For the past twenty years, U.S. colleges and universities have relied on a Supreme Court decision that allows admissions committees to consider an applicant’s race in seeking to further the universities’ compelling interest in racial diversity on their campuses.             The Supreme Court heard five hours of oral arguments last week [October 31] in legal challenges filed by a ..read more

         With the Supreme Court’s new term set to open in three weeks, the Republican-packed bench may be on the verge of overruling another important precedent just as the justices did last year in overruling the landmark abortion rights decision, Roe v. Wade.             The Court gets its first clear shot at mocking “equal justice under law” this term when the justices will hear oral ..read more

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           Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer was unaccustomedly emotional sixteen years ago as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a newly polarized Court in limiting the ability of local school districts to engineer a measure of racial balance in public schools. Roberts wrote and led five Republican-appointed justices in holding in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School ..read more

             The Supreme Court delivered a major victory to religious schools last week [June 21] by forcing the state of Maine to provide tuition assistance to families who want to send their children to private schools that practice religious indoctrination through an explicitly religious curriculum.             The 6-3 decision in Carson v. Makin invalidated in the name of free exercise of ..read more

           The Republican-majority Supreme Court displayed its anti-immigrant bias last week in two separate decisions on the same day that operate to block noncitizens detained in ICE custody from seeking bond hearings for possible release while they seek relief from removal orders and to block noncitizens from seeking classwide relief to enforce immigration law provisions.               Both ..read more

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 President Biden spoke for most Americans last week [June 2] when he pleaded with Congress to pass a short list of specific gun safety proposals to try to prevent mass shootings and to limit the number of deaths from any such episodes. Predictably, however, Biden’s plea fell on deaf ears as Republicans in Congress and gun rights advocacy groups warned that he was tampering with the sacrosanct ..read more