwynn Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris.

Sept. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court’s rulings blocking federal immigration officials from conducting raids in California seen by critics as unconstitutional racial profiling.

The high court voted 6-3 in favor of lifting temporary restraining orders preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement from carrying out the raids.

“This is a win for the safety of Californians and the rule of law,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement.

“DHS law enforcement will not be slowed down and will continue to arrest and remove the murderers, rapists, gang members and other criminal illegal aliens that Karen Bass continues to give safe harbor.”

Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued two restraining orders in July, saying roving patrols “indiscriminately” rounded up people without reasonable suspicion, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. She also said that ICE denied the individuals access to lawyers, a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority on Monday, said it was reasonable to question people gathered in places seeking day work, landscaping, agriculture, construction and other types of jobs that don’t require paperwork and are therefore attractive to undocumented immigrants. He said reasonable suspicion cannot rely alone on ethnicity, but he called it a “relevant factor.”

“Under this court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote.

The three dissenters — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — agreed with civil rights activists who said that ICE’s approach of questioning people who appear to be of Hispanic origin or work in certain jobs would target many U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.

“We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low-wage job,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

The high court’s decision was swiftly rebuked by civil rights organizations, unions and Democrats.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has fought against President Donald Trump‘s raids, described the action as an “attack” that not only targeted her city, but “an attack on every person in every city in this country.”

“Today’s ruling is not only dangerous — it’s un-American and threatens the fabric of personal freedom in the U.S.,” she said in a statement on X.

The federal government raids in Los Angeles began June 6, sparking protests that prompted Trump to deploy thousands of National Guardsmen to the city.

On July 2, several people who were arrested in the operation filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government, calling on the courts to end the stop and arrests and to up hold due process and rights for immigration detainees to access to legal counsel.

Janet Murguia, president and CEO of UnidosUS, a nonpartisan nonprofit Hispanic civil rights organization, lambasted the ruling as opening the door for the federal government to indiscriminately stop and arrest minorities.

“It authorizes targeting by authorities that makes all immigrants, Hispanics and other non-White Americans, suspects simply because of the color of their skin or the language they speak. In doing so, the court has put the civil rights of every person in the United States at risk, Murguia said in a statement emailed to UPI.

“The Supreme Court, without proper review of explanation, has signaled that the administration can, with impunity, use profiling-based tactics nationwide.”

July 23 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to remove three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission as the case proceeds through the courts in another emergency appeal on firings backed by the conservative-dominated court.

The court, in a 6-3 opinion along ideological lines, ruled in a lawsuit brought by Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr., who were nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

In a dissent by Justice Elena Kagan, joined by fellow liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, she said the court majority decided on the emergency appeal to “destroy the independence of an independent agency, as established by Congress.”

The majority opinion was unsigned and based upon an earlier 6-3 order that allowed the dismissal of two independent labor boards in Trump vs. Wilcox: the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

“Although our interim orders are not conclusive as to the merits, they inform how a court should exercise its equitable discretion in like cases,” the court ruled. “The stay we issued in Wilcox reflected ‘our judgment that the government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.’

“The same is true on the facts presented here, where the Consumer Product Safety Commission exercises executive power in a similar manner as the National Labor Relations Board, and the case does not otherwise differ from Wilcox in any pertinent respect.”

The order is stayed pending disposition by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Va. On July 1, the three-judge panel rejected Trump’s request for an administrative stay pending appeal.

“Congress lawfully constrained the President’s removal authority, and no court has found that constraint unconstitutional,” the appeals court said. “The district court correctly declined to permit a President — any President — to disregard those limits.”

District Judge Matthew Maddox found on June 13 that Trump’s removal was unlawful and blocked it. Maddox, who serves in Maryland, was appointed by President Joe Biden.

“Depriving this five-member commission of three of its sitting members threatens severe impairment of its ability to fulfill its statutory mandates and advance the public’s interest in safe consumer products,” Maddox wrote in his decision. “This hardship and threat to public safety significantly outweighs any hardship defendants might suffer from plaintiffs’ participation on the CPSC.”

