News you can use
News you can use
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WASHINGTON (AP) — In a major victory for gay rights, the Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a provision of a federal law denying federal benefits to married gay couples and cleared the way for the resumption of same-sex marriage in California. The justices issued two 5-4 rulings in their final session of the term. One decision wiped away part of a federal anti-gay marriage law that has kept legally married same-sex couples from receiving tax, health and pension benefits. The other was a technical ruling that said n... Full story
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says legally married same-sex couples should get the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples. The court invalidated a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act Wednesday that has prevented married gay couples from receiving a range of tax, health and retirement benefits that are generally available to married people. The vote was 5-4.... Full story
WASHINGTON — Concluding two days of intense debate, the Supreme Court signaled Wednesday it could give a boost to same-sex marriage by striking down the federal law that denies legally married gay spouses a wide range of benefits offered to other couples. As the court wrapped up its remarkable arguments over gay marriage in America, a majority of the justices indicated they will invalidate part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act — if they can get past procedural problems similar to those that appeared to mark Tue... Full story
WASHINGTON — They've known the outcome for three months. Now it's time for the nine Supreme Court justices to share it with the world. Barring some incredibly strange twist, shortly after 10 o'clock in the morning Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to reveal the high court's verdict on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Between 400 and 500 people will crowd into the marble courtroom, the only witnesses to a historic moment that will not be broadcast live on television or radio. Some of those h...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul. The decision means the huge overhaul, still only partly in effect, will proceed and pick up momentum over the next several years, affecting the way that countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care. The ruling also hands Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in requiring most Americans to have health i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sharp questioning by the Supreme Court's conservative justices cast serious doubt Tuesday on the survival of the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul. Arguments at the high court focused on whether the mandate for virtually every American to have insurance "is a step beyond what our cases allow," in the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy. AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren This artist rendering shows Paul Clement speaks in front of the Supreme Court i...
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak Supporters of the health care reform law signed by President Obama gather in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday as the court begins three days of arguments on health care. WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court plunged into debate Monday on the fate of the Obama administration's overhaul of the nation's health care system, and the justices gave every indication they will not allow an obscure tax law to derail the case. A decision is expected by late June, in the midst of a presidential e... Full story
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending. By a 5-4 vote, the court's conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices. The majority turned away pleas f...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bucking the Obama administration, Supreme Court justices seemed to find little trouble Wednesday with major parts of Arizona's tough immigration law that require police to check the legal status of people they stop for other reasons. But the fate of other provisions that make Arizona state crimes out of immigration violations was unclear in the court's final argument of the term. AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren This artist rendering shows PaulClement, arguing for Arizona, before the Supreme Court in Washington, W... Full story
WASHINGTON — The monumental fight over a health care law that touches all Americans and divides them sharply comes before the Supreme Court on Monday. The justices will decide whether to kill or keep the largest expansion in the nation's social safety net in more than four decades. Two years and three days after President Barack Obama signed into law a health care overhaul aimed at extending medical insurance to more than 30 million Americans, the high court begins three days of hearings over the law's validity. AP P...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sided with a power company Wednesday in a dispute with Montana over who owns the riverbeds beneath 10 dams sitting on three Montana rivers. In a case that reached back to the travels of Lewis and Clark more than 200 years ago, the court voted unanimously to throw out a state court ruling that could have cost the company, PPL Montana, more than $50 million. The power company had appealed a Montana Supreme Court ruling that the state owns the submerged land beneath the dams on the M...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court unanimously threw out fines and sanctions Thursday against broadcasters who violated the Federal Communications Commission policy regulating curse words and nudity on broadcast television. But the justices declined to issue a broad ruling on the constitutionality of the FCC indecency policy. Instead, the court concluded only that broadcasters could not have known in advance that obscenities uttered during awards show programs and a brief display of nudity on an episode of ABC's NYPD Blue c... Full story
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is setting an election-season review of racial preference in college admissions, agreeing Tuesday to consider new limits on the contentious issue of affirmative action programs. A challenge from a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas flagship campus will be the high court's first look at affirmative action in higher education since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma Demonstrators Sid Jacobo, left, and Jazel Flores, right, bo...
