Supreme

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court announced Friday it will rule on President Trump’s ban on asylum claims at the southern border, testing a key part of his hard-line policy on immigration.

At issue is a clash between the promise of asylum for those fleeing persecution and the reality of a border overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands who arrived seeking to apply.

Trump’s lawyers said his ban on asylum claims in January 2025 was his “single most effective policy” in ending the chaos along the border.

“Over preceding four years, at least eight million illegal aliens were encountered along the southern border,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer told the court, “and countless millions more evaded detection and illegally entered the United States.”

The sheer numbers of people coming to the border had “overwhelmed the system,” making it impossible for U.S. officials to screen and interview asylum seekers, he said. Lacking facilities to detain applicants, most were released into the country.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigration rights advocates said the right of individuals to seek asylum was recognized in U.S. law and could not be abolished.

The law authorizes asylum for people who can demonstrate they are fleeing persecution based on race, religion, nationality or belonging to a particular social or political group.

Federal judges in Washington agreed that asylum must be preserved. They said immigration officials were free to reject claims for asylum but they could not eliminate the right for the entire category of potential applicants.

However, their ruling was put on hold while the administration appealed to the Supreme Court.

“The president does not have the right to unilaterally override the protections Congress has afforded those fleeing danger,” said Lee Gelernt, lead counsel and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “The courts are right to reject this unprecedented power grab that would put countless lives in danger. We look forward to making our case before the Supreme Court.”

Keren Zwick, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, said the plaintiffs in the case “fled persecution and torture, including political imprisonment and threats from the Taliban. Yet, the Trump administration refused to honor its obligation to consider them for asylum.”

Instead, some of them “were removed to third countries and then pushed back to the very place they fled. This vicious attack on due process and human rights has put thousands of lives in danger.”

Federal immigration law gives the president broad authority to close the border to most migrants.

It says he “may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

The court said it would hear the case of Mullin vs. Refugee and Immigrant Center early next year and rule by June.

A lawsuit had sought to block border wall construction in the Big Bend National Park by targeting the waivers that sidestep environmental protections.

The United States Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to build a border wall through a remote section of Big Bend National Park in West Texas.

In its decision on Monday, the court granted the government’s emergency request to lift a lower court’s injunction that had paused construction while the matter was litigated.

The injunction, it said, “impedes the Government from advancing its ‘compelling interests’ in border security and integrity”.

The border wall has long been a signature part of Trump’s platform to restrict immigration into the US.

During his first successful bid for the presidency in 2016, for instance, he rallied supporters with chants of “Build the wall!”

But the push to expand the border barrier through the popular national park has met pushback from conservationists, local officials and some members of Trump’s own Republican Party.

Big Bend National Park includes mountain ranges and desert that serve as a home to endangered species like the Mexican long-nosed bat.

Opponents say the plan to build the wall through the park would disrupt the ecologically and culturally significant landscape.

The Trump administration, however, has depicted the project as an urgent priority for national security and immigration control. It has described the Big Bend area as an artery for irregular border crossings and drug trafficking.

US District Judge Kathleen Cardone blocked the construction in October, noting that while the Big Bend sector makes up more than 25 percent of the US-Mexico border, it accounts for only 0.3 to 2.2 percent of migrant apprehensions.

“Therefore, if the Big Bend Sector is an area of high illegal entry, so is every other sector, and the waiver authority would apply to the entire US-Mexico border,” Cardone wrote.

The Supreme Court, however, said the government was “exceedingly likely to prevail” on its argument that Cardone lacked jurisdiction under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which limits the ability of lower courts to rule on border barriers.

Under that law, district courts can only hear claims alleging a violation of the US Constitution. The Supreme Court found that the challengers’ claim did not qualify, writing that “there is no such thing as a ‘constitutional’ major-questions claim”.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to indicate she would have denied the government’s request. She did not explain her reasoning.

The Center for Biological Diversity was among the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, along with Friends of the Ruidosa Church and a local river guide and landowner.

The lawsuit challenged waivers used by the agency to fast-track border construction and sidestep environmental and conservation laws.

Without those waivers, plaintiffs said that construction would have to comply with laws such as the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act to alter the landscape in “one of the most remote and ecologically and culturally significant landscapes in the United States”.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to build a border wall through the scenic and rugged Big Bend sector of west Texas.

The justices on Monday granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside a judge’s order that had paused further construction along a 517-mile section of the Rio Grande.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone and without an explanation.

In an unsigned opinion, the court said federal courts did not have the authority to stand in the way and block efforts along the border.

“The balance of the equities also favors the government,” the court said. “Construction in the Big Bend Sector will diminish the [plaintiffs’] ability to use and enjoy the area. But Congress’s enactment of [the special law] — which permits the Secretary to waive the requirements of environmental protection and other conservation laws — reflects a clear preference for expeditious border construction over the very harms” cited by the opponents.

A broad coalition of environmentalists, cattle ranchers, farmers, river boat guides, outdoor activists and church leaders had gone to court in El Paso seeking to stop the construction.

“The Trump administration and its contractors are hellbent on destroying one of America’s greatest national parks, and the Supreme Court just gave them the green light,” said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This horrific decision clears the way for contractors to bulldoze pristine desert and dynamite canyon walls before the courts have even decided whether this destruction is legal.”