The terms of the five members are staggered to overlap during presidencies.

Boyle’s term was to end in October after filling a vacancy in 2022, with Hoehn-Saric in October 2027 and Trumka in October 2028. The board consists of five members, and they are operating as a two-member quorum, which is allowed for six months.

The remaining members are Acting Chairman Peter Feldman, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, and Republican Douglas Dziak, who was appointed by Biden in 2024.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a court ruling that Maddox’s decision has “sown chaos and dysfunction” at the agency.

In May, the three commissioners were notified their positions were terminated immediately. A president can legally only remove a commissioner for neglect of duty of malfeasance.

The court has allowed the termination of employees as the cases proceed through the courts.

Lower court judges have relied on a decision in 1935, called Humphrey’s Executor vs. United States, about the mass firings. The Supreme Court has said it will act on this matter.

On July 14, the justices allowed the Trump administration to mass fire half of the Education Department. Trump wants the agency abolished, and the court has not ruled on that decision, which requires a vote by the U.S. Senate.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which was created in 1972, protects consumers from dangerous products, including issuing safety standards and recalls.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat representing Minnesota, criticized the decision, saying: “For over 50 years, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has been free from politics so it can remain focused on its core mission of keeping Americans safe – from banning lead paint, to ensuring electronics aren’t fire hazards, to making swimming pools safe for kids. Last year alone, the Commission recalled 153 million unsafe items.”

“By firing the three Democratic commissioners, the President has undermined the independent structure of the Commission and its critical work — and the Supreme Court is letting it happen,” added the member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

July 16 (UPI) — The Trump administration has deported five migrants convicted of violent crimes to the African nation of Eswatini, the Department of Homeland Security said.

The migrants from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen arrived in the small Southeast African nation Tuesday night, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said on social media, announcing that their flight had landed.

“This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them,” she said in a statement, adding that it was thanks to President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that “they are off of American soil.”

The announcement marks the second instance of the Trump administration shipping migrants to a third country since the Supreme Court earlier this month said it could deport eight migrants to South Sudan.

The conservative-leaning Supreme Court ruling ended litigation over the legality of the United States deporting noncitizens to a third country other than their own without permitting them the opportunity to argue they would be tortured or receive degrading treatment in the new country.

The justices did not give a detailed explanation for their reasoning, though liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, arguing the Supreme Court’s refusal to justify its decision “is indefensible.”

“Today’s order clarifies only one thing: Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial,” she wrote.

It was not clear when the United States made a deal with Eswatini to accept its deported migrants.

The majority of those who landed in Eswatini late Tuesday had been convicted of murder, among other charges. One migrant was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for the sexual abuse of a minor.

The announcement comes amid reports that a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo states that “effective immediately” the Trump administration may deport migrants to a third country with as little as six hours’ notice as long as the receiving country has given the United States assurances that the deportee “will not be persecuted or tortured.”

June 26 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the nonprofit’s arm that covers South Carolina, can’t sue the state over its closing off of the nonprofit’s Medicaid funding because it provides abortions.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed our right to exclude abortion providers from receiving taxpayer dollars,” wrote Gov. Henry McMaster, R-S.C., in an X post Thursday.

“Seven years ago, we took a stand to protect the sanctity of life and defend South Carolina’s authority and values,” he added, “and today, we are finally victorious.”

The 6-3 decision followed the court’s ideological makeup, with the three liberal judges in dissent while the six conservative judges ruled in support.

The court’s syllabus noted 42 U.S. Code Section 1983, which allows private parties to file suit against state officials who violate their Constitutional rights. However, in the opinion of the Court, which was delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, he wrote that “federal statutes do not automatically confer [Section 1983]-enforceable ‘rights.'”

“This is especially true of spending-power statutes like Medicaid, where ‘the typical remedy’ for violations is federal funding termination, not private suits,” he continued.

“No court has addressed whether that Medicare provision creates [Section 1983] rights,” he later wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, and she also referred to Section 1983.

“South Carolina asks us to hollow out that provision so that the State can evade liability for violating the rights of its Medicaid recipients to choose their own doctors,” Jackson stated. “The Court abides South Carolina’s request. I would not.”

