Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 176
WASHINGTON (AP) — The agreement by the maker of OxyContin to settle thousands of lawsuits over the harm done by opioids could help combat the overdose epidemic that the painkiller helped spark. But that does not mean all the victims are satisfied. In exchange for giving up ownership of drug manufacturer Purdue Pharma and for contributing up to $6 billion to fight the crisis, members of the wealthy Sackler family would be exempt from any civil lawsuits. At the same time, they could potentially keep billions of dollars from their profits on O...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to a federal law that prohibits people from having guns if they are under a court order to stay away from their spouse, partner or other family members. The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in their first case about guns since last year's decision that called into question numerous gun control laws. The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down the law following the Supreme Court's Bruen decision in June 2022. That high-court ruling not only expanded Americans' gun rights...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is returning to a new term to take up some familiar topics — guns and abortion — and concerns about ethics swirling around the justices. The year also will have a heavy focus on social media and how free speech protections apply online. A big unknown is whether the court will be asked to weigh in on any aspect of the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump and others or efforts in some states to keep the Republican off the 2024 presidential ballot because of his role in trying to overturn the r...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court opened its new term Monday with a case about prison terms for drug dealers and rejections of hundreds of appeals, including one from an attorney who pushed a plan to keep former President Donald Trump in power. The court turned away attorney John Eastman's effort to have a lower-court ruling thrown out that said Eastman and Trump had "more likely than not" committed a crime by trying to keep Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. Justice Clarence Thomas, who once e...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is reinstating a regulation aimed at reining in the proliferation of ghost guns, firearms without serial numbers that have been turning up at crime scenes across the nation in increasing numbers. The court on Tuesday voted 5-4 to put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in Texas that invalidated the Biden administration's regulation of ghost gun kits. The regulation will be in effect while the administration appeals the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans — and potentially the Supr...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that state courts can curtail the actions of their legislatures when it comes to federal redistricting and elections, rejecting arguments by North Carolina Republicans that could have dramatically altered races for Congress and president in that state and beyond. The justices by a 6-3 vote upheld a decision by North Carolina's top court that struck down a congressional districting plan as excessively partisan under state law. The high court did, though, indicate there could be limits on state c...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh aligned with the court's liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven districts in a s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Google, Twitter and Facebook in lawsuits seeking to hold them liable for terrorist attacks. But the justices sidestepped the big issue hovering over the cases, the federal law that shields social media companies from being sued over content posted by others. The justices unanimously rejected a lawsuit alleging that the companies allowed their platforms to be used to aid and abet an attack at a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people in 2017. In the case of an American college student w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative justices holding the Supreme Court's majority seem likely to sink President Joe Biden's plan to wipe away or reduce student loans held by millions of Americans. In arguments lasting more than three hours Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts led his conservative colleagues in questioning the administration's authority to broadly cancel federal student loans because of the COVID-19 emergency. The plan has so far been blocked by Republican-appointed judges on lower courts. It was not clear that any of the six j...
