Supreme Court rejects several gun rights cases for next term
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday passed up several challenges to federal and state gun control laws, over the dissent of two conservative justices.
Gun rights advocates had hoped the court would expand the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms” beyond the home.
Instead, the justices left in place restrictions on the right to carry weapons in public in Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey. They also declined to review Massachusetts’ ban on some semi-automatic firearms and large-capacity ammunition magazines, a California handgun control law and a half-century-old federal law banning interstate handgun sales.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote a dissent in the court’s denial of a New Jersey resident’s appeal seeking the right to carry a gun in public for self-defense. Rather than take on the constitutional issue, Thomas wrote, “the Court simply looks the other way.”
Justcies revive permit for pipeline under Appalachian Trail
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sided with energy companies and the Trump administration Monday in reinstating a critical permit for a proposed natural gas pipeline that would cross under the Appalachian Trail.
The justices ruled 7-2 to throw out a lower court ruling that had canceled the permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. It would bring natural gas from West Virginia to growing markets in Virginia and North Carolina. Its supporters say the pipeline would bring economic development, thousands of jobs and reduced energy costs for consumers.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for a majority of the court that the “Forest Service had the authority to issue the permit here.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.
Other legal issues remain before construction of the pipeline could begin. The narrow question before the Supreme Court was whether the U.S. Forest Service has the authority to grant rights-of-way through lands crossed by the Appalachian Trail within national forests, as project developers Dominion Energy and Duke Energy and the Trump administration argued.
The pipeline would run in part through the George Washington National Forest, where a 0.1-mile segment of the pipeline would cross about 600 feet (about 183 meters) beneath the Appalachian Trail.
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups had argued that because the 2,200-mile (3,540-kilometer) scenic trail from Georgia to Maine is considered a unit of the National Park System, no federal agency can grant a right-of-way for the pipeline. They say only Congress can approve such a crossing.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the environmentalists in 2018 and threw out a special-use permit for the 605-mile (974-kilometer) natural gas pipeline. The appeals court relied on a century-old law, the 1920 Mineral Leasing Act, in finding that the Forest Service does not have authority to grant rights-of-way for pipelines on federal land in the National Park System.
The project has had numerous setbacks since plans were first announced in 2014. Legal challenges brought by environmental groups have prompted the dismissal or suspension of eight permits and halted construction for more than a year.
The project is more than three years behind schedule and its original price tag has nearly doubled to $8 billion.
Dominion says the pipeline will bring a critical new gas supply to Virginia and North Carolina to support the shift away from coal and toward intermittent natural resources like solar. The company also says greater availability of natural gas will attract manufacturing businesses.
Environmental groups say the pipeline would scar pristine landscapes, put numerous rivers and streams at risk of increased sedimentation and harm sensitive species.
Justices reject Trump bid to void Calif. sanctuary law
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to throw out a California immigrant-sanctuary law that limits local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The justices’ order leaves in place lower court rulings that upheld the law. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voted to hear the administration’s appeal.
The administration said the 2017 state immigrant-sanctuary measure conflicts with federal immigration law and makes it harder to deport people who are in the country illegally.
California argued that encouraging local police to participate in federal immigration enforcement is counterproductive because it makes people less likely to report crimes if they believe they’ll be deported for doing so.
Supreme Court for now stays out of police immunity debate
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is for now declining to get involved in an ongoing debate by citizens and in Congress over policing, rejecting cases Monday that would have allowed the justices to revisit when police can be held financially responsible for wrongdoing.
With protests over racism and police brutality continuing nationwide, the justices turned away more than half a dozen cases involving the legal doctrine known as qualified immunity, which the high court created more than 50 years ago. It shields officials, including police, from lawsuits for money as a result for things they do in the course of their job.
As is usual the court didn’t comment in turning away the cases, but Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a 6-page dissent saying he would have agreed to hear one of the cases.
“I have previously expressed my doubts about our qualified immunity jurisprudence,” he wrote, explaining he believes the court’s “qualified immunity doctrine appears to stray from the statutory text.”
As a result of qualified immunity, even when a court finds that an official or officer has violated someone’s constitutional rights, they can still be protected from civil lawsuits seeking money. The Supreme Court has said that qualified immunity protects officials as long as their actions don’t violate clearly established law or constitutional rights which they should have known about.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to wade into the qualified immunity debate follows nationwide protests against racism and police brutality sparked by the death in Minnesota of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died May 25 while being restrained by a white officer.
In Congress, a bill introduced by House Democrats in the wake of Floyd’s death would make it easier for injured individuals to claim damages in civil suits against police offices. The White House, however, has said that provision is a nonstarter and not likely to be part of a Senate Republican bill that’s in the works.
The push for the court to reexamine qualified immunity has come both from the left and right, including Thomas, a conservative, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal. In 2018, when the court said that an Arizona police officer who shot a knife-wielding woman four times was immune from being sued, Sotomayor said the decision “sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public.”
Since then, the court has been asked to take a number of different cases involving qualified immunity. Some of the cases the court rejected Monday were filed at the court more than a year ago and many others had been pending for months, before Floyd’s death and the protests it prompted. The incidents themselves that sparked the lawsuits go back years and in some cases almost a decade.
