US Legal News

The US Supreme Court issued an unsigned order Tuesday allowing Alabama to use a congressional map that is expected to benefit Republican candidates during the midterms, effectively eliminating a district currently represented by a Black Democrat. Over the dissent of the three liberal justices, the court released the order despite the fact that Alabama has [...]

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PLBechly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to establish government oversight of emerging artificial intelligence technologies. Section 3 of the order calls for developing and maintaining a “classified benchmarking process to assess the advanced cyber capabilities of AI models.” Specifically, the administration wants to determine which models constitute a “covered frontier model,” a [...]

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Lauren Ban // JURIST

Plaintiffs on Monday filed an appeal of the decision not to block President Donald Trump’s executive order (EO) directed at placing restrictions on voting by mail. The appeal is the latest development in the fight by advocacy organizations to stop the Trump administration from reshaping the mail-in ballot guidelines ahead of the November midterm elections. [...]

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The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a Notice of Appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Monday in a case seeking personal information regarding Massachusetts voters. Following the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s refusal to turn over the information, the administration filed a lawsuit. In the complaint, the administration argued that [...]

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The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Monday that a Trump administration policy banning transgender troops from military service is illegal. In a split decision, the court concluded that the administration may stop transgender recruits from joining, but could not immediately remove transgender troops who are already actively serving. The [...]

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qimono / Pixabay

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Friday cleared the way for Texas to enforce Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), staying a district court injunction that had blocked the state immigration enforcement measure from taking effect. The decision allows Texas law enforcement officers to arrest people suspected of entering the country without [...]

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The Louisiana Senate has approved House Bill 211, