Tag: Supreme Court

Vermont Backs Down on Religion-Free School Choice after SCOTUS Knocks Down Maine Policy

Just the News

Vermont families that want to send their children to religious schools will no longer be excluded from the state’s tuition benefit program, as a result of legal settlements in two cases brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

The plaintiffs who were denied funding under the Town Tuition Program, which provides tuition for students who live in areas without local public schools, will get reimbursement for money spent out of pocket on tuition. Other families denied funding can apply as well.

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Supreme Court Keeps Biden Student Loan Forgiveness Plan on Hold, Will Hear Case in February

Virginia Star Staff

The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it will hear a lawsuit challenging President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program in February, while the plan currently remains blocked.

The court released a miscellaneous order late Thursday afternoon from Justice Brett Kavanaugh granting the six states involved in the lawsuit the opportunity to present oral arguments. Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan remains blocked by an injunction, pending a further ruling from the court, who will hear arguments in February 2023.

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Supreme Court Allows House Democrats to Have Access to Former President Trump’s Tax Records

Just the News

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down former President Donald Trump’s request to block House Democrats from accessing his tax records.

Earlier in November, Chief Justice Roberts temporarily blocked the release of Trump’s tax records, according to the Associated Press. 

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Commentary: The Systemic Racism of the Teachers Unions

Admin

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could reverse the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, in which SCOTUS asserted that the use of an applicant’s race as a factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The current case specifically cites the use of race in the admissions process at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, maintain that Harvard violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “which bars entities that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race, because Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted than similarly qualified white, Black, or Hispanic applicants.”

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‘Targets for Assassination’: Justice Alito Opens Up About the Dobbs Leak

Virginia Star Staff

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the leaking of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in endangered the lives of those who were expected to overturn Roe v. Wade, making them targets for assassination.

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade June 24 in a 6-3 decision, but their preliminary decision was leaked to Politico May 2. Alito, who wrote the Dobbs decision, said the leak made him and other conservative justices targets for assassination attempts in a Tuesday interview with The Heritage Foundation.

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Trump Explains Why He Took DOJ to Supreme Court: Political Prosecution ‘Has to Stop’

Just the News

Former President Donald Trump says his two most recent legal strikes — suing CNN for defamation and taking the Biden Justice Department to the Supreme Court — aim to restore fairness in America’s courts of law and public opinion. 

In an interview Tuesday evening hours after his legal team took its battle over presidential records to the nation’s nine justices, Trump told the “Just the News, Not Noise” television show that the case was about erasing politics from DOJ and the FBI.

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Trump Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in Mar-a-Lago FBI Case

Just the News

Former President Donald Trump has reportedly asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the ongoing legal dispute between him and the Department of Justice over his alleged mishandling of classified materials that led to the FBI raid on his Florida estate.

Trump filed an emergency request with the court, seeking their intervention, according to a CNN report. Specifically, the former president wants the court to ensure that the court-appointed special master may review the more than 100 documents marked classified.

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Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Big Tech’s Section 230 Protections

Virginia Star Staff

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear a case that challenges Big Tech companies’ broad protections against lawsuits regarding the content they host, as a result of a policy known as Section 230.

Politico reports that the case will mark the first time that the nation’s highest court will hear any challenge to Big Tech’s immunity under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which forbids legal action against such platforms over third-party content that is hosted on their sites. The case, Gonzalez vs. Google LLC, will see the court determine if these protections go too far when it comes to such content as terrorist videos being allowed on YouTube, the video-sharing platform that is owned by Google.

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Major Government Unions Lose over 200K Members

The Center Square

The top four public labor unions in the U.S. lost hundreds of thousands of members since a 2018 Supreme Court case that ruled government employees could not be forced to pay a union to keep their job, a new report shows that.

The Commonwealth Foundation released the report, which found that the top four public labor unions – AFT, AFSCME, NEA, and SEIU – lost nearly 219,000 members altogether since the Janus v. AFSCME ruling.

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Supreme Court Temporarily Sides with LGBTQ Group at Jewish University

Virginia Star Staff

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court narrowly sided with a left-wing pro-LGBTQ group that is seeking official recognition from its Jewish university, although the court may revisit the decision in the future.

