A federal judge in Texas has reopened the legal battle over the federal government’s regulation of so-called “ghost guns,” ruling that key portions of a Biden-era rule violate both the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. The decision may sound like a direct rejection of the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling upholding…
Texas Classrooms, the Ten Commandments, and the Supreme Court
The Ten Commandments are headed toward another possible encounter with the Supreme Court, this time by way of Texas, two groups of public-school families, and a sharply divided federal appeals court. On August 17, more than two dozen Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Baha’i, Unitarian Universalist, and nonreligious families asked the Supreme Court to review Texas Senate…
Mail-In Voting, Executive Power, and the Supreme Court
Another election year, another courtroom battle over voting rules. At this point, constitutional lawyers might as well keep overnight bags packed beside their desks. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to suspend lower-court rulings blocking portions of the President’s executive order on citizenship verification and mail-in voting. The request would allow the administration…
Who Should Enforce the Supreme Court’s Ethics Code?
The Supreme Court finally adopted a formal code of conduct in 2023, committing its members to uphold judicial integrity, avoid actual or apparent impropriety, remain impartial, disclose relevant financial interests, and refrain from political activity. What the code didn’t establish was an independent process for investigating alleged violations or determining whether a justice had failed…
The Border, the Bump, and the Citizenship Battle
The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding birthright citizenship has set off the next round of immigration politics: not just who gets citizenship after birth, but who should be allowed into the country before birth. Specifically, some have begun floating tighter restrictions on pregnant foreign visitors entering the United States. The issue is “birth tourism,” meaning foreign…
Birthright Citizenship Survives, and the Justices Bring the Receipts
The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling is one of those cases where constitutional text, history, immigration policy, presidential power, and judicial philosophy all collide in one very crowded legal hallway. The Court affirmed the lower court’s judgment against President Trump’s executive order, which sought to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to…
Supreme Court, Girls’ Sports, and the Question Nobody Can Dodge
The Supreme Court has now upheld state laws from West Virginia and Idaho barring transgender girls and women from competing on school athletic teams designated for girls and women. The Court’s conservative majority ruled that the laws don’t violate the Constitution, while all nine justices agreed that Title IX doesn’t require schools to allow transgender…
Truth, Libel, and the Media’s Very Expensive Hall Pass
Few Supreme Court precedents have shaped American political speech more than New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 decision that made it much harder for public officials, and later public figures, to win defamation lawsuits. Supporters say that high bar protects free debate, especially criticism of powerful people. Critics say it’s become a legal bunker…
When Pills, Power, and Policy Collide
A federal court decision to block telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone might sound, at first glance, like one of those niche regulatory tweaks that only healthcare lawyers and policy wonks get excited about. But in reality, this is a ruling with massive ripple effects legally, culturally, and morally. To understand why, you have to look at…
When “Protecting Voters” Becomes “Sorting by Race”
Yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court to strike down certain majority-minority congressional districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymandering has landed like a political thunderclap, though not exactly a surprising one. If you’ve been watching the Court’s trajectory on race-conscious policymaking, this feels less like a sudden detour and more like the next logical mile marker. Still,…
The Independent Christian Conservative 