Latest news with #JohnRoberts
The Hill
an hour ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Supreme Court revives terror victim lawsuits against Palestinian groups
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law allowing Americans injured by acts of terror in the Middle East to take Palestinian leadership groups to U.S. courts for damages. In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled that the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (PSJVTA) does not violate the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s due process rights by forcing them to consent to federal courts' authority. The decision means that lawsuits by U.S. victims of terrorist attacks in Israel can move forward in American courts. The justices reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit's ruling finding that the law denied the groups a fair legal process and directed the lower court to hold further proceedings consistent with the court's opinion. 'The PSJVTA reasonably ties the assertion of federal jurisdiction over the PLO and PA to conduct that involves the United States and implicates sensitive foreign policy matters within the prerogative of the political branches,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. 'We hold that the statute's provision for personal jurisdiction comports with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment,' he said. Congress enacted the law in 2019 to let victim lawsuits move forward against the PA and PLO, responding to a series of court decisions that found the victim's families had no jurisdiction to sue. The justices consolidated two cases for arguments in April, a Justice Department appeal and an appeal by the family of Ari Fuld, an Israeli American fatally stabbed at a shopping mall in the West Bank in 2018. The Justice Department argued that Congress determined the PA and PLO would be made open to U.S. civil suits if they made payments to representatives of terrorists who injured or killed Americans or maintained a certain presence in the country. Former U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who held the role in the Biden administration, wrote in court papers that a lower court's finding those conditions fall short rests on a 'rigid and misconceived' application of the law. The Biden administration initially intervened in Fuld's case — which received bipartisan support, including through a friend-of-the-court brief authorized by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — and another case brought by 11 American families who sued the Palestinian leadership groups two decades ago for several attacks in Israel, winning more than $650 million in a 2015 trial. In April, under the Trump administration, Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler argued before the justices that the legislative and the executive branches together determined that it would prevent terrorism to find the PA and PLO consented to jurisdiction in federal courts. The justices should not override that assessment, owing both branches 'virtually absolute deference,' he said. A lawyer for the PA and PLO argued that personal jurisdiction is 'over and above' what Congress can prescribe. He pointed to piracy as an example, noting that while piracy has been illegal since the nation's founding, 'no one' thought Congress would let pirates be tried in the U.S. without being present there. 'That's never been the law,' lawyer Mitchell Berger said.
NBC News
an hour ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Supreme Court allows terrorism victims to sue Palestinian entities
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that victims of terrorism can sue Palestinian entities in U.S. courts, upholding a law passed by Congress that allows such claims to be brought. The court held unanimously that the 2019 law, called the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, does not violate the due process rights of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority. The law reasonably took account of "sensitive foreign policy matters within the prerogative of the political branches," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. As such, the law "comports with the Due Process Clause," he added. It was an unusual case in which Congress stepped in to legislate on specific litigation after the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction to hear the claims. The lawsuits, brought under a law called the Anti-Terrorism Act, were filed by various victims, including the family of Ari Fuld, an American citizen who was killed by a Palestinian terrorist at a West Bank shopping mall in 2018. Other plaintiffs involved in the litigation had previously won a $655 million judgment that the lower court threw out. The technical legal question was whether the defendants 'consented' to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Congress concluded in the 2019 law that they had consented if two conditions were met: that the defendants paid a terrorist convicted of or killed while committing a terrorist attack, and that the organization in question conducted any activity within the U.S. within 15 days after the law was enacted. The Palestine Liberation Organization represents the Palestinian people internationally, while the Palestinian Authority exercises partial domestic government authority in the West Bank.
CNN
an hour ago
- Politics
- CNN
Supreme Court allows victims of terrorist attacks to sue the Palestinian Authority
The Supreme Court on Friday said that the families of victims of terrorist attacks in Israel may sue the Palestinian Authority in a decision that will likely make it easier for victims of other overseas attacks with ties to Palestinian groups to seek damages in US courts. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the court and the vote was unanimous.