ABC News reports that the court voted 5-4 to lift a temporary hold on a lower court order requiring Yeshiva University in New York to formally recognize the group, YU Pride Alliance. However, the legal battle over the group’s claims against the university is ongoing in the state of New York.

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Three More States Are Poised to Ban Abortion Amid Court Battles

Admin

Idaho, Tennessee and Texas are moving to enact “trigger bans” restricting abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade June 24, ending the precedent which had banned states from restricting abortion throughout the first six months of pregnancy.

The bans in these three states will take effect 30 days after the Supreme Court officially transmitted its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association July 26, according to The Hill. Another 10 states had trigger bans go into effect after elected officials enacted them, and trigger abortion bans went into effect immediately after the court overturned Roe in three other states.

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SCOTUS Blocks Biden Admin’s Attempt to Limit Immigration Enforcement

Virginia Star Staff

The Supreme Court blocked a Biden administration effort to limit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in a decision Thursday.

The 5-4 decision placed a national freeze on a September 2021 Biden administration memo that sought to tighten the scope of civil immigration arrests to threats to national security, border security and public safety. A judge in the Southern District of Texas vacated the guidelines in June.

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Most Companies Quiet on Abortion After Roe Overturned

Virginia Star Staff

Most U.S. companies aren’t making public statements about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade June 24 in its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Conference Board survey found.

Only 8% of U.S. companies have made public statements about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, and another 2% plan to make a statement, according to the survey. Most companies in the survey had made public statements about social issues since 2020, with 61% addressing racial equality, 44% addressing LGBT issues, 40% addressing COVID-19 and vaccines and 30% addressing gender equality.

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Poll: Majorities of Democrats and Young Voters Want to Abolish the Supreme Court

Virginia Star Staff

A new poll reveals that over half of Democratic voters, and an even larger majority of younger voters, believe that the Supreme Court must be abolished after a series of rulings that greatly increased personal freedoms.

As reported by the New York Post, the poll from the Heartland Institute saw 53 percent of Democrats voice their support for eliminating the Supreme Court altogether, in favor of replacing it with a “new, democratically elected…court with justices chosen by the American people directly.” Of these respondents, 33 percent said they were “strongly” in favor of such an idea. In the same poll, a slightly larger majority of voters between the ages of 19 and 39 want to abolish the high court, at 54 percent. By contrast, only 21 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of independents supported abolition.

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Supreme Court Delivers Massive Blow to Biden’s Climate Agenda

Virginia Star Staff

The Supreme Court delivered a massive blow to the Biden administration’s climate change plan Thursday, severely limiting the power of federal agencies.

The Court, in a 6-3 decision on West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), limited the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, significantly curtailing the power of the federal agency. The decision restricts the agency to regulating individual power plants and not the entire power sector.

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SCOTUS Rules Biden Can Scrap Signature Trump-Era Immigration Policy

Virginia Star Staff
U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations following the implementation of Title 42 USC 265 at the northern and southern land borders. U.S. Border Patrol agents use personal protective equipment as they prepare to process a group of individuals encountered near Sasabe, Ariz. on March 22, 2020. CBP Photo by Jerry Glaser

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Biden administration can stop the implementation of the Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy.

The policy, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, forces certain migrants to await asylum proceedings in Mexico. The Trump administration enacted the policy in 2019 to send certain migrants to Mexico to await their asylum proceedings. But, on his second day in office, President Joe Biden ended the policy, calling it both “dangerous” and “inhumane.”

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CNN Promotes Overseas Abortion Pill Scheme

Virginia Star Staff

CNN promoted a website that connects women with overseas pharmacies to provide abortion pills Tuesday in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Before Friday, we had about 3500 visitors in a day,” Elisa Wells, co-founder of Plan C, told CNN host Poppy Harlow. “On Friday, we had 209,000 visitors that day. And it since has remained increased. People are looking for this information. They want to know, ‘How can I have an abortion if I need one in a state that restricts access?’”

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Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services Launches Abortion Access Website Following Far-Left Backlash

Virginia Star Staff

On Tuesday, the Biden Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rolled out a new website aimed at helping people find access to contraceptives and abortions, following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

According to Politico, the website, ReproductiveRights.gov, was launched after the administration faced criticism from the far-left over its response (or lack thereof) to the historic ruling by the Supreme Court, with progressives claiming that the Biden White House wasn’t doing enough to shore up abortion protections. The new website shares links and information regarding options for abortion and contraception.

