#Supreme Court

(CNN) — Living with the virus, as the world is finding out, is easier said than done. From the US Supreme Court to Australian Open tennis courts, and from a French President vowing to "piss off" the unvaccinated to China's iron fist pre-Olympic lockdowns, Covid-19's political fallout is ever more contagious.

American workers are dying at an unprecedented rate — thousands of healthcare workers have already been killed by COVID-19. The Supreme Court may allow this to continue. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 807,050 healthcare worker infections and 3,067 deaths. But they acknowledge that this is a vast undercount — the tally is based on fewer than 20 percent of COVID-19 case reports that list the occupation of the infected person. The actual count could be 4-5 times greater. Unofficial tallies have counted twice as many deaths as the CDC. Still, even the lower number is 30 times higher than usual — the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported only 94 healthcare work-related deaths in 2019.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to review a Washington state law that makes it far easier for ill Hanford site workers to be compensated. The Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to weigh in after it lost a case opposing the state law in U.S District Court in Eastern Washington and then an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court on Monday morning added three new cases — involving bankruptcy law, civil procedure, and workers’ compensation — to its docket for the 2021-22 term. But the orders that the justices issued from their private conference on Jan. 7 were just as noteworthy for what they did not do: The court did not act on a pair of petitions challenging the consideration of race in the undergraduate admissions process at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, nor did it act on a petition filed by a website designer who does not want to design wedding websites for same-sex couples.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases on Tuesday that could impact thousands of unauthorized immigrants detained in the United States. Unauthorized immigrants are often detained indefinitely in prison-like settings while their immigration cases are adjudicated. The plaintiffs in the two cases coming before the high court argue that immigrants held in detention for longer than six months are entitled to a bond hearing in which a judge determines whether they should continue to be detained. (Oral arguments in the two cases , Garland v. Gonzalez and Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez , will be heard Tuesday morning.)

As arguments approach in the most significant Supreme Court environment battle of the decade, teams of lawyers are already making their case for how the justices should view EPA’s climate authority. When the justices take the bench on Feb. 28 to hear arguments in West Virginia v. EPA, they...

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case involving an Obama-era power-plant rule that’s no longer in effect, and never really was. The Court has agreed to hear so many high-profile cases this term, on subjects ranging from abortion to gun rights to vaccine mandates, that this one—West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency—has received relatively little attention beyond legal circles. But its potential ramifications are profound. At a minimum, the Court’s ruling on the case is likely to make it difficult for the Biden Administration to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions. The ruling could also go much further and hobble the Administration’s efforts to protect the environment and public health.

Jan 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away an industry group's bid to revive a decision made by the Environmental Protection Agency under former President Donald Trump to allow expanded sales of gasoline that has a higher ethanol blend, called E15. The action by the justices...

“There are three quarters of a million new [COVID] cases yesterday. . . [t]hat is 10 times as many as when OSHA put in this ruling. The hospitals are today, yesterday, full. . . . Can you ask us—is that what you are doing now—to stop this vaccination rule with nearly one million people, nearly three quarters of a million people, new cases every day?” This was the dramatic question asked on Friday by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer of Scott Keller, one of the attorneys seeking a stay of an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) promulgated by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OHSA) in the case of National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor . This so called “Test-or-Vaccinate” mandate requires employers across the country with more than 100 employees to implement either vaccination or testing and masking policies for their employees. A majority of the Justices seem poised to endorse not only a temporary stay of the standard, but a permanent injunction against OSHA’s power to act, and the country will be worse for it.

Center for American Liberty CEO and civil rights attorney Harmeet Dhillon predicted a "split ruling" out of the Supreme Court in the case that will determine the constitutionality of President Biden's COVID-19 OSHA vaccine regulations. The Supreme Court on Friday heard close to four hours of oral arguments over two...

A prominent immigrant rights nonprofit based in Seattle is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. Five years ago, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people detained in Washington state who had previously been deported but who returned to the U.S. to seek protection. Immigration officials were detaining them indefinitely without a bond hearing. That's despite the fact that these individuals had already passed an initial screening and found to have a credible fear.

Today, January 10, 2022, the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on COVID-19 for employers with 100 or more employees takes effect. Although many had anticipated that the U.S. Supreme Court might rule on the legality of the OSHA ETS prior to today, the Court’s failure to do so means that covered employers should be prepared to comply. A full discussion of the ETS’s requirements is available in our previous advisory: Here We Go Again: Sixth Circuit Lifts Stay of OSHA COVID-19 ETS for Employers With 100 or More Employees. Additional guidance from MIOSHA late last week suggests that covered employers in Michigan may have an additional two-week period, until January 24, 2022, to come into full compliance.

The basement of a Colorado Springs apartment building was covered under the state law that permits deadly force in defense of a home, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Monday. The decision upholds a lower court's determination that Patrick Rau was able to claim immunity from prosecution for shooting and...

The Ohio Supreme Court is inviting local courts to apply for grants to upgrade technology. Introduced in 2015, the grants, offered across the state under the Ohio Courts Technology Initiative, have totaled $32.4 million. “I started this program seven years ago to help local courts tap into innovations to make...

January 10, 2022 - The Supreme Court's 2021 term is in full swing, and several trends we predicted for the Court's "new normal" appear to be taking hold. Justice Thomas continues to be an active questioner at oral argument, and all the Justices seem to appreciate the new hybrid format's extra time for questions — sometimes extending arguments by more than 40 minutes.

Austin (WBAP/KLIFI) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is wants the Texas Supreme Court to toss a whistleblower lawsuit against him. Last February four former officials with the AG’s office said they were wrongly fired after accusing Paxton of accepting bribes and other improprieties. In October, the 3rd...

In his nine-page 2021 year-end Report on the Federal Judiciary, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has tried to meet head-on current criticism in Congress and the media that the Court finds itself, as Court analyst Linda Greenhouse succinctly puts it, “in a danger zone as a willing – and willful – participant in a war for the soul of the country.”

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it will review a dispute over a recent increase in fees that Chapter 11 debtors are required to pay the federal government. The issue, which stems from a 2017 law that hiked the government fees that most large companies in bankruptcy must pay, has divided top appellate courts across the country.