WASHINGTON (AP) — In its first case about the federal law that is credited with helping create the modern internet, the Supreme Court seemed unlikely Tuesday to side with a family wanting to hold Google liable for the death of their daughter in a terrorist attack. At the same time, the justices also signaled in arguments lasting two and a half hours that they are wary of Google's claims that a 1996 law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, affords it, Twitter, Facebook and other companies far-reaching immunity from lawsuits over t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court seemed skeptical Wednesday of a lawsuit trying to hold social media companies responsible for a terrorist attack at a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people. During arguments at the high court several justices underscored that there was no evidence linking Twitter, Facebook and Google directly to the 2017 attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul. The family of a man killed in the attack says the companies aided and abetted the attack because they assisted in the growth of the Islamic State group, which c...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Thursday an eight-month investigation that included more than 120 interviews and revealed shortcomings in how sensitive documents are secured has failed to find who leaked a draft of the court's opinion overturning abortion rights. Ninety-seven employees, including the justices' law clerks, swore under oath that they did not disclose a draft of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, the court said. It was unclear whether the justices themselves were questioned about the leak, w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight months, 126 formal interviews and a 23-page report later, the Supreme Court said it has failed to discover who leaked a draft of the court's opinion overturning abortion rights. The report released by the court Thursday is the apparent culmination of an investigation ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts a day after the May leak of the draft to Politico. On Friday, in response to questions, the head of the investigation added in a statement that the court's nine justices had been interviewed as part of the probe and t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court 's conservative majority sounded sympathetic Monday to a Christian graphic artist who objects to designing wedding websites for gay couples, the latest collision of religion and gay rights to land at the high court. The designer and her supporters say that ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs. Her opponents, meanwhile, say that if she wins, a range of businesses will be able to discriminate, refusing to se...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Thursday to decide whether the Biden administration can broadly cancel student loans, keeping the program blocked for now but signaling a final answer by early summer. That's about two months before the newly extended pause on loan repayments is set to expire. The administration had wanted a court order that would have allowed the program to take effect even as court challenges proceed. The justices didn't do that, but agreed to the administration's fallback, setting arguments for late February or e...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up a dispute over a blocked Biden administration policy that would prioritize deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk. Republican-led states sued and won a nationwide court order that is meant to limit immigration officers' discretion in deciding whom to deport. The justices are hearing arguments in the case Tuesday. It's the latest example of a Republican litigation strategy that has succeeded in slowing Biden administration initiatives by going to G...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the imminent handover of former President Donald Trump's tax returns to a congressional committee after a three-year legal fight. The court, with no noted dissents, rejected Trump's plea for an order that would have prevented the Treasury Department from giving six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his businesses to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee. Alone among recent presidents, Trump refused to release his tax returns either during his successf...
WASHINGTON (AP) — New Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued her first Supreme Court opinion Monday, a short dissent in support of a death row inmate from Ohio. Jackson wrote that she would have thrown out lower court rulings in the case of Ohio inmate Davel Chinn, whose lawyers argued that the state suppressed evidence that might have altered the outcome of his trial. The two-page opinion came on the same day the high court was hearing cases that are part of a wider dispute over the power of the federal government. In her dissent, Jackson w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for 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 court lifted a temporary hold on 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. "Today, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Constitution s Speech or Debate Clause a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of former President Donald Trump's tax returns to a congressional committee. Roberts' order gives the Supreme Court time to weigh the legal issues in Trump's emergency appeal to the high court, filed Monday. Without court intervention, the tax returns could have been provided as early as Thursday by the Treasury Department to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee. Roberts gave the committee until Nov. 10 to respond. The chief j...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Maine can't exclude religious schools from a program that offers tuition aid for private education, a decision that could ease religious organizations' access to taxpayer money. The 6-3 outcome could fuel a renewed push for school choice programs in some of the 18 states that have so far not directed taxpayer money to private, religious education. The most immediate effect of the court's ruling beyond Maine probably will be in nearby Vermont, which has a similar program. The decision is t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Curbing abortion rights and expanding the right to be armed in public are long-sought goals of the conservative legal movement that the Supreme Court seems poised to deliver within the next month. The justices also could ease the use of public funds for religious schooling and constrain Biden administration efforts to fight climate change. The disputes are among 30 cases the court still has to resolve before it takes an extended summer break. It's a large, though not unprecedented, haul for the court at this point in its t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A man carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties was arrested Wednesday near Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house in Maryland after threatening to kill the justice. Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, California, was charged with the attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice. During a court hearing, he consented to remain in federal custody for now. Roske was dressed in black when he arrived by taxi just after 1 a.m. outside Kavanaugh's home in a Washington suburb. He had a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A draft opinion circulated among Supreme Court justices suggests that earlier this year a majority of them had thrown support behind overturning the 1973 case Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide, according to a report published Monday night in Politico. It's unclear if the draft represents the court's final word on the matter. The Associated Press could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the draft Politico posted, which if verified marks a shocking revelation of the high court's secretive deliberation p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned lower-court orders that have blocked the Biden administration from ending a controversial Trump-era immigration program for asylum-seekers. Questions from conservative and liberal justices during nearly two hours of arguments suggested that the court could free the administration to end the "Remain in Mexico" policy that forces some people seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico for their hearings. President Joe Biden suspended the program on his first day in office. After Texas a...