But Trump’s lawyers pointed to unusual measures adopted by Congress that gave the Department of Homeland Security broad authority to construct border barriers “to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry.” One provision authorized the department’s secretary to “waive all legal requirements” that stood in the way, including environmental protection measures.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it does not plan to build a border wall in the Big Bend National Park, with its steep canyons, but said new patrol roads and vehicle barriers would be added.

However, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone, an appointee of President George W. Bush, issued a preliminary injunction on Oct. 2 to halt further work on the border barriers. She said the government’s own evidence showed illegal entries and drug smuggling were much less common in the Big Bend sector.

“For ‘high illegal entry’ to impose any limit, it must at least mean, not ‘the lowest rate of illegal entry,’” she said. “The Bend Sector has the lowest rate of illegal entry along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.”

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed a fast-track appeal at the Supreme Court and urged the justices to set aside her order and to rule on the underlying legal question. He cited evidence that over four years, there were 89,000 apprehensions of illegal migrants in the Big Bend sector which covers nearly one-fourth of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The Sinaloa and Juarez cartels operate south of this sector across the Mexico border and seek to exploit any vulnerabilities in United States border protection to traffic humans, drugs and weapons across the border and infiltrate the United States,” he told the court. “Leaving a 300-plus-mile gap in border defenses would act as a dangerous magnet for cartels and other bad actors to exploit as other routes close off.”

WASHINGTON  — The Constitution protects the rights of Americans but normally does not allow them to sue federal agents for violating those rights.

This rights vs. remedies dispute has divided the Supreme Court for nearly 50 years.

It did so again Monday when the justices heard arguments on whether to throw out a lawsuit brought by a federal prison inmate in Hawaii who suffered a broken tailbone in a gang fight.

Kekai Watanabe said he told prison nurse Francis Nielsen he was in intense pain. He was given only an over-the-counter pain medication. Seven months later, an X-ray finally revealed the damage from the fracture and the source of his continuing agony.

Acting on his own, Watanabe sued Nielsen for cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment.

A federal judge dismissed his suit, citing the Supreme Court’s decades of skepticism over such lawsuits. However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals revived his claim and pointed to a 1980 ruling that allowed a similar suit brought by a mother whose son died of an asthma attack in a federal prison.

It was the last time the high court had upheld a lawsuit for money damages against a federal agent for violating a constitutional right.

But the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in Nielsen vs. Watanabe. And during Monday’s arguments, the justices debated whether to further narrow such lawsuits or to reject them entirely.

The court’s conservatives say only Congress can authorize lawsuits for money damages against federal agents and employees. And they noted that in the Federal Tort Claims Act, Congress authorized damage suits against the United States for such claims.

“The power to create damages remedies belongs to Congress, not federal courts,” said Lucas Walker, an attorney for the prison nurse. “It’s time to end the Bivens experiment.”

He was referring to a 1971 decision in which the Supreme Court for the first time authorized such a constitutional claim for money damages against federal agent. In that case, known as Bivens, the suit was against several FBI agents for an unreasonable search during a drug raid in violation of the 4th Amendment.

Walker argued the court should overturn the Bivens case as well as the later ruling allowing a suit involving gross medical negligence.

But Joshua Wesneski, an attorney for Watanabe, said the prospect of being sued for wrongdoing “has a powerful deterrent effect.”

This issue has taken on new significance because of the aggressive and sometimes violent actions of federal immigration agents. They may be charged with a crime but they are not subject to being sued for damages by victims or their families.

After the Civil War, Congress passed an enforcement law that authorized suits against state and local officials acting under color of law who violated constitutional rights. But there is no comparably broad law for federal officers and agents.

That’s why a Los Angeles police officer who uses excessive force can be sued in a federal court, but the same is not true of a federal immigration agent.

Democrats in the Senate may try to change that in the year ahead.

Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have proposed an “Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act” to allow victims to sue for “damages for constitutional and civil rights violations committed by federal law enforcement agents.”

They said Congress needs to extend the same legal accountability to federal agents that has long applied to police and other state and local officials.

“Recent incidents — from violent ICE and CBP raids to abuses by federal task forces — have underscored this gap in accountability,” Padilla said. “These events have eroded public trust and shown how federal officers can act with impunity even when their conduct clearly violates constitutional protections.”

The U.S. Justice Department moved Friday to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit challenging the counting of 20,000 ballots in California, arguing the relief it sought is now impossible given Tuesday’s midterm election has concluded.

The Justice Department had sought a court order requiring state and Los Angeles County election officials to set aside the ballots, which it alleged could be from noncitizen voters. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter and a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had both rejected that request, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a Trump administration appeal to those lower court rulings — with no noted dissents.

Carter had ruled that the government’s request was probably unconstitutional, given the Constitution gives states and Congress power over elections, not the executive, and probably ran afoul of federal law barring sweeping vetting of voter rolls in the immediate run-up to an election.

However, he had set a schedule moving forward for additional fact-finding in the case — including by appointing a special master to dig into the data the federal government was relying on to assert the 20,000 voters were potentially noncitizens.

In a filing before Carter on Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Hamill in Los Angeles wrote that that court process was no longer necessary, as it would not provide the relief that the federal government was seeking by filing its lawsuit.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s denial, the United States is evaluating how to best ensure that American votes are protected, including by preventing vote dilution by noncitizens. In addition, by the time of this Court’s hearing on Nov. 13 in this matter, California will have already commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones,” Hamill wrote. “There is then no way to get the challenged ballots segregated. As a result, the relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available — rendering voluntary dismissal necessary.”

