SCOTUS Rules On Mommies And Daddies | Trump’s Travel Ban Gets Another Knock | 50 Years of Loving
June 12, 2017
MOMMIES AND DADDIES AT SCOTUS
|The Supreme Court ruled today on a part of an unusual law that treats fathers and mothers differently when it comes to conferring citizenship on children born outside the U.S. The justices unanimously found that federal citizenship rules violate the Constitution by making it harder for some foreign-born children of American men to become citizens than children born abroad to American women. JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG wrote for the court that the different treatment of unwed mothers and unwed fathers in the immigration law citizenship context “is stunningly anachronistic.”
COMING FOR YOU BRO
|Today, the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP arguing that businesses owned by the president divert customers away from businesses in Maryland and D.C. The complaint opens uncharted legal territory, and some are already saying the case is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court. No state has ever accused a president of violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. The suit alleges that the president has misused his position as president of the United States to increase patronage of his family’s hotels and the restaurants in them by foreign diplomats and others.
IT'S THE GREATEST TIME OF YEAR, AND IT'S HERE!
|“It’s decision time at the Supreme Court, as the justices prepare to hand down the final rulings of their current term by the end of this month. They are due to rule in 21 cases, including disputes over religion, free speech and immigration that could have broad significance.” David Savage with the Los Angeles Times reports on the greatest time of year, y’all – so buckle up and get ready for a wild ride.
NO, DON'T DO IT, PLEASE DON'T DO IT
|The state of Hawaii today urged the Supreme Court not to grant the Trump administration’s emergency request seeking to revive the president’s travel ban. Lawyers for Hawaii, which challenged Trump’s ban in court and won a nationwide injunction blocking it, said in court papers his executive order is a “thinly veiled Muslim ban.”
ANOTHA ONE
|Breaking news, people! A second federal appeals court just ruled against PRESIDENT TRUMP’S travel ban. The decision, from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, was the latest in a string of court rulings rejecting the administration’s efforts to limit travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.
HUNG JURY
|USA Today’s Richard Wolf and Alan Gomez report that PRESIDENT TRUMP’S very public, very controversial comments about his own “travel ban” has judges all across the country divided over a central question: “Can Trump’s statements as a candidate and as president be used against him?”
ROUND 2
|Adam Liptak with The New York Times reports on the return of public sector unions to the Supreme Court. He writes, “Unions again have reason to be nervous. Having already determined that the issue in the case warrants the court’s attention, the justices will probably agree to hear it. And if JUSTICE GORSUCH votes with the court’s more conservative members, which seems likely, millions of government workers in more than 20 states could be allowed to opt out of paying for collective bargaining, depriving unions of vast sums of money and making them less powerful and effective.”
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court shared its ruling on the case of Loving v. Virginia, in which it unanimously struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.
LOVING YOU IS EASY
|In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling declaring the constitutionality of interracial marriage in America, The Associated Press shares its 1976 story by reporter Karl R. Baumann on the ruling.
SCOTUS VIEWS
America Needs Closure on the Travel Ban
The New York Times“The legality of the travel ban, which implicates the commander in chief’s core statutory and constitutional authority over national security, demands an immediate resolution by the Supreme Court — one way or the other.”
Why America Still Executes People
The Economist“One way to understand why America still executes people is to look at the Fifth Amendment, which provides that nobody will “be deprived of life…without due process of law”. How could the framers of the constitution have banned capital punishment in the Eighth Amendment when, in the Fifth, they specifically contemplated its existence?”
OTHER NEWS
U.S. Supreme Court Issues Mixed Ruling on Biotech-Drug Copies
Bloomberg“The U.S. Supreme Court issued a mixed decision on the rules governing efforts to get low-cost alternatives to pricey biotechnology drugs on the market.”
Supreme Court to Review Constitutionality of Patent-Review System
Bloomberg“The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to rule on the constitutionality of a system that has invalidated hundreds of patents and divided the technology and drug industries.”
'We Are Not Unusual Anymore': 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S.
The New York Times“When they married in Oakland in 1950, mixed-race marriage had just become legal in California, the result of a lawsuit that reached the State Supreme Court. They are among the oldest living interracial couples legally married in the United States. It would be nearly two decades before all couples like them across the country were allowed to marry.”
Despite Trump's Tough Talk on Travel Ban, Few Changes to Vetting
The New York Times“The result has been that almost halfway through his first year in office, Mr. Trump has made few changes to the way people enter the United States from the countries he has deemed the most dangerous, despite his frequent campaign promises to institute ‘extreme vetting.'”