Live updates: Supreme Court decisions

CNN

2 days ago

Update:
Date: 1 min ago
Title: Can states require IDs for porn sites?
Content:
Everyone agrees that minors shouldn't have access to porn.
The question for the Supreme Court in a key First Amendment case to be decided Friday is what happens when government regulations to protect young people wind up also making it harder for adults to access the material.
Texas enacted a law in 2023 that requires any website that publishes a substantial amount of content that is 'harmful to minors' to verify the age of users. Groups representing the adult entertainment industry say the law forces adults to identify themselves – such as by providing an ID – before accessing pornography, which they say 'chills' free speech rights.
Texas' law is similar to more than a dozen others across the country that require users to submit some proof of adulthood.
During oral arguments in January, several of the justices signaled they might send the case back to the 5th Circuit to have the appeals court revisit it. But others made clear they ultimately supported Texas' effort.
Update:
Date: 1 min ago
Title: How Louisiana's congressional map could have nationwide implications
Content:
Louisiana has been in court over its congressional map for years. Now, the Supreme Court will decide if state lawmakers violated the Constitution by creating a second Black-majority district.
Federal courts initially ruled that the state had likely violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing only one majority Black district out of six. After the state legislature tried to correct that problem by drawing a second Black majority district, a group of White voters sued arguing that the state violated the Constitution by relying too much on race to meet the first court's demands.
There's an inherent tension between the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law that prohibits states from curbing the power of minority voters, and the equal protection clause, which essentially bars states from considering race when they draw district boundaries. The question for the Supreme Court is how to strike that balance.
The high court's conservative majority has grown increasingly skeptical of policies of any kind that, in the court's words, pick 'winners and losers' based on race. The Supreme Court has also in recent years chipped away at the power of the Voting Rights Act, including with a 2013 decision that ended the practice of requiring states with a history of racist policies to preclear changes to their voting rights laws with the Justice Department.
The district lawmakers drew slashes diagonally for some 250 miles from Shreveport in the northwest of the state to Baton Rouge in the southeast to create a district where Black residents make up some 54% of voters – up from about 24% under the old lines. Rep. Cleo Fields, a Democrat, won the seat in last year's election – adding a second Democrat to the state's delegation.
Update:
Date: 14 min ago
Title: Supreme Court tees up blockbuster final day of term
Content:
It's a blockbuster last day at the Supreme Court in which the justices will hand down six opinions in some of the biggest cases of the year, including those dealing with Trump's birthright citizenship order.
Also on the docket: A challenge from religious parents who want to opt their children out of reading LGBTQ books in school and a First Amendment suit over a Texas law that requires people to verify their age before accessing porn online.
The court will also decide the fate of a government task force that recommends which preventive health care services must be covered at no cost under Obamacare.
And it will decide a challenge over Louisiana's congressional districts that questions how far states may go in considering race when they draw maps to fix a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Update:
Date: 3 min ago
Title: What to know about birthright citizenship, in charts
Content:
The US is among dozens of countries, mostly in the Americas, that grant unconditional birthright citizenship to anyone born in its territory under a legal principle known as jus soli, Latin for 'right of the soil.'
More than 20 states, mostly led by Democrats, previously filed lawsuits in two different federal courts arguing that the president has no authority to change or override a constitutional amendment. Civil rights groups and expectant parents have brought similar legal action.
Update:
Date: 20 min ago
Title: What is the birthright citizenship case about?
Content:
President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court in March to allow him to move forward with plans to end birthright citizenship, elevating a fringe legal theory that several lower courts have resoundingly rejected.
For more than a century, courts have understood the text of the 14th Amendment to guarantee 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States' to be US citizens, no matter the immigration status of their parents.
In a series of emergency appeals, the Trump administration argued that lower courts had gone too far in handing down nationwide injunctions blocking the controversial policy, and it asked the justices to limit the impact of those orders.
A federal judge in January described his executive order as 'blatantly unconstitutional' and blocked its implementation. Days later, a judge in Maryland said that Trump's plan 'runs counter to our nation's 250-year history of citizenship by birth.'
Several conservative justices seemed open to backing the president on the issue of the nationwide orders, saying lower courts have gone too far. But they also didn't seem ready to endorse a departure from the longstanding precedent upholding birthright citizenship.
Update:
Date: 19 min ago
Title: All about the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship
Content:
The 14th Amendment clearly states that American citizenship is a birthright for all people who are born on American soil.
Its first section reads:
'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'
Before the Civil War, states didn't necessarily have to follow the provisions stated in the Bill of Rights; only Congress had to. The 14th Amendment changed that.
'Citizenship was a central question left open by the original Constitution,' says Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. 'At the time it was written, the Constitution assumed citizenship, but it didn't provide any rules for it. In the infamous Dred Scott decision, the Chief Justice said African Americans can't be citizens of the US and 'had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.''
The US Supreme Court's ruling in the Dred Scott case, named for a slave who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom, has since been widely condemned.
'The 14th Amendment was designed to overturn this decision and define citizenship once and for all, and it was based on birthright,' Rosen says. 'It is really important that it's a vision of citizenship based on land rather than blood. It is an idea that anyone can be an American if they commit themselves to our Constitutional values.'
Read more about the protections outlined in the amendment here.