Court extends block on Texas law that
would allow police to arrest migrants
By Lindsay Whitehurst
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on
Monday continued to block, for now, a Texas law that would give police broad
powers to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the U.S. while the
legal battle it sparked over immigration authority plays out.
A one-page order signed by Justice Samuel Alito indefinitely prevents Texas from enforcing a sweeping state immigration enforcement law that had been set to take effect this month. The language of the order strongly suggests the court will take additional action, but it is unclear when.
It marks the second time Alito has extended a pause on the law, known as Senate Bill 4, which the Justice Department has argued would step on the federal government's immigration powers. Monday's order extending the stay came a few minutes after a 5 p.m. deadline the court had set for itself, creating momentary confusion about the measure's status.
Opponents have called the law the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since an Arizona law more than a decade ago, portions of which were struck down by the Supreme Court. The court battle is unfolding as immigration emerges as a key issue in the 2024 presidential race.
The office of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said the state's law mirrored federal law and "was adopted to address the ongoing crisis at the southern border, which hurts Texans more than anyone else."
Arrests for illegal crossings along the southern border hit record highs in December but fell by half in January, a shift attributed to seasonal declines and heightened enforcement by the U.S. and its allies. The federal government has not yet released numbers for February.
The Biden administration sued to strike down the Texas measure in January, arguing it's a clear violation of federal authority on immigration that would hurt international relations and create chaos in administering immigration law. Critics have also said the law could lead to civil rights violations and racial profiling.
A federal judge in Texas struck down the law in late February, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals quickly stayed that ruling, leading the federal government to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court in 2012 struck down key parts of an Arizona law that would have allowed police to arrest people for federal immigration violations, often referred to by opponents as the "show me your papers" bill. The divided high court found then that the impasse in Washington over immigration reform did not justify state intrusion.
The battle over the Texas immigration law is one of multiple legal disputes between Texas officials and the Biden administration over how far the state can go to patrol the Texas-Mexico border and prevent illegal border crossings.
Several Republican governors have backed Gov. Greg Abbott's efforts, saying the federal government is not doing enough to enforce existing immigration laws.
Chief justice denies Peter Navarro's bid
to stave off prison sentence
By Lindsay Whitehurst
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on
Monday refused to halt a prison sentence for former Trump White House official
Peter Navarro as he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction.
Navarro is due to report Tuesday to a federal prison for a four-month sentence, after being found guilty of misdemeanor charges for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He had asked to stay free while he appealed his conviction.
Navarro has maintained that he couldn't cooperate with the committee because former President Donald Trump had invoked executive privilege. Lower courts have rejected that argument, finding he couldn't prove Trump had actually invoked it.
The Monday order signed by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency applications from Washington, D.C., said he has "no basis to disagree" with the appeals court ruling, though he said the finding doesn't affect the eventual outcome of Navarro's appeal.
His attorney Stanley Woodward declined to comment.
Navarro, who served as a White House trade adviser, was the second Trump aide convicted of misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon previously received a four-month sentence but was allowed to stay free pending appeal by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by Trump.
Navarro was found guilty of defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House Jan. 6 committee. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, refused his push to stave off his prison sentence and the federal appeals court in Washington agreed.
The Supreme Court is also separately preparing to hear arguments on whether Trump himself has presidential immunity from charges alleging he interfered in the 2020 election.
Court appears receptive to NRA
free-speech lawsuit against a former
New York state official
By Lindsay Whitehurst
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court justices
appeared receptive Monday to National Rifle Association claims that a former
New York state official violated its free-speech rights by pressuring banks and
insurance companies to blacklist the group after the deadly school shooting in
Parkland, Florida.
The NRA is suing former New York State Department of Financial Services superintendent Maria Vullo, who the group says used her regulatory power to economically punish the group for its gun-rights stance in violation of the First Amendment.
The Biden administration has backed some of the NRA's claims and encouraged the high court to reverse a lower court decision to toss out the suit. The NRA is being represented by a group often on the other end of the political spectrum: The American Civil Liberties Union.
"This is a First Amendment case. All they need to do is to show that the desire to suppress speech was a motivating factor," said Justice Samuel Alito. Other justices in the court's majority conservative wing also appeared receptive to the NRA's suit.
Vullo, for her part, said she rightly investigated NRA-endorsed insurance policies sometimes referred to as "murder insurance," her attorney Neal Katyal said. She did speak out about the risks of doing business with gun groups, but didn't exert any improper pressure on companies, he said.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned whether lawsuits like the NRA's could hobble regulators when interest groups are involved: "How do we avoid a world in which advocacy organizations are exempt from regulation?"
The justices also heard another case Monday about the government and free speech. They appeared to favor the Biden administration in that dispute with Republican-led states on how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.
The two cases are different because the NRA claimed it faced a "specific, coercive threat," said Ephraim McDowell, assistant to the solicitor general, said in response to a question from Chief Justice John Roberts.
The NRA says Vullo leveraged a state investigation into the legality of NRA-endorsed insurance products to pressure insurance companies, saying she would go easier on them if they cut ties with the NRA.
The group had been working with insurance companies to offer its members policies that covered losses caused by firearms, even when the insured person intentionally killed or hurt somebody.
Vullo says the products clearly violated state law, including by covering intentional acts and criminal defense costs, and the pressure claims are "implausible and insufficient." The probe started before Parkland and the insurance providers ultimately paid multimillion-dollar fines.
She also sent out guidance letters to banks and insurance companies warning about the "reputational risks" of working with the NRA. The NRA says her words had significant sway because of her position and several companies cut ties with the group, costing it millions in revenue.
Vullo says the letters were evenhanded and sent at a time when companies all over the country decided on their own to distance themselves from the NRA after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland that left 17 people dead.
"If you let this complaint go forward, you will be saying to government regulators everywhere that you have to be careful about the speech you say," her attorney Katyal said, addressing the justices. "It's not just the NRA today, it's every regulated party tomorrow, from TikTok on."
A federal appeals court in New York sided with her, finding she was doing her job and had qualified immunity as a government official. The NRA appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.
That's when the Justice Department weighed in. The solicitor general said the NRA's claims about leveraging the investigation were plausible enough that the suit shouldn't have been tossed out by a lower court, but also cautioned against an overly broad ruling that could wrongly restrict officials' free speech.
The ACLU, for its part, has said it opposes the NRA's views in general but that the case could be a "playbook" for government officials to target other groups, including those on the other end of the ideological spectrum supporting abortion rights or environmental protections.
"Government officials are free to encourage people not to support political groups they oppose. What they can not do is use their regulatory might to add 'or else' to that request," said ACLU Attorney David Cole.
The Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision by late June.
Justices reject appeal by former
New
Mexico county commissioner
banned for Jan. 6 insurrection
By Morgan Lee, Nicholas Riccardi and Mark
Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on
Monday rejected an appeal from a former New Mexico county commissioner who was
kicked out of office over his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection
at the U.S. Capitol.
Former Otero County commissioner Couy Griffin, a cowboy pastor who rode to national political fame by embracing then-President Donald Trump with a series of horseback caravans, is the only elected official thus far to be banned from office in connection with the Capitol attack, which disrupted Congress as it was trying to certify Joe Biden's 2020 electoral victory over Trump.
At a 2022 trial in state district court, Griffin received the first disqualification from office in over a century under a provision of the 14th Amendment written to prevent former Confederates from serving in government after the Civil War.
Though the Supreme Court ruled this month that states don't have the ability to bar Trump or other candidates for federal offices from the ballot, the justices said different rules apply to state and local candidates.
"We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office," the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion.
The outcome of Griffin's case could bolster efforts to hold other state and local elected officials accountable for their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack.
Griffin, a Republican, was convicted separately in federal court of entering a restricted area on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 and received a 14-day prison sentence. The sentence was offset by time served after his arrest in Washington, where he had returned to protest Biden's 2021 inauguration. That conviction is under appeal.
Griffin contends that he entered the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 without recognizing that it had been designated as a restricted area and that he attempted to lead a crowd in prayer using a bullhorn, without engaging in violence.
The recent ruling in the Trump case shut down a push in dozens of states to end Trump's Republican candidacy for president over claims he helped instigate the insurrection to try to prevent Biden, a Democrat, from replacing him in the White House in 2020.
The accusations of insurrection against Griffin were filed on behalf of three New Mexico residents by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning group that also brought the lawsuit in Colorado to disqualify Trump.
CREW has outlined the case for investigating several current state legislators who went to Washington on Jan. 6.
In Griffin's 2022 trial in state district court, New Mexico Judge Francis Mathew recognized the Jan. 6 attack as an insurrection and ruled that Griffin aided that insurrection, without engaging in violence, contributing to a delay in Congress' election certification proceedings.
Griffin's appeal of the disqualification asserted that only Congress, and not a state court, has the power to enforce the anti-insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment by legislation, and it urged the Supreme Court to rule on whether the events on Jan. 6 constituted an "insurrection" as defined in the Constitution.
It also invoked Griffin's rights to free speech protections.
"If the decision ... is to stand, at least in New Mexico, it is now the crime of insurrection to gather people to pray together for the United States of America on the unmarked restricted grounds of the Capitol building," Florida-based defense attorney Peter Ticktin argued on behalf of Griffin in court filings.
At trial, Mathew, the judge, called Griffin's free-speech arguments self-serving and not credible, noting that the then-commissioner spread lies about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump in a series of speeches at rallies during a cross-country journey starting in New Mexico, calling on crowds to go with him to Washington on Jan. 6 and join the "war" over the presidential election results.
Mathew said recordings by a videographer accompanying Griffin outside the U.S. Capitol showed that the county commissioner "incited the mob, even after seeing members of the mob a short distance away attack police officers and violently try to break into the Capitol building."
The New Mexico Supreme Court later refused to hear the case after Griffin missed procedural deadlines.
Griffin on Monday said the Supreme Court took "the coward's way out" in dismissing his appeal without comment, calling it "the greatest attack on our democracy to date."
"When civil courtrooms can remove elected officials, it sets a very dangerous precedent," Griffin said. "Personally, I'm very disappointed and equally concerned about the future of our political system."
On the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack this year, Griffin cast himself as the victim of political persecution as he spoke to a gathering in the rural community of Gillette, Wyoming, at the invitation of a county Republican Party.
"God is really allowing me to experience some amazing days," Griffin said. "Jan. 6 was a day like no other. It was a day where a type of patriotism was expressed that I'd never seen before, and I was honored to be there."
In 2019, Griffin forged a group of rodeo acquaintances into the promotional group called Cowboys for Trump, which staged horseback parades to support Trump's conservative message about gun rights, immigration controls and abortion restrictions.
While still a county commissioner, Griffin joined with Republican colleagues in refusing to certify results of the June 2022 primary election based on distrust of the voting systems used to tally the vote, even though the county's election official said there were no problems. The board ultimately certified the election on a 2-1 vote with Griffin still voting no based on a "gut feeling."
Griffin withstood a recall petition drive in 2021. After his disqualification from office, Griffin was tried and acquitted by a jury in his home county in March 2023 of allegations that he declined to register and disclose donors to Cowboys for Trump.
––––
Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico,
and Riccardi reported from Denver.
