Law

As the conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with the Trump administration and stayed a district court's preliminary injunction pending appeal, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor sharply criticized the majority for "clos[ing] its eyes" and "rewarding lawlessness" by permitting the government to resume so-called "third-country" deportations.

The court needed five justices to grant the stay, and the nine-member court accomplished that without the help of the dissenting Sotomayor and Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

As recently as early June, immigration lawyers opposing the Trump administration's stay application urged the high court not to lose sight of the government's "own choices — to violate the district court's orders" by moving to "deport two groups of class members to Libya and South Sudan" even after U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued the injunction in April.

In an environmental case, the liberal justice questioned whether the high court treats business interests differently from "less powerful litigants."

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized her colleagues Friday in a scathing dissent in a case involving vehicle emissions regulations.

In her dissenting opinion, she argued that the court's ruling gives the impression it favors “moneyed interests” in the way it decides which cases to hear and how it rules in them. The court had ruled 7-2 in favor of fuel producers seeking to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's approval of California clean vehicle emissions regulations.

She also said she was concerned that the ruling could have "a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests."

A federal judge ruled Monday it was illegal for the Trump administration to cancel several hundred research grants, adding that the cuts raise serious questions about racial discrimination.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts said the administration’s process was “arbitrary and capricious” and that it did not follow long-held government rules and standards when it abruptly canceled grants deemed to focus on gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a hearing Monday on two cases calling for the grants to be restored, the judge pushed government lawyers to offer a formal definition of DEI, questioning how grants could be canceled for that reason when some were designed to study health disparities as Congress had directed.

After 40 years on the bench, “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young added. He ended Monday’s hearing saying, “Have we no shame.”

A federal jury in Colorado on Monday found that one of the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, defamed a former employee for a leading voting equipment company after the 2020 presidential election.

The employee, Eric Coomer, was awarded $2.3 million in damages. He had sued after Lindell called him a traitor and accusations about him stealing the election were streamed on Lindell’s online media platform.

Coomer was the security and product strategy director at Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines became the target of elaborate conspiracy theories among allies of President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely claim that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 was due to widespread fraud.

A federal judge on Friday blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to overhaul elections in the U.S., siding with a group of Democratic state attorneys general who challenged the effort as unconstitutional.

Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts said in Friday’s order that the states had a likelihood of success as to their legal challenges. “The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.

Casper also noted that, when it comes to citizenship, “there is no dispute (nor could there be) that U.S. citizenship is required to vote in federal elections and the federal voter registration forms require attestation of citizenship.”

A Tennessee judge is scheduled to hear arguments Friday about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released from jail pending the outcome of a trial on human smuggling charges.

In a motion asking U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes to order Abrego Garcia detained, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire described him as both a danger to the community and a flight risk. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys disagree. They point out that he was already wrongly detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison thanks to government error, and argue that due process and “basic fairness” require him to be set free.

Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living in the United States for more than a decade before he was wrongfully deported in March. The expulsion violated a 2019 U.S. immigration judge’s order that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he likely faced gang persecution there.

Donald Trump says he had no role in bringing mistakenly deported Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States, telling NBC News the decision was made solely by the Justice Department and not him personally.

“That wasn’t my decision,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview Saturday. “It should be a very easy case,” he reportedly added. “I think it should be.”

Trump also said he did not speak with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele about Abrego Garcia’s return before it went down on Friday, per Welker. The 29-year-old El Salvador native was transported back to the U.S. to be federally charged with two counts of illegally transporting undocumented migrants into the country. It was the DOJ that reportedly signed off on the move after “new facts” came to light following Abrego Garcia’s deportation.

Texas lawmakers trying to muzzle campus protests have just passed one of the most ridiculous anti-speech laws in the country. If signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, Senate Bill 2972 would ban speech at night — from study groups to newspaper reporting — at public universities in the state.

Ironically, the bill builds on a previous law passed in 2019 meant to enshrine free speech on Texas campuses. But now, lawmakers want to crack down on college students’ pro-Palestinian protests so badly that they literally passed a prohibition on talking.

