Supreme Court won’t hear case involving transgender rights
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is declining to wade into a case involving transgender rights and leaving in place a lower court decision against a Catholic hospital that wouldn’t allow a transgender man to have a hysterectomy there.
The high court turned away the case Monday without comment, as is typical. Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — said they would have heard the case.
Mercy San Juan Medical Center near Sacramento declined to allow the procedure to be performed at its facility saying it was an “elective sterilization” that violated the hospital’s ethical and religious obligations.
The patient, Evan Minton, got the surgery three days later at a different hospital. He sued under a California law that bars discrimination. A trial court agreed with the hospital that a three-day delay in the procedure did not involve a denial of “full and equal” access to health care under California law. An appeals court reversed that decision.
The high court’s decision not to step in is the latest win recently for transgender rights groups at the court. In June, the justices declined to weigh in on a different case involving transgender rights. In that case, the justices rejected a Virginia school board’s appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban. Transgender rights groups and a former high school student had fought in court for six years to overturn the ban.
In 2020, the high court ruled that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment. The 6-3 decision was a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.
The court said a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
High court adds climate change, immigration cases to docket
WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the objections of the Biden administration, the Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider a climate change case that could limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The court also said it would hear a Republican-led immigration challenge.
The earliest the cases will be argued is 2022 and, as is typical, the high court did not explain its decision to take either case. Both are unusual, however, in that the Biden administration either has changed or said it will change the rules at the center of each case.
On climate change, the court will review the decision of a federal appeals court that struck down one of the Trump administration’s most momentous climate rollbacks. The Biden administration has said it is working on a replacement rule.
As a practical matter, the decision to review the ruling in the case will probably make it harder for the Biden administration to move forward with a new rule to regulate planet-warming carbon emissions from the power sector.
West Virginia, leading a coalition of 19 mostly Republican-led states, and coal companies told the high court in asking it to take the case that the appeals court’s ruling would give EPA almost unlimited authority to regulate in a way that would harm the coal industry.
“How we respond to climate change is a pressing issue for our nation, yet some of the paths forward carry serious and disproportionate costs for States and countless other affected parties,” the states wrote in urging the court to take the case. “Continued uncertainty over the scope of EPA’s authority will impose costs we can never recoup.”
In a statement posted on Twitter after the court agreed to hear the case, EPA administrator Michael Regan said: “Power plant carbon pollution hurts families and communities, and threatens businesses and workers. The Courts have repeatedly upheld EPA’s authority to regulate dangerous power plant carbon pollution.”
The court also will consider whether Republican-led states can take over the defense of a Trump-era rule denying green cards to immigrants who use public benefits like food stamps, after the Biden administration dropped the legal challenges.
A federal appeals court in Chicago upheld a lower court order striking down the Trump-era rule nationwide. In March, the Biden administration announced an agreement with the parties and states challenging the rule and also dropped its objections to the appellate decision.
The administration proposed a new rule in August.
Under the Trump administration policy, applicants for green cards had to show they wouldn’t be burdens to the country or “public charges.”
Federal law already required those seeking permanent residency or legal status to prove they wouldn’t be a “public charge.” But the Trump administration rule included a wider range of programs that could disqualify them, like Medicaid, housing vouchers or other public benefits.
The immigration case is being led by the state of Arizona.
High court won’t take case involving Hunter Biden ex-partner
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a former business partner of presidential son Hunter Biden who was seeking to overturn his criminal conviction for securities fraud.
As is typical, the justices did not comment in leaving in place a federal appeals court ruling that reinstated the fraud conviction of Devon Archer. A lower court judge had earlier set aside a jury verdict that found Archer guilty of fraud and ordered a new trial.
Biden was not involved in the effort to defraud the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe in a scheme that involved the sale of bonds, but participants in the fraud invoked his name to enhance their credentials, according to court records.
Archer was convicted in 2018. His conviction was overturned later that year before the court of appeals in New York reinstated it in 2020.
Biden and Archer had been business partners, and both served on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
Supreme Court rejects appeal over secretive court’s work
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal over whether the public should have access to opinions of the secretive court that reviews bulk email collection, warrantless internet searches and other government surveillance programs.
The justices turned away the appeal filed by civil liberties and media rights groups arguing that the public has a constitutional right to see significant opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They also argued that federal courts, not the executive branch, should decide when opinions that potentially affect the privacy of millions of Americans should be made public.
Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Sonia Sotomayor said they would have heard the case. Gorsuch wrote that the case “presents questions about the right of public access to ... judicial proceedings of grave national importance.”
“If these matters are not worthy of our time,” he wrote, “what is?”
The Biden administration had opposed high-court review, arguing that not even the Supreme Court has the authority to review the case under federal law. In addition, the administration said much of the material sought in this case already has been made public through requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was established in 1978 to receive applications from the FBI to eavesdrop on people it suspects of being agents of a foreign power, such as potential spies or terrorists. After Sept. 11, 2001, Congress expanded the court’s role to consider broad surveillance programs.
In recent decisions, judges ruled that opinions sought by the groups couldn’t be made public, even in censored form, and that they didn’t even have the authority to consider releasing the opinions.
Legislation adopted in 2015 includes a provision that requires the government to consider releasing significant FISA court opinions. But the law doesn’t apply to opinions written before it was enacted and leaves the review process entirely to the executive branch.
The appeal was filed by Theodore Olson, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. Olson is on the Knight institute’s board and was the Bush administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer as the FISA court’s role was expanded after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