Hamill wrote that the Trump administration had sought to “protect American voters and to prevent the irreparable harm of state and local election officials including illegally cast votes in the final vote tabulation,” but had “exhausted its appeals to obtain timely relief” by going to — and being denied by — the Supreme Court.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli’s office in Los Angeles — where Hamill works — referred questions about the filing to the Justice Department.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the litigation at issue was “moot” but that the Trump administration “is not backing down” in its targeting of alleged noncitizen voters, including in a separate case in which it is still demanding that California “conduct proper list maintenance, including removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls — which will be crucial to ensure fair elections in the future.”

Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a defendant in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, another defendant, said he was “pleased that the administration has accepted the clarity of the court findings” against it and ended its lawsuit.

“At each stage of this election, and in response to the Department of Justice, we have been clear that state and federal law sets well-defined standards for verifying and challenging voter eligibility,” Logan said. “Our commitment and focus remain on the fair, secure, accurate, and legal processes we are engaged in to complete and certify the election.”

California Atty. Gen Rob Bonta, in a statement, said that after losing in every court it tried, including the Supreme Court, “the Trump Administration has given up its latest unlawful effort to interfere with California’s elections and disenfranchise eligible voters.”

Bonta added: “Rest assured: California has and always will defend your fundamental right to vote.”

Tricia Webber, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Election Officials, said state election officials “are very pleased” with the voluntary dismissal of the case — which she said “affirms that our elections are administered with the utmost integrity and care.”

“At the same time, we are under no illusions. We recognize that this issue is unlikely to go away permanently, and we remain fully prepared to continue defending California’s election administration against future challenges,” she said. “We will always stand ready to protect every eligible voter’s right to participate in a fair and secure election process.”

The administration’s filing — three days after President Trump’s party took a drubbing in the midterms — marks a sudden and unremarkable conclusion to an unprecedented court battle in the days leading up to the election, when the federal government sought permission from the courts to force state and local elections officials to set aside votes during an ongoing election.

Carter had rejected the administration’s request for immediate intervention in a blistering Oct. 28 ruling, calling its allegations about the ineligible voters “not credible” and warning that the proposed action could disenfranchise eligible voters and sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election.

“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If [the Trump administration’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.”

While Justice Department officials characterized the relief it had requested from the court as “targeted and modest,” Carter had reached a sharply different conclusion — writing that the administration’s demands would “wreak havoc” on an ongoing election and “create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens.”

The reliability of the government’s list became a central issue in the litigation. Logan’s office said its review of about 200 flagged voters found that a substantial portion appeared to have been born in the United States, a finding Homeland Security officials disputed.

Election officials elsewhere in California also reported problems with the lists, including names of people who did not appear to live in their counties or to be registered voters. Justice Department officials sent letters to election officials across the state, demanding that they sequester flagged ballots and warning of potential criminal penalties if they failed to comply.

The three-judge 9th Circuit panel that heard the federal government’s appeal to Carter’s ruling — composed of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — came to some of the same conclusions Carter did in a 2-1 ruling. One of the Trump appointees dissented, writing that he would have ruled for the administration.

Carter ordered an expedited hearing on the state’s and county’s motions to dismiss the case and the government’s motion for a preliminary injunction. He ordered all parties by Nov. 6 to submit witness lists, including experts, regarding the reliability of the list of voters and the methodology behind it. He ordered both sides to appear at the Nov. 13 hearing, with submitted witnesses prepared to take the stand.

Ending the litigation now will forestall that process to detail the origins of the administration’s list — which is still being used by federal prosecutors in California to target individual voters for criminal prosecution.

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is exercising power without appearing in public or allowing his voice to be heard. Since succeeding his father in March, he has governed through written statements and decrees, while reports of his meetings with senior officials offer a glimpse into how he exercises power.

The meetings announced in May and August appeared intended primarily to reassure Iranians that their new leader was alive and exercising authority. But a series of four meetings announced within 11 days in October, involving the heads of Iran’s parliament, judiciary and national security establishment, as well as senior military commanders, suggests something more: a new system of decision-making taking shape.

The meetings come as Tehran weighs its options between negotiations and renewed confrontation with the United States and Israel. They also invite comparisons with the consultations that preceded the 2015 nuclear agreement. The question is whether Iran’s new leadership is preparing for a similarly consequential decision, and whether this system is capable of making one.

The new Khameneism

For nearly 37 years, Ali Khamenei’s rule rested on his direct personal presence: speeches setting red lines, public meetings with commanders, political elites and ordinary Iranians. His son came to power in different circumstances. Injured in the February 28 strike that killed his father, he was advised, according to sources close to him quoted by Reuters, not to appear or release audio recordings for fear of being tracked.

His rule has taken shape through decrees rebuilding institutions, decisions channelled through a narrow circle of trusted officials, and the testimony of others in place of personal appearances.

The October meetings followed appointments to replace military and security commanders killed in the war. In August, Khamenei appointed his military adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, as his representative on the Supreme National Security Council; Rezaei later became its secretary. Six military appointments followed, including Ali Abdollahi as chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, Ahmad Vahidi as commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ali Azmaei as IRGC Navy commander. Abdollahi was also instructed to complete the merger of the General Staff with Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.

The sequence of Khamenei’s reported meetings is revealing. Those announced in May with President Masoud Pezeshkian and Abdollahi, then head of Khatam al-Anbiya, and another with Pezeshkian announced in August, served chiefly to reassure Iranians that the new leader was alive and exercising his duties. October’s meetings appear to have constituted a systematic round of consultations reaching from constitutional institutions to the armed forces.