MCLEAN, Va. (AP) — Robert H. Bork, who stepped in to fire the Watergate prosecutor at Richard Nixon's behest and whose failed 1980s nomination to the Supreme Court helped draw the modern boundaries of cultural fights over abortion, civil rights and other issues, has died. He was 85. Son Robert H. Bork Jr. confirmed his father died Wednesday at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va. The son said Bork died from complications of heart ailments. AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork testifies b... Full story
WASHINGTON (AP) — Xavier Alvarez was in good company when he stood up at a public meeting and called himself a wounded war veteran who had received the top military award, the Medal of Honor. Alvarez was lying about his medal, his wounds and his military service, but he wasn't the first man to invent war exploits. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Doug and Pam Sterner are in their home in Alexandria, Va. Pam is the author of a college paper that led to the drafting of a federal law in 2006, the Stolen Valor Act, aimed at curbing f...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday blocked a Montana court ruling upholding limits on corporate campaign spending. The state court ruling appears to be at odds with the high court's 2010 decision striking down a federal ban on those campaign expenditures. The justices put the Montana ruling on hold while they consider an appeal from corporations seeking to be free of spending limits. The state argues, and the Montana Supreme Court agreed, that political corruption gave rise to the century-old ban on corporate c... Full story
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will take up California's ban on same-sex marriage, a case that could give the justices the chance to rule on whether gay Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals. The justices said Friday they will review a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the state's gay marriage ban, though on narrow grounds. The San Francisco-based appeals court said the state could not take away the same-sex marriage right that had been granted by California's Supreme Court. AP P...
WASHINGTON — Jailers may perform invasive strip searches on people arrested even for minor offenses, an ideologically divided Supreme Court ruled Monday, the conservative majority declaring that security trumps privacy in an often dangerous environment. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who was strip searched in two county jails following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine that he had, in reality, paid. The decision resolved a conflict among lower courts about how to balance security and p... Full story
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a provision of a campaign financing system in Arizona that gives extra cash to publicly funded candidates who face privately funded rivals and independent groups. The 5-4 ruling is the latest in a series of decisions by the court's conservative majority upending campaign finance laws. The Arizona law was passed in the wake of a public corruption scandal and was intended to reward candidates who forgo raising campaign cash, even in the face of opponents' heavy spending fuele...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday narrowly endorsed reducing California's cramped prison population by more than 30,000 inmates to fix sometimes deadly problems in medical care, ruling that federal judges retain enormous power to oversee troubled state prisons. The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is "required by the Constitution" to correct longstanding violations of inmates' rights. The order mandates a prison population of no more than 110,000 inmates, still far above the system's designed c...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court blocked a federal lawsuit Monday by states and conservation groups trying to force cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The court said that the authority to seek reductions in emissions rests with the Environmental Protection Agency, not the courts. The ruling was 8-0. EPA said in December that it will issue new regulations by next year concerning power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. The lawsuit targeted the five largest emitters of carbon dioxide i... Full story
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of female employees in a decision that makes it harder to mount large-scale bias claims against the biggest U.S. companies. The justices all agreed that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cannot proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court said there too many women in too many j...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court seemed ready Wednesday to endorse a jail policy that forces even people arrested on minor charges to undress and shower while being watched by guards. Less clear was whether justices would decide jailers need a reason to suspect someone may be hiding a weapon or drugs before undertaking a more invasive strip search. The court heard arguments in a case weighing the privacy rights of people in jail against authorities' need to maintain safety. AP Photo/Mel Evans Albert Florence sits at his h...
WASHINGTON — A Supreme Court dominated by Easterners tried to make sense Wednesday of a Western water dispute. The court heard arguments in a lawsuit between a power company and the state of Montana over who owns the riverbeds beneath 10 dams sitting on three Montana rivers. AP photo Holter Dam on the Missouri River near Wolf Creek, s privately owned by Pennsylvania Power and Light. U.S. Supreme Court justices heard arguments that invoke the Lewis and Clark expedition from two centuries ago in a dispute that could affect w...
Supreme Court: Anti-gay funeral picketers allowed MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a grieving father's pain over mocking protests at his Marine son's funeral must yield to First Amendment protections for free speech. All but one justice sided with a fundamentalist church that has stirred outrage with raucous demonstrations contending God is punishing the military for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. The 8-1 decision in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, K...