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Commentary: Clarence Thomas Derangement Syndrome

Virginia Star Staff

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 takedown of Roe v. Wade on Friday set off a Krakatoa of hatred not seen from the Left since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016. As California’s Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis demonstrates, Trump Derangement Syndrome now joins forces with Thomas Derangement Syndrome. 

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26 Attorneys General Urge Supreme Court to Reverse California’s Agricultural Animal Confinement Law

The Center Square

Attorneys general from 26 states are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower-court decision upholding a California law banning the raising or importing pork, veal or eggs if the animals are confined.

The Supreme Court announced on March 28 that it would hear the pork industry’s challenge to California’s Proposition 12, a law restricting confinement practices in animal agriculture. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Oct. 11.

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Democratic Candidates Waste No Time Begging for Money Off Dobbs Decision

Virginia Star Staff

Democratic candidates running for office and other liberals immediately began using the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade to raise funds Friday.

Democrat Attorney General John Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who is running to replace Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, posted a fundraising request on Twitter at 10:20 AM Friday, nine minutes after SCOTUSBlog tweeted news of the decision.

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Trump: SCOTUS Abortion Decision Will Return Power to the States ‘Where It Has Always Belonged’

Virginia Star Staff

Former President Trump said Friday the Supreme Court ruling earlier in the morning that struck down that struck down the decades-old Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion will “work out for everybody.”

“This is following the Constitution, and gives rights back when they should have been given long ago,” Trump, who appointed three of the six justices who voted to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe decision, told Fox News.

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New Mexico County Refuses to Certify Election Results over Machine Concerns, Igniting Legal Battle

Virginia Star Staff

A New Mexico county has been ordered by the state Supreme Court to certify its primary election results and threatened with legal action by the state attorney general after the county commissioners refused to do so over concerns about Dominion vote-counting machines.

The three Republican members of the Otero County Commission, in their role as the county canvassing board, decided to not certify the June 7 primary results because of their distrust of the Dominion machines, the Associated Press reported. The commissioners also voted last week to recount the ballots by hand, discontinue using the Dominion machines, and remove ballot drop boxes.

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Crowds Return to the Supreme Court to Learn If Justices Overturned Roe v. Wade

Julie Carr

The Star News Network was once again at the Supreme Court with special correspondent Joanna Miller Wednesday, where crowds gathered to learn if the 1970s-era ‘right to abortion’ would be overturned with the highly anticipated Dobbs v Jackson opinion.

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Crowds Gather at the Supreme Court in Anticipation of the Possible Overturn of Roe v. Wade

Julie Carr

The Star News Network was on scene at the Supreme Court Monday as activists from the left and the right gathered to learn if the justices would publish their decision on Dobbs vs Jackson, which would effectively overturn Roe vs Wade and send the question of abortion limits back to the states.

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Commentary: Biden Must Condemn Violence Threat to Supreme Court

RealClearWire

Last week 19 children and their two teachers were slaughtered in a Texas classroom, one week after 10 grocery store shoppers were gunned down in New York because of the color of their skin. We are drowning in violence that comes unexpectedly, but with depressing regularity.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court completes its term this month, it is expected to release a decision that will eviscerate Roe v. Wade, and there is already evidence that the response is likely to turn violent. Government officials have warned us that extremists on both sides of the charged abortion debate are threatening harm to the nine justices, the building itself, staff, and protestors. The decision is coming, the violence is expected.

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Supreme Court Pauses Counting of Challenged Pennsylvania Mail-In Ballots

Virginia Star Staff

The Supreme Court on Tuesday paused the count of some mail-in ballots that could impact the Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary race.

The order temporarily blocks a lower court’s ruling that instructed election officials to count mail-in ballots that arrived on time but were undated.

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‘If Abortion Isn’t Safe, You Aren’t Either’: Vandal Attacks Pregnancy Center

Admin

A suspect vandalized a Washington state crisis pregnancy center by breaking the building’s windows and spray-painting the property early Wednesday morning.

The suspect targeted the Next Step Pregnancy Center in Lynwood, Washington, Next Step Pregnancy Center Director Heather Vasquez told KTTH talk radio host Jason Rantz. The center stayed open despite the vandalism and police have opened an investigation into the matter.

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Supreme Court Hands Biden Admin Major Win for Climate Agenda

Admin

The Supreme Court denied a petition from 10 Republican-led states Thursday requesting it to block a key Biden administration climate policy.

The decision ensures that President Joe Biden’s so-called “social cost” of carbon policy — which assigns an estimated dollar value or cost to every ton of carbon emissions, according to the Government Accountability Office — can remain in place and be used for future federal permitting processes. The high court rejected states’ April 27 petition without giving a reason or listing which justices opposed it, according to a one-page filing published on the Supreme Court docket.

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Justice Thomas: ‘We Are in Danger of Destroying the Institutions Required for a Free Society’

The Center Square

It’s been two weeks and there’s still no word on who leaked the U.S. Supreme Court draft brief indicating that the court was set to overturn Roe V. Wade and returning the issue of abortion back to the states.

At a recent event in Dallas, Texas, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the Manhattan Institute, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke about the leak and his concern for the rule of law and credibility of the court.

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Commentary: The Abortion Wars Are Just Getting Started

RealClearWire

The Supreme Court’s apparent decision to send the abortion issue back to the states may be a triumph for federalism and the concept of the separation of powers, but it is also a recipe for unyielding division. Abortion politics will become even more of a litmus test for tens of millions of pro-choice and pro-life voters at the local, state, and federal levels because their legislators will have far more power to shape policy. This, in turn, will further polarize our politics and empower the extremes because many voters will likely back candidates no matter their position on schools, crime, housing, jobs and debt, so long as they are the right kind of “pro.”

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Commentary: Democrats Show Their True Colors in Attempt to Intimidate and Coerce U.S. Supreme Court Justices

Virginia Star Staff

Following the leak of a draft United States Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the country and our Commonwealth have seen Democrat extremism on full display. They have seen the release of a draft, pre-decisional document, which is itself a threat to the judicial process. They have also seen extreme pro-abortion activists gather outside the private residences of Supreme Court Justices in Virginia, threatening their safety and that of their families. These blatant acts of intimidation go far beyond legitimate political protest and should be condemned by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Since Roe v. Wade was first decided in 1973, legal scholars on both the right and the left have held that the decision has no basis in Constitutional law and was wrongly decided. For liberals, Roe is merely a mechanism for leveraging the power of the federal judiciary to produce a preferred policy outcome. For conservatives, Roe is an affront to both an originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and basic human decency.

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Inflation Is a Great Reason to Get an Abortion, Democrat Lawmaker Says

Virginia Star Staff

Democratic California Rep. Katie Porter said inflation and rising prices reinforced the importance of abortion on MSNBC’s “The Last Word” Wednesday.

Porter said inflation and abortion were closely tied together and that, as grocery and gas prices rose, people would realize the importance of controlling their family size through abortion.

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Psaki Tells Americans That If You Don’t Support Roe v. Wade, You’re ‘Ultra MAGA’

Virginia Star Staff

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said opposing the Supreme Court precedent set in Roe v. Wade was an example of an “ultra MAGA” position in a Tuesday press conference.

Psaki said President Joe Biden used the phrase “ultra MAGA” to refer to Republicans with extreme or unpopular positions who, in his view, played too large of a role in the GOP. She added that people who support Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s plan to have all Americans pay income taxes and “sunset” Medicare and Social Security are also “ultra MAGA.”

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AP Urges Media to Hold Off on ‘Pregnant People’ in the Wake of Roe Leak

Virginia Star Staff

The Associated Press updated its style guide on pregnancy and abortion Wednesday to discourage journalists from using gender-neutral phrases when writing about abortion despite having previously encouraged the terms.

Corporate media outlets use phrases like “pregnant people” to replace “pregnant women” in order to be more inclusive of transgender people. As the abortion debate has heated up after a leaked draft opinion revealed the Supreme Court would likely overturn Roe v. Wade, the AP told journalists to only use these gender-neutral phrases when specifically discussing transgender and nonbinary individuals.