At his first reported meeting with the military leadership he had reconstituted, announced on October 31, Abdollahi, army commander Amir Hatami and Vahidi reportedly briefed Khamenei on military readiness in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman.

Iran thus appears to be moving from reconstruction to operation: activating a decision-making system rather than merely establishing the leader’s presence.

These consultations unfolded alongside intensive mediation, with each stage of internal consultation following an external diplomatic development.

On October 20, Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, carried a Qatari-Pakistani compromise proposal to Tehran. According to Arab media reports, it envisaged unannounced inspections of nuclear facilities in exchange for Iran receiving the interest on its frozen funds in Qatar. Khamenei’s meeting with Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, was announced the following day.

On October 26, Munir returned with Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin. Their discussions produced an understanding that regional security was the responsibility of the region’s own states. Rezaei also announced that Tehran had sent Washington a proposal concerning the Strait of Hormuz with a seven-day deadline. Khamenei’s meeting with Rezaei, who had received a letter from US Vice President JD Vance, was announced the next day.

On October 30, Qatari mediators held 12 hours of talks in Tehran, coordinated with the White House, after US envoy Tom Barrack suggested an initial understanding was close. Khamenei’s meeting with military commanders was announced the following day.

This timing suggests that internal consultation has become the other side of external mediation.

The statements from these meetings carry two parallel, not contradictory, messages. In the meeting with Rezaei, Khamenei insisted on Iran’s conditions for ending the war, escaping the debilitating state of “neither war nor peace” and managing the Strait of Hormuz. In his instructions to the commanders, he demanded immediate retaliation against any threat without geographical limits, an expanded list of US and Israeli targets, and emphasised that Iran would decide when any renewed confrontation ended.

Repeated appeals for unity suggest an awareness of competing views within the political elite over war and negotiations.

Yet the meetings appear to have defined the upper and lower limits of Iran’s choices, rather than settled on a particular course: at one end, rejecting an intolerable continuation of “neither war nor peace”; at the other, preparing to widen the war if attacks resume. Between these limits lie a settlement on Iranian terms, pursued through Ghalibaf, Rezaei and the mediators, or continued mutual pressure while strengthening the domestic front.

The gap remains wide. Washington wants nuclear concessions before negotiations resume; Tehran first wants the naval blockade lifted, frozen assets released and oil exports restored.

Significantly, Khamenei spoke of conditions “set by the country’s officials”, not by himself. The wording distributes responsibility among institutions and preserves room for him to embrace or disown an eventual outcome.

The comparison with 2015

There are echoes here of the lengthy consultations before the nuclear agreement of July 14, 2015.

A secret channel in Muscat opened with Ali Khamenei’s approval. On September 17, 2013, he spoke to IRGC commanders of “heroic flexibility”, reassuring the military before negotiations. In June 2015, he set out his red lines, and in October he issued a letter of conditional approval. Responsibility for the nuclear file passed from the Supreme National Security Council to the Foreign Ministry under Mohammad Javad Zarif, a sign that the political decision had been made.

The resemblance is clear: a supreme leader establishes red lines, delegates negotiations to trusted figures and brings the military into the process before a major shift.

The differences are deeper. The earlier process lasted around two years under sanctions, not war. Today’s consultations were compressed into 11 days amid armed confrontation, a naval blockade and the approaching November 3 US midterm elections.

Ali Khamenei spoke in his own voice; his son speaks through written statements. Diplomats led the earlier negotiations; now two figures with IRGC backgrounds, Ghalibaf and Rezaei, play central roles. Where the earlier backchannel ran through Oman, today mediation involves Qatar and the countries of the Mecca Agreement, signed on August 7.

Above all, “heroic flexibility” was presented to commanders as preparation for an agreement. Today, conditions for a settlement sit alongside an expanded list of military targets.

The deficit of trust has also deepened. If the legacy of 1979 shaped Washington’s view of Tehran, and the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement in 2018 shaped Tehran’s view of Washington, the wars of June 2025 and February 2026 have added a layer of mistrust that no technical agreement can easily overcome.

The consultations thus resemble those of 2013 in form but not function. Then, they prepared the ground for negotiations; now, they prepare for a choice between negotiation and escalation.

The seven reported meetings suggest that the new Khameneism may be more than an attempt to fill a leadership vacuum. Its decision-making machinery appears to be in place and functioning, even though the supreme leader’s presence can be established only through others.

Yet every announcement intended to dispel doubts produces more of them, without photographs or details of exactly when and where the meetings took place. The legitimacy of decisions remains partly dependent on the legitimacy of the leader’s presence.

Can this system, with its new commanders and parallel messages of compromise and deterrence, make a decision as consequential as the one taken in 2015, when war has raised the political cost of flexibility beyond what a leader who has yet to appear publicly may be able to bear?

The father saw and was seen; the son makes his presence felt through endorsements and influence from behind protective barriers.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

WASHINGTON  — In its latest chapter on religion in schools, the Supreme Court debated Tuesday whether Colorado may fund private preschools for 4-year-olds but exclude Catholic schools that refuse to serve same-sex parents and their children.

The court’s six conservatives, all of whom were raised Catholic, leaned in favor of ruling the state was discriminating based on religion.

The state offered funding to all preschools but said they must abide by an “equal opportunity” rule that forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett said state officials “chose to impose a condition” they knew those Catholic schools “will be unable to agree to.”