South Carolina had announced in July of 2018 that Planned Parenthood could no longer participate in the state’s Medicaid program, under a state law that prohibits the use of its own public funding for abortions.

The order further affected patients in that it had the effect of also blocking Planned Parenthood patients from receiving services such as breast exams, sexually transmitted diseases and contraception.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic announced on its social media platform Thursday that, “Today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that people using Medicaid in South Carolina no longer have the freedom to choose Planned Parenthood South Atlantic as their sexual and reproductive health care provider.”

“If you are a patient using Medicaid, keep your appointment,” the post continued. “We’re still here to provide you with the low or no cost care you deserve.”

The post concluded with “We’re in this with you, and we aren’t going anywhere.”

June 20 (UPI) — Fossil fuel companies can challenge California setting stricter emissions standards for cars, the U.S Supreme Court ruled Friday.

California has stipulated that only zero-emission cars will be able to sold there by 2035, with a phased increase in ZEV requirements for model years 2026-2035. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set a fleet-wide average of 49 mpg by model year 2026, with higher standards in the following years.

In the 7-2 opinion authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled that oil producers have legal standing to sue over California’s clean car standards approved by the U.S. EPA. Dissenting were Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, two of the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices.

“This case concerns only standing, not the merits,” Kavanaugh wrote in the 48-page opinion that included two dissents. “EPA and California may or may not prevail on the merits in defending EPA’s approval of the California regulations. But the justiciability of the fuel producers’ challenge to EPA’s approval of the California regulations is evident.”

The Clean Air Act supersedes state laws that regulate motor vehicle emissions, but it allows the EPA to issue a waiver for California. Other states can copy California’s stricter standard.

The states are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia.

The EPA, when Barack Obama was president, granted a waiver for California, but President Trump partially withdrew it during his first term.

When Joe Biden became president in 2021, the EPA reinstated the waiver with the tougher emissions.

Last week, Trump signed a bi-partisan congressional resolution to rescind California’s electric vehicle mandate. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, called this move illegal and will sue over this order.

“You couldn’t buy any other car except an electric-powered car, and in California, they have blackouts and brownouts,” Trump said last week. “They don’t have enough electricity right now to do the job. And, countrywide, you’d have to spend four trillion dollars to build the firing plants, charging plants.”

Gasoline and other liquid fuel producers and 17 Republic-led states sued, arguing California’s regulations reduce the manufacturing of gas-powered cars. The lead plaintiff was Diamond Alternative Energy, which sells renewable diesel, an alternative to traditional petroleum-derived diesel. Valero Energy Corp. also joined in the suit.

Automakers were involved in the case.

California lawyers argue the producers have no legal standing, which requires showing that a favorable court ruling would redress a plaintiff’s injury.

The EPA said consumer demand for electric cars would exceed California’s mandate and hence the regulations wouldn’t have an impact.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the lawsuit.

“If invalidating the regulations would change nothing in the market, why are EPA and California enforcing and defending the regulations?” Kavanaugh wrote.

“The whole point of the regulations is to increase the number of electric vehicles in the new automobile market beyond what consumers would otherwise demand and what automakers would otherwise manufacture and sell.”

Sotomayor and Jackson separately wrote the case may become moot.

“I see no need to expound on the law of standing in a case where the sole dispute is a factual one not addressed below,” Sotomayor wrote.

She said she would have sent the case back to the lower court to look at the issue again.

Jackson said her colleagues weren’t applying the standing doctrine evenhandedly and it can erode public trust in judges.

“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens. Because the Court had ample opportunity to avoid that result, I respectfully dissent,” Jackson wrote.

The ruling does not prevent California and other states from enforcing standards, Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, told The Guardian.

“The standards have saved hundreds of lives, have provided enormous health benefits, and have saved families money,” Patton said. “While the Supreme Court has now clarified who has grounds to bring a challenge to court, the decision does not affect California’s bedrock legal authority to adopt pollution safeguards, nor does it alter the life-saving, affordable, clean cars program itself.”