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Post-Leak Poll: Enthusiastic Voters Support Overturning Roe by Huge Margin

Virginia Star Staff

Voters who support the overturning of Roe v. Wade are almost twice as likely to say they are extremely enthusiastic about voting in the fall than those who want it to stay, according to a CNN poll released Friday.

The poll, taken after the leak of a Supreme Court draft decision that indicates the court could overturn the case, showed that 38% of those “happy” Roe could be overturned are “extremely enthusiastic” about voting, while only 20% of those “angry” said they had the same level of enthusiasm, CNN reported.

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Democrats Quietly Scrub Abortion Bill Language Saying Men Can Get Pregnant

Admin

The latest version of the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which would effectively make abortion a statutory right, scrubbed references to transgender and nonbinary people’s pregnancies as well as language related to “reproductive justice.”

Earlier versions of the bill used language tying race and transgenderism to the issue of abortion in its non-binding “Findings” section. Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the bill’s sponsor, told Politico the language had been removed from the bill due to objections from some Democrats.

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Prosecutors Could Pursue Charges Against the SCOTUS Leaker, According to Legal Expert

Virginia Star Staff

The government’s best shot at prosecuting the individual who leaked the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization may involve having potential suspects testify to their innocence in signed statements, a legal expert told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Politico published a leaked draft opinion Monday revealing the Court would likely overturn Roe v. Wade, leading to speculation about whether the leaker’s actions were illegal. However, many of the potential charges that could be levied against the leaker aren’t a perfect fit for the unprecedented incident, Zack Smith, a legal fellow for the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told the DCNF.

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Far-Left Group Doxxes Six Supreme Court Justices

Virginia Star Staff

A group of far-left extremists published a list of addresses that they claimed belong to the six conservative Supreme Court justices, declaring their plans to target the homes and terrorize the justices over their apparent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Daily Caller reports that the group, “Ruth Sent Us,” published alleged home addresses for Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. The move came after the Monday leak of a draft opinion written by Alito that appears to completely overturn Roe, as well as the 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which would eliminate the nationwide legalization of abortion and return the matter back to the individual states to decide.

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Supreme Court Rules Boston Violated First Amendment over Rejection of Christian Flag

Virginia Star Staff

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the city of Boston was in violation of the First Amendment over its attempt to ban the Christian flag.

Axios reports that the opinion was written by outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer. In the opinion, Breyer states that the city government of Boston “violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment” by forbidding a Christian organization from flying the Christian flag in front of city hall, which Breyer said constituted discrimination “based on religious viewpoints.”

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Commentary: The Left Only Sees Success by Altering the Rules of Governance

Virginia Star Staff

Court packing—the attempt to enlarge the size of the Supreme Court for short-term political purposes—used to be a dirty word in the history of American jurisprudence. 

The tradition of a nine-person Supreme Court is now 153 years old. The last attempt to expand it for political gain was President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed effort in 1937. FDR’s gambit was so blatantly political that even his overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress rebuffed him. 

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Senate Democrats Tee Up Vote to Codify Abortion Law with Long-Shot Odds of Getting 60 Votes to Pass

Virginia Star Staff

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a plan Thursday to force a vote on legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade – following the release earlier this week of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicating justices may soon overturn the high-court’s decades-old abortion-related ruling.

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Newt Gingrich Commentary: Roe v. Wade Is Inevitably Going Away

Virginia Star Staff

The current uproar over the leaked draft from the U.S. Supreme Court deliberations over abortion – and the rage of the pro-abortion Left over the likelihood that the conservative justices (three of whom were nominated by President Donald Trump) will now repeal Roe v. Wade – is in some ways a lot of noise about the inevitable.

Roe v. Wade was a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion across the whole country and made America one of the most extreme abortion systems in the entire world. Importantly, it was a court decision by appointed judges – not legislation made by elected legislators. It was inevitably going to be overturned sooner or later.

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GOP Senators Chastise Conservative Justices in the Wake of Leak

Virginia Star Staff

Two moderate Republican senators criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in a leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that if the draft opinion was accurate, “it rocks my confidence in the court right now,” Politico’s Burgess Everett reported. Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the accuracy of the leak in a statement Tuesday.

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