In contrast, the court’s three liberals said the Catholic schools were not seeking equal treatment but a new right to discriminate.

“You are asking for a special rule for religious schools,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the state opened the funding program to all schools, including church-related schools. “The Catholic schools are not being excluded. They’re choosing not to participate because they won’t get an exemption,” she said.

In the last decade, the court’s conservative majority has strengthened the 1st Amendment’s protection for the “free exercise of religion.”

States and local governments need not offer public funds to private groups and entities, the justices said. But if they do so, they may not single out religious schools or people and deny them public funding that is open to all.

They struck down laws in Minnesota and Maine that denied scholarships or school funds to students who enrolled in a religious school. And they ruled the city of Philadelphia could not bar Catholic social services from providing foster care because they did not work with same-sex couples.

Despite that history, Colorado adopted a strong “equal opportunity” law in 2022 to go with its new state funding for preschools.

The state voters had approved a ballot measure in 2020 to provide public funding for a year of preschool prior to kindergarten. Both public and private schools were encouraged to participate.

The state pays for 15 hours per week and provides parents about $6,000 in tuition.

Lawmakers said eligible schools must provide children “an equal opportunity to enroll regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level or disability.”

The Archdiocese of Denver oversees 34 Catholic preschools. Parents were told they must support and affirm the teachings of the church, including on matters of gender and marriage.

In light of the new funding law, the church asked for an accommodation that would allow “faith based providers to participate in the program without compromising their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The state refused. It said “no provider may discriminate against children or families in violation of the state statute.”

St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton, Colo., and two of its parents sued, alleging a violation of the 1st Amendment.

Their attorneys — the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — argued that no LGBTQ+ family has been harmed or claimed discrimination under the preschool funding law, while “thousands of Catholic families have zero Catholic preschools available to them.”

They lost before a federal judge and the 10th Circuit Court. Those judges said the state did not target the Catholic schools or treat them differently from others because of their religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court agreed in April to hear the case of St. Mary Catholic Parish vs. Roy.

During Tuesday’s argument, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh voiced dismay over how this case arose.

“This seems like a would-be solution in search of a problem. Why are we here?” he asked a state attorney.

He and Barrett said same-sex couples did not seek to have their children enrolled in Catholic preschools. Meanwhile, other parents were denied state funds because of the marriage and family policies of the Catholic parishes.

The court is likely to hand down a decision in several months.

California says the move to block ballots from suspected noncitizens could disenfranchise eligible voters.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to stop California from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 voters it claims are not US citizens.

The emergency request, filed on Monday, just one day before the midterm elections, is the latest development in a legal battle between the administration and California, a Democratic stronghold and the most populous US state.

California says the move could disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters.

The Department of Justice wants California to set aside ballots from voters on a list compiled by the Department of Homeland Security until after their citizenship status is confirmed.

But California says the list is unreliable and could include thousands of US citizens.

Voting has been under way since early October, and state officials say it would be nearly impossible to separate the ballots in question.

Last week, a federal judge rejected the administration’s request, raising concerns about the reliability of the data on the list.

“If the executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger,” Judge David Carter wrote.

The administration has turned to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court also rejected the request on Friday.

The dispute comes as Republicans fight to retain control of Congress in Tuesday’s elections.

Trump has repeatedly made false claims about widespread voter fraud, but studies and state audits have shown that ineligible voting, including by noncitizens, is rare.

WASHINGTON  — On the day before the midterm election, Trump administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court to intervene and set aside ballots from 20,000 California voters who the administration says may not be citizens.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal on Monday.

“The Court should issue a limited injunction directing California to stop commingling suspected illegal ballots with legal ones,” he wrote, “pending completion of the United States’ appeal to the 9th Circuit and further review in this Court.”

He said the court should require “California to segregate mail ballots from persons whom the United States has identified as likely non-citizens. The court should also enter an administrative injunction to that effect while it considers this application.”

It’s not clear whether the court will see this as an emergency.

The appeal goes first to Justice Elena Kagan. She could ask for a response from California, which would take days.

So far, the administration has lost before a federal judge in Los Angeles and twice at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Those judges said that Trump’s lawyers were wrong on the Constitution and that their complaint came too late for this election.

In May, more than 23 million Californians were registered to vote, and the majority lean in favor of Democrats. But Trump claimed again last week “there are hundreds of thousands of bad ballots, bad votes, in California. Millions, in my opinion.”

In mid-October, the Trump administration sued and said federal courts should require California and Los Angeles County to “set aside vote-by-mail ballots from persons identified by the federal government likely to be non-citizens.”

Federal law says that within 90 days of an election, officials may not “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”

Separately, the Supreme Court also has repeatedly frowned on “late-breaking, court-ordered rule changes” involving elections.

The California court cases have also put a spotlight on the state vs. federal divide in election law.

Usually, federal laws are deemed to be the “supreme law” and override state laws that are in conflict. No one disputes U.S. prosecutors may bring criminal fraud charges against noncitizens who violate a federal law by registering with a state to vote and casting an illegal ballot.

But election rules and procedures are different. The Constitution says “the Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state,” unless Congress acts by law to “alter” its regulations.

The 9th Circuit judges in Friday’s opinion said that “this clause expressly dictates which sovereign has the authority to prescribe the manner in which congressional elections are conducted.”

“If the United States believes different procedures are necessary for vote-by-mail ballots, we believe it should take that suggestion to Congress, not the courts,” said Judges Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, a Biden appointee.

