US Supreme Court

A U.S. Supreme Court decision a decade ago that tossed out the heart of the Voting Rights Act continues to reverberate across the country. Republican-led states continue to pass voting restrictions that, in several cases, would have been subject to federal review had the court left the provision intact. The conservative-leaning court has continued to take other cases challenging elements of the landmark 1965 law. The justices are expected to rule in the coming weeks in a case out of Alabama that could make it much more difficult for minority groups to sue over gerrymandered political maps that dilute their representation.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether South Carolina's congressional districts need to be redrawn because they discriminate against Black voters. The justices said Monday they would review a lower-court ruling that found a coastal district running from Charleston to Hilton Head was intentionally redrawn to reduce the number of Black Democratic-leaning voters to make it more likely Republican candidates would win.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week over President Joe Biden's student debt relief plan. It's a plan that impacts millions of borrowers who could see their loans wiped away or reduced. Republican-appointed judges have kept the Democratic president's plan from going into effect. It's unclear how the court will respond. The court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives. The justices have scheduled two hours of arguments in the case Tuesday, though it'll probably go longer. The public can listen in on the court's website beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern. The court is hearing challenges by two students and by six Republican-led states: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina.

A federal appeals court has denied South Carolina Republicans' motion for a stay in the ongoing challenge over the state's congressional district map. Leading GOP lawmakers will now take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court in attempt to avoid redrawing the map that a three-judge federal panel last month deemed unconstitutional. According to an early January ruling, the boundaries passed last year by the Republican-dominated state Legislature mark an intentional splitting of Black voters in South Carolina's 1st District. In their Feb. 4 order, the judges postponed the date by which new maps may be presented.

The Supreme Court has lifted a temporary hold on Sen. Lindsey Graham's testimony in a Georgia investigation of possible illegal interference in the 2020 election by then-President Donald Trump and his allies in the state. The high court on Tuesday left no legal impediments in the way of Graham's appearance before a special grand jury, now scheduled for Nov. 17. But in an unsigned order, the justices noted that Graham still could raise objections to some questions. The South Carolina senator, a top Trump ally, had argued that a provision of the Constitution, the speech and debate clause, shields him from being forced to testify. Lower courts had rebuffed Graham's plea for a pause while the legal case plays out.

Sen. Lindsey Graham has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a lower court ordered him to testify before a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in the state. In a filing Friday with the court, attorneys for the South Carolina Republican sought to halt Graham's possible testimony while he continues to appeal the requirement to appear before the Fulton County special grand jury. The filing was directed to Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles emergency appeals from Georgia.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Dylann Roof, who challenged his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation. Roof had asked the court to decide how to handle disputes over mental illness-related evidence between capital defendants and their attorneys. The justices did not comment Tuesday in turning away the appeal. Roof fired his attorneys and represented himself during the sentencing phase of his capital trial, part of his effort to block evidence potentially portraying him as mentally ill. Roof shot participants at a Bible study session at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

In their book, Justice Deferred - Race and the Supreme Court (2021, Belknap Press), historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record—a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence.The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice.

In their book, Justice Deferred - Race and the Supreme Court (2021, Belknap Press), historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Court’s race record—a legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Court’s race jurisprudence.The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice.

Abortion bans are temporarily blocked in Louisiana and Utah, while a federal court in South Carolina says a law sharply restricting the procedure can take effect there immediately. The decisions emerged as the battle over whether women may end pregnancies shifted from the nation's highest court to courthouses around the country. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision Friday to end constitutional protection for abortion opened the gates for a wave of litigation.