The university filed a legal challenge after Trump said he would block visas for international students who planned to attend.

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Donald Trump's efforts to block visas for foreign students planning to attend Harvard, after the Ivy League college filed a legal challenge.

U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs granted a temporary restraining order that enjoins anyone from "implementing, instituting, maintaining, enforcing, or giving force or effect to the Presidential Proclamation" that Trump issued Wednesday.

Harvard had earlier Thursday amended its complaint against the Trump administration to challenge Trump's proclamation that the president issued the day before.

Donald Trump’s administration on Monday renewed its request for the Supreme Court to clear the way for plans to downsize the federal workforce, while a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities proceeds.

The high court filing came after an appeals court refused to freeze a California-based judge’s order halting the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency.

By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nation’s food-safety system and health care for veterans.

In her ruling last month, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trump’s administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce.

The court's 6-3 conservative majority has expanded gun rights but has also shown a reluctance in recent months to take up new cases on the scope of the right to bear arms.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear two major gun cases challenging a Maryland law that bans assault-style weapons, including the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle that has been used in high-profile mass shootings, and a Rhode Island restriction on large-capacity magazines.

As a result, the two laws remain in effect. Litigation over similar bans across the country is ongoing, and the issue is likely to return to the justices.

The court has a 6-3 conservative majority that has expanded gun rights but has also shown a reluctance in recent months to take up a new case on the scope of the right to bear arms under the Constitution's Second Amendment.

Richard Bednar apologized after Utah appeals court discovered false citations, including one nonexistent case

The Utah court of appeals has sanctioned a lawyer after he was discovered to have used ChatGPT for a filing he made in which he referenced a nonexistent court case.

Earlier this week, the Utah court of appeals made the decision to sanction Richard Bednar over claims that he filed a brief which included false citations.

According to court documents reviewed by ABC4, Bednar and Douglas Durbano, another Utah-based lawyer who was serving as the petitioner’s counsel, filed a “timely petition for interlocutory appeal”.

Upon reviewing the brief which was written by a law clerk, the respondent’s counsel found several false citations of cases.

Veteran lawyers have reached a curious conclusion about Trump's deals with big law firms this year: they do not appear to be legally valid.

Trump since coming to office has punished certain firms for their past clients or causes, stripping them of security clearances and government contracts, while trumpeting deals with others, including titans like Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins.

The White House said the nine firms it's settled with agreed to provide about $1 billion in pro bono services in order to curtail investigations into their hiring practices and maintain access to federal buildings. But the details of those agreements remain murky, even after Democratic lawmakers demanded answers.

"The problem with the law firm deals is … they're not deals at all," said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor and former dean at Yale Law School. "You know, a contract that you make with a gun to your head is not a contract."

Donald Trump's administration can temporarily revoke the legal status of over 500,000 migrants living in the US, the US Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

The ruling put on hold a previous federal judge's order stopping the administration from ending the "parole" immigration programme, established by Joe Biden. The programme protected immigrants fleeing economic and political turmoil in their home countries.

The new order puts roughly 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela at risk of being deported.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, two of the court's three liberal justices, dissented.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) has filed a federal lawsuit against the White House over a lack of American Sign Language interpreters at media briefings.

The NAD says the White House abruptly stopped providing ASL interpreters during press briefings and other public events when President Trump returned to office for a second term.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, asks the court to require ASL interpreters be present at these events and that video of them be available for viewers.

Ruling from court of international trade in New York comes after slew of lawsuits arguing president exceeded authority

A US trade court has ruled Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs regime illegal, in a dramatic twist that could block the US president’s controversial global trade policy.

The ruling by a three-judge panel at the New York-based court of international trade came after several lawsuits argued that Trump had exceeded his authority, leaving US trade policy dependent on the president’s whims and unleashing economic chaos around the world.

Tariffs typically need to be approved by Congress but Trump has so far bypassed that requirement by claiming that the country’s trade deficits amounted to a national emergency. It left the US president able to apply sweeping tariffs to most countries in the world last month, in a shock move that sent markets reeling.

A U.S. judge on Tuesday allowed a group of 14 states to move ahead with a lawsuit challenging Elon Musk's efforts to slash federal spending as the head of Donald Trump's new government efficiency agency, rejecting the Trump administration's effort to dismiss the case.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, however, dismissed the states' claims against Trump himself, saying her court would not try to interfere with "the performance of his official duties" as president.

The states' lawsuit could proceed against Musk and DOGE because it made a plausible claim that Musk's cost-cutting activities were "unauthorized by any law," according to Chutkan's ruling in Washington, D.C., federal court.

A federal judge ruled that convicted criminals the administration wants to deport to countries that are not their country of origin should be given more time to raise concerns about the potential risk of torture, persecution or death.

The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to make it easier for officials to deport convicted criminals to 'third countries' that are not their nations of origin.

The administration is seeking to block an injunction issued by Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy that said the affected immigrants nationwide should be given a "meaningful opportunity" to raise concerns that they may be at risk of torture, persecution or death.

Murphy later clarified that they should have at least ten days to bring their claims.

The FBI is refocusing on three, high-profile cases that emerged just before and during the Biden administration, Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, announced Monday on X.

The FBI wants to revive or invest more resources into cases that Bongino said pointed to "potential public corruption," including the investigation into a pair of undetonated pipe bombs left near the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021, and the discovery of a bag of cocaine at the White House over July 4 weekend in 2023.

The third case getting renewed scrutiny is the 2022 leak of the unpublished Supreme Court Dobbs decision, which ended federal protections for abortion. An eight month investigation into the leak, ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts, was unable to identify the person responsible.

A federal judge on Friday struck down an executive order signed by Donald Trump earlier this year targeting the law firm Jenner & Block, ruling the effort ran afoul of the Constitution’s First Amendment.

The decision from US District Judge John Bates in Washington, DC, represents the second time in recent weeks a judge has thwarted Trump’s attempt to retaliate against a top law firm.

“This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers,” Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote in the ruling. “It thus violates the Constitution and the Court will enjoin its operation in full.”

Ivy League school filed suit saying ban was unconstitutional retaliation for defying White House’s demands

A US federal judge on Friday blocked the government from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students just hours after the elite college sued the Trump administration over its abrupt ban the day before on enrolling foreign students.

US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued the temporary restraining order late on Friday morning, freezing the policy that had been abruptly imposed on the university, based in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has accused Columbia University of violating civil rights laws, while overseas governments had expressed alarm at the administration’s actions against Harvard as part of its latest assault on elite higher education in the US.

Eight people from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan were on a flight intended for South Sudan this week.

After a deportation flight with eight migrants left Texas reportedly intended for South Sudan this week, a federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration had violated a previous order.

District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts said during a hearing that the Trump administration had failed to adhere to his injunction, issued in March, preventing individuals from being sent to a country other than their own without giving them an opportunity to raise fears of persecution or torture.

The judge's ruling comes after the Department of Homeland Security confirmed during a press briefing Wednesday morning that eight individuals from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan were deported this week. According to the DHS, many of these individuals had violent criminal convictions, including murder and sexual assault.

“The department’s actions,” Murphy said, “are unquestionably violative of this court’s order.”

A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that U.S. officials must retain custody and control of migrants apparently removed to South Sudan in case he orders their removals were unlawful.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts issued the ruling after an emergency hearing, after attorneys for immigrants said the Trump administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan — despite a court order restricting removals to other countries.

Murphy said the government must “maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”

A day after a federal appeals court affirmed a court order directing the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a deported 20-year-old Venezuelan man to the United States, the judge overseeing the case has ordered the administration to report "the steps they have taken" to do so.

The man, identified in court records by the pseudonym "Cristian," challenged his removal after he was sent in mid-March on a flight to El Salvador after Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a "hybrid criminal state" that is invading the United States.

U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, found in April that Cristian's removal violated a class action settlement on behalf of individuals who entered the U.S. as unaccompanied minors then later sought asylum, and she directed the government to take steps toward "aiding, assisting or making easier" Cristian's release and return -- similar to the remedy ordered by the judge in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.