Dissenting Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, called the administration’s proposal to separate the 20,000 ballots a “reasonable request” and a “modest remedy” for the problem of illegal voting.

The majority cited a 2013 opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

“The Elections Clause functions as a default provision,” he wrote. “It invests the states with responsibility for the mechanics of congressional elections,” unless Congress adopts a different rule.

Scalia spoke for a 7-2 majority that rejected an Arizona law that required voters to show documentary proof of their citizenship when registering to vote. In the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Congress said voters may register to vote by filling out a form and attesting under oath they are citizens.

California does the same under state law.

Scalia said the federal voter registration law did not allow Arizona to adopt new and stricter rules.

In dissent, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito said they would go farther to protect the states from federal interference in elections.

“Given states’ exclusive authority to set voter qualifications and to determine whether those qualifications are met,” Thomas said the Arizona restriction should have been upheld.
“The Constitution reserves for the States the power to decide who is qualified to vote in federal elections,” Alito added.

Last month, Trump’s prosecutors brought fraud charges against 28 lawful immigrants in California who are alleged to have registered or voted in the past even though they are not citizens. They did so under a 1996 immigration law which made it “unlawful for any alien” to vote in a federal election.

The notion of segregating potentially suspect ballots is not a new issue for the Supreme Court.

In November 2020, Alito agreed with Pennsylvania state officials and said they should set aside late-arriving mail ballots to be counted separately.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state election officials and the state Supreme Court agreed to waive part of the state’s law and allow for counting mail ballots that arrived up to three days late.

Republicans strongly objected. That led to Alito’s order. But in the end, the small number of late votes made no difference because the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, decisively won Pennsylvania’s votes and defeated Trump.

The California dispute is different because the state has not changed its voting rules or election procedures. Instead, it is the Trump administration that sought a late change in California’s voting rules and election procedures.

Alieu Kosiah killed civilians and unarmed soldiers, and ordered lootings and other crimes against humanity.

Switzerland’s supreme court upheld a 20-year jail sentence for former Liberian rebel commander Alieu Kosiah on Friday, but overturned a conviction for crimes against humanity.

In 2021, Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court found Kosiah, now 51, guilty of multiple atrocities committed during the first of Liberia’s back-to-back civil wars, in which about 250,000 people died between 1989 and 2003.

In 2023, the court’s appeals chamber upheld his 20-year sentence for war crimes and, for the first time in Swiss history, also made a new ruling that Kosiah was guilty of crimes against humanity.

The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland was asked to review the case, and its verdict, dated September 28, was published on Friday.

The court “rejected the appeal filed by a high-ranking Liberian military official challenging his conviction for violations of the laws of war committed between 1993 and 1995 during the first Liberian civil war”, it said in a statement.

“However, the court has acquitted the individual of the charge of crimes against humanity, based on a strict application of the principle of non-retroactivity.”

Switzerland recognises the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows it to prosecute individuals suspected of international crimes, regardless of where those crimes were committed.

The court said the offence of crimes against humanity – introduced into Swiss law in 2011 – could not be applied to acts committed before then.

Kosiah’s conviction for violating the law of war was upheld, as was the maximum 20-year custodial sentence imposed.

“The decision makes final the first war crimes conviction ever handed down by a Swiss civilian court, and the first conviction anywhere of a Liberian for war crimes committed during the country’s civil wars,” said the Swiss organisation Civitas Maxima, which works to bring perpetrators of international crimes to justice.

Kosiah settled in Switzerland in the late 1990s and was arrested in 2014.

“Today the survivors of Alieu Kosiah’s crimes have final justice,” said Civitas Maxima director Alain Werner, who represents victims in the case.

“We are, however, deeply disappointed by the acquittal on crimes against humanity. What happened in Lofa between 1993 and 1995 is the very definition of a crime against humanity.”

Like war crimes, crimes against humanity refer to atrocities, including murder, torture and rape. However, instead of isolated or sporadic events, the charge is used for incidents carried out in a widespread or systematic way.

In the 2021 verdict, Kosiah was found guilty of a slew of war crimes committed as commander of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy rebel group.

He ordered or participated in the killing of 17 civilians and two unarmed soldiers, as well as rape and the deployment of a child soldier, the court ruled.

He had also ordered looting and repeatedly ordered, or had himself inflicted, cruel and humiliating treatment of civilians and mishandled corpses, according to the verdict.

US federal judge blocked wall’s construction on Texas-Mexico border amid an ongoing legal battle.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to resume plans to build a border wall through the Big Bend region of West Texas, as part of its anti-immigration policy to strengthen security on the border with Mexico.

The Justice Department filed an emergency request on Wednesday asking the court to lift a federal judge’s injunction in a lower court that has halted construction while a lawsuit against the project, brought by an environmental group and other challengers, plays out.

The Department of Homeland Security plans include vehicle barriers, patrol roads, lighting and detection technology in and around Big Bend National Park.

Big Bend has about 805km (500 miles) of border, and, according to opponents of the project who have sued the administration, accounts for about 1 percent of migrant arrests.

Landscape, historic church

The lawsuit, filed by plaintiffs including the Center for Biological Diversity and a Big Bend-area river guide, seeks to preserve the landscape, protect a historic church, and challenge the federal government’s waivers of environmental and historical laws to fast-track the $1.7bn project.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and current Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who issued the waivers between February and July, found the region to be an “area of high illegal entry”, requiring additional barriers to control the border.

US District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued an injunction in El Paso on October 2 halting work “until and unless Defendants comply with all applicable laws,” she wrote in her order.

In a later opinion, the judge found that the waivers exceeded the authority of Noem and Mullin.

The Justice Department in its request urged the Supreme Court to pause or overturn Cardone’s injunction.

The Supreme Court has not yet responded to this appeal.

“Even assuming that the secretary’s waiver authority implicates a question of ‘vast economic and political significance,’ Congress did clearly authorize the secretary both to build border barriers and to waive legal requirements in order to facilitate their expeditious construction,” the Justice Department wrote.

In August, the administration paused construction in Big Bend after the project drew bipartisan criticism over its potential impact on the park’s landscape and wildlife.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down an appeal from President Trump and rejected his order to end hormone treatments and other gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in federal prisons.

The justices denied Trump’s appeal without comment, over dissents by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito.

The order leaves in a place a decision by a senior judge appointed by President Reagan who had blocked Trump’s new prison policy from taking effect.

The decision is a rare win for trans rights at the Supreme Court.

In June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, said he would “not wade into the culture war being waged against transgender individuals” and ruled the Trump administration did not have evidence or good reasons for changing the long-standing policy for these inmates.

He cited the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids abrupt and “arbitrary” changes in federal regulations.

Lamberth said the Bureau of Prisons’ new regulation would “arbitrarily deprive inmates of medications and other lifestyle accommodations that its own medical staff have deemed to be medically appropriate.” The evidence showed that “gender affirming care is the only effective treatment for gender dysphoria and severe harm flows from the cessation of such care,’’ he wrote.

Last month, the D.C. Circuit upheld his decision on a 2-1 vote, prompting the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of three inmates, said the court should not “overturn a three decades-long status quo.” Since 1992, the Bureau of Prisons has “treated people with gender dysphoria with hormone therapy,” their lawyers told the court.

In response to Trump’s order, the “BOP overrode its own medical providers’ clinical judgment and mandated the cessation of treatment for almost 1,000 people in its custody,” they said.

At issue in this latest legal dispute over trans rights was whether the government had evidence to justify a sharp change in its prison regulations.

In the past, the court has often deferred to prison officials on their handling and treatment of inmates.

“If deference to prison administrators means anything, it means that courts cannot second-guess their eminently reasonable choice to treat the mental-health condition of gender dysphoria with psychotherapy rather than physical, sex-rejecting interventions,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said in his appeal.

A group of parents claims local admission policy boosts Black and Latino students while constraining Asian applicants.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case about the role of race in admissions to selective Maryland middle schools after a group of parents claimed policies discriminated against Asian students in favour of Black and Latino students.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear the parents’ plea on four academically rigorous “magnet” schools in Montgomery County, a suburb on the outskirts of Washington, DC, in the neighbouring state of Maryland.

The high court said it would weigh whether the parent group has enough evidence of discrimination for the case to move forward.

Lower courts previously dismissed the case because Asian-American students were not underrepresented at the specialised-curriculum schools compared with the pool of students that applied.

If the Supreme Court rules for the parent group, the Association for Education Fairness, it could revive the lawsuit.

The court is expected to hear arguments in the coming months and rule by June.

‘The Pandemic Plan’

The Montgomery County school district’s selection process was introduced in the 2021-2022 school year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It screens all students for academic potential, and then implements a lottery to randomly assign students from that pool to receive enriched instruction at either a magnet school or a local school.

The suit alleged that the screening process makes it harder for Asian-American students, who the challengers said are clustered in “high-performing, low-poverty elementary schools”, to enter the lottery pool.

Part of the process ranks a student’s performance by comparing the student’s test scores against those of other students whose family incomes are at a similar level.

“Under the applicant pool benchmark, the government can set specific racial targets, hit them, and avoid even an inquiry into discriminatory intent,” so long as it has not explicitly called out race in its process, they wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court.

Previously thrown out

The case was thrown out in 2022 by US District Judge Paula Xinis. She noted that the percentage of admitted Asian-American students exceeded the percentage of Asian Americans among all applicants to the magnet schools.

Xinis also found no evidence that the lottery policy was implemented with discriminatory intent.

The school system has consistently argued the new admissions policy, called the “Pandemic Plan” due to the timing of its release, is race-neutral.

“The Pandemic Plan is a colorblind lottery,” lawyers wrote in a brief asking the Supreme Court not to take up the case. “Nothing about the Pandemic Plan, its history, or its purpose is offensive to the Constitution.”

Supreme Court justices will now consider whether a group claiming to be targeted by a race-neutral policy must show it was disproportionately harmed to prove intentional discrimination.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider outlawing school diversity policies that limit Asian American students at magnet programs and selective high schools.

Three years ago, the court ruled that Harvard and other universities may not discriminate on whom they admit based on the race of their applicants. Evidence in that case showed that Asian applicants with very high test scores were often turned down.

But the justices have been divided over admissions rules for highly selective high schools in Boston, New York and Fairfax County, Va., as well as magnet programs for gifted middle school students.

In most instances, judges have said school officials may use “race-neutral” policies to achieve racial diversity. For example, giving an automatic admission to the top 5% of the students in all of a big city’s high schools or its middle schools could achieve greater racial and ethnic diversity.

But the court’s conservatives, led by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito, have condemned such policies as thinly disguised racial discrimination.

Magnet programs exist across the country, including in California and Los Angeles, and were conceived as a form of voluntary integration — a way to get white students to attend the same schools as nonwhite students, without having to resort to forced busing.

The idea was that a special school program would be attractive enough to serve as a “magnet” for white students to enroll at a school they might not otherwise attend. A mix of white and nonwhite students was seen as a benefit to the nonwhite students, because white students would be sharing the fate of the nonwhite students.

Asian students were frequently part of that original equation on the nonwhite side of the ledger and counted with other students classified as nonwhite, such as Black or Latino students. But in terms of student achievement, Asian students have performed more like white students, frequently surpassing white students academically.

One subset of magnet schools requires a selective admissions process, and these are at the center of the current dispute.

The court agreed to hear an appeal from parents in Montgomery County, Md., who were upset by a sharp drop in Asian students at its four magnet schools for gifted students.

For a decade, the school board had been troubled that fewer than 15% of the students at its magnet schools were Black or Latino, even though they made up about half of the student population.

In contrast, Asian students were less than 15% of the county’s student population but made up about half of the enrolees at the magnet programs.

After several years of debate, school officials dropped the use of a countywide competitive test and chose top performing students at all of its middle schools using a lottery.

That prompted a lawsuit that reached the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Fairfax County in northern Virginia had adopted a somewhat similar policy for the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology. A federal judge ruled for Asian parents and said their students had been deprived of a “level playing field” in competing for admission.

But the 4th Circuit, by a 2-1 vote, disagreed and said Asian American students were still winning more seats than their percentage of the school population.

The Assn. for Education Fairness, the parents group in Montgomery County, lost for the same reason in the 4th Circuit. The number of admitted Asian students had declined, but their percentage remained well above their share of school population.

They appealed and urged the Supreme Court to rule on their case and to clarify the law.

“School districts across the country have overhauled admissions criteria for competitive public schools after concluding that existing systems produced undesirable racial enrollment patterns,” they said.

They said the court should end this type of racial discrimination against Asian students.

However, a longtime champion of admissions policies that rely on social and economic fairness said he hoped the court would side with Montgomery County.

“The Supreme Court has long disfavored racial preferences and pointed to race-neutral programs that look at factors like socioeconomic disadvantage as the right way to do affirmative action,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute.

He said the Maryland school board followed that rule.

“It essentially provided an admissions break to students based not on race, but on the economic disadvantage of the elementary school they attended. The question now opened is whether the court will stand by precedent or move the goal posts. Is the court opposed to racial preferences, or to racial diversity itself?”

Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, has an extensive magnet system, with 66 whole-school magnets and 268 magnet centers within a larger campus.

At this point, many of the magnets provide no discernible integration benefit and are viewed instead as inducements for any student to enroll. Many magnets are nearly all students of color because few white students apply.

A few schools, however, have more applicants than spaces, and the district relies on “the Magnet Priority Point System and the need to maintain a racially balanced enrollment, and by available space.”

Parents must mark one federally recognized race or ethnicity on the application, or it won’t be processed. A family gets points, for example, if a student applied unsuccessfully for a magnet in the past.

In L.A. Unified, 53 schools are designated for students rated as “gifted,” and there are four campuses with programs for highly gifted students, typically identified by a professional evaluator.

Available recent data for the highly gifted program at North Hollywood High indicated that the largest percentage of students, about 38%, were Asian. Overall, the district’s enrollment is about 3.5% Asian.

The justices will hear arguments in the case early next year.

Savage reported from Washington and Blume from Los Angeles.

PHOENIX — The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to toss out $122,000 in legal costs that lawyers for former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake were ordered to pay for false and misleading statements they made in a lawsuit that sought to require a hand-count of all ballots in the 2022 midterm elections.

The nation’s highest court on Tuesday denied a request from Andrew D. Parker, an attorney who represented Lake in the lawsuit, to review a lower-court decision over the legal costs arising from the unsuccessful litigation.

The lawsuit by Lake and state lawmaker Mark Finchem sought to ban electronic tabulation devices. It was dismissed by a judge who found Lake and Finchem lacked standing to sue and that their lawsuit was filed too close to the election.

In 2022, Lake lost the governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs and Finchem was defeated in the secretary of state’s race by Democrat Andrian Fontes. Both Republicans had promoted the narrative that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.

Maricopa County had sought sanctions against Lake, Finchem and their lawyers, alleging they broke a court rule by making unfounded allegations and by not conducting the necessary research before filing the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge John Tuchi later concluded the lawsuit’s claims lacked an adequate basis in fact, that the standard inquiry attorneys must make before pressing litigation hadn’t been done and that the lawyers acted recklessly in seeking a court order based on frivolous claims.

The requirement to pay the legal fees applies to the lawyers who pressed the lawsuit, not to Lake and Finchem.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected appeals over the lawsuit’s dismissal and the awarding of the legal fees.

The Associated Press left phone and email messages Tuesday for Parker, whose firm is based in Minneapolis.

Earlier this year, Parker asked the Supreme Court to throw out the requirement to pay Maricopa County’s legal fees in the case, arguing such sanctions would deter attorneys from bringing aggressive or novel legal claims.

Maricopa County said lawyers for Lake and Finchem had disregarded a letter that identified false allegations they had made in their lawsuit and relied on some of those claims in a later court filing. The county’s attorneys said those who brought the lawsuit failed to present evidence to support their allegations and falsely alleged that Arizona didn’t use paper ballots and that its electronic voting systems hadn’t been subjected to expert analysis.

Billeaud writes for the Associated Press.