American Military News
a day ago
- Health
- American Military News
Supreme Court upholds child sex change ban in Tennessee
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law on Wednesday that bans sex changes for minors in the state, ruling that the prohibition on 'certain medical treatments for transgender minors' is not discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said, 'Tennessee's law prohibiting certain medical treatments for transgender minors is not subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and satisfies rational basis review.' According to Fox News, the case, 'United States v. Skrmetti,' was originally brought against Tennessee's Senate Bill 1, which bans 'all medical treatments intended to allow 'a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor's sex' or to treat 'purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor's sex and asserted identity.'' Tennessee's Senate Bill 1 prevents healthcare providers from performing sex change procedures for minors with gender dysphoria and from using hormone and puberty blocker treatments to allow minors to transition to a different sex. READ MORE: Supreme Court allows AR-15, high-capacity magazine bans to continue In the Supreme Court's majority opinion on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, 'This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound.' 'The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements. Nor does it afford us license to decide them as we see best,' Roberts added. 'Our role is not 'to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic' of the law before us, Beach Communications, 508 U. S., at 313, but only to ensure that it does not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. Having concluded it does not, we leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process.' Following the Supreme Court's ruling on Wednesday, conservative political commentator Matt Walsh released a statement saying that he was 'grateful' to be a part of a 'truly historic victory' after years of fighting against child sex change procedures. 'Three years ago, we launched our investigation into Vanderbilt's child mutilation practices. We rallied in the state capital. Our lawmakers responded with a law banning child mutilation in the state,' Walsh tweeted. 'Today the Supreme Court upheld our law, which means child mutilation can be banned anywhere and everywhere in the country. And should be.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Transgender rights advocates gird for more fights after US Supreme Court loss
By Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to transgender rights by upholding a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for adolescents, but legal experts said the ruling was narrower than it could have been and left open the door for challenges to the rising number of government restrictions aimed at transgender people. The court decided that Tennessee's Republican-backed law, which prohibits medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormones for people under age 18 experiencing gender dysphoria, did not violate the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment promise of equal protection, as challengers to the measure had argued. The court's six conservative justices powered the ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, with its three liberal members dissenting. Transgender rights advocates called the decision a major setback while the law's backers welcomed the Supreme Court's endorsement and urged other states to adopt similar restrictions. Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person's gender identity and sex assigned at birth. The ruling rejected the assertion made by the law's challengers that the measure was a form of discrimination - based on sex or transgender status - that should trigger tougher judicial review and make it harder to defend in court under 14th Amendment protections. Instead, the ruling concluded that the ban classified people based on age and medical diagnosis, and the court applied what is called a rational-basis review, a deferential analysis that merely requires a rational connection between a law and a legitimate state interest. Application of rational basis review by courts generally would make it easier to defend a broader array of measures curbing transgender rights, from bathroom use to sports participation. But Wednesday's ruling did not foreclose the possibility of courts in the future applying tougher scrutiny and finding unlawful discrimination in certain measures targeting transgender people. 'PLENTY OF TOOLS' Karen Loewy, a lawyer with the LGBT rights group Lambda Legal, called the ruling heartbreaking for transgender youths and their families but saw some hope. "I think the court here went out of its way to confine what it was doing here to a restriction on care for minors," Loewy said, adding that it "left us plenty of tools to fight other bans on healthcare and other discriminatory actions that target transgender people." The court concluded that Tennessee did not create a sex-based category or specifically draw a line between transgender people and others, said Georgetown University law professor Paul Smith, who has argued many cases at the Supreme Court including a landmark gay rights victory in 2003. "Other statutes may not be viewed the same," Smith said. Roberts wrote that the "fierce scientific and policy debates" concerning the medical treatments at issue justified the court's deferential review of Tennessee's ban. Roberts added that questions about these treatments should be left "to the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process." Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a written dissent disagreed with that view. Judicial scrutiny, Sotomayor said, "has long played an essential role in guarding against legislative efforts to impose upon individuals the state's views about how people of a particular sex (or race) should live or look or act." The ban's proponents welcomed the ruling and the court's reasoning. "Voters, through their elected representatives, should have the power to decide what they believe on serious issues like this one," said Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican who signed the ban into law. Lee added that the measure protects young people from "irreversible, life-altering medical decisions." "This ruling sends a strong message to the country that states have a clear right and path forward to protect children from irreversible body mutilation," added Republican state legislator Jack Johnson, one of the lead sponsors of the Tennessee measure. The issue of transgender rights is a flashpoint in the U.S. culture wars. Tennessee's law is one of 25 such policies enacted by conservative state lawmakers around the United States, and various states have adopted other restrictions on transgender people. Donald Trump in particular has taken a hard line against transgender rights since returning to the presidency in January. TRANSGENDER STATUS Tennessee's law, passed in 2023, aims to encourage minors to "appreciate their sex" by prohibiting healthcare workers from prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to help them live as "a purported identity inconsistent with the minor's sex." In litigation brought by plaintiffs including transgender individuals and former President Joe Biden's administration, a federal judge blocked the law as likely violating the 14th Amendment. The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently reversed the judge's decision. Lawyers for the challengers noted that the Supreme Court did not go as far as the 6th Circuit to decline to recognize transgender people as a class of people whose status requires courts to apply tougher judicial review to laws targeting them. The Supreme Court left that question unresolved. Future legal challenges may hinge on whether a law draws a line between transgender people and others, Smith said. "If a state refused to hire transgender people or excluded them from juries, for example, that might well lead the court to apply heightened scrutiny under a sex discrimination theory or under the theory that such a line itself warrants heightened scrutiny," Smith said. "Targeting transgender people out of animus, as other more-recent restrictions have done, still violates equal protection," said Pratik Shah, an attorney who also helped represent the plaintiffs. However, three conservative justices who wrote or joined opinions concurring in Wednesday's outcome - Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito - agreed with the 6th Circuit that laws based on transgender status do not merit tougher legal scrutiny like laws that divide people based on race or sex. Such a ruling "would require courts to oversee all manner of policy choices normally committed to legislative discretion," Barrett wrote. Though some transgender advocates had expressed concern that a ruling favoring Tennessee could bolster restrictions on transgender adults as well, Jennifer Levi of the LGBT rights legal group GLAD Law said Wednesday's decision was explicitly limited to care for minors and that challenges to restrictions on adults remain viable under existing precedent. The Supreme Court also did not rule on a separate argument made by the plaintiffs that laws like Tennessee's violate the right of parents to make decisions concerning the medical care of their children. Competent adults could similarly claim a right to make medical decisions about their own bodies, Smith said. In a previous major case involving transgender rights, the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that a landmark federal law forbidding workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees. Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the Tennessee case, made history in the case in December as the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the Supreme Court. Strangio emphasized the narrowness of Wednesday's ruling, but acknowledged its practical impact. "Of course the most immediate effect is on our clients, other young transgender people in Tennessee and across the country who need medical care that the government has stepped in to ban," Strangio said. "And for them we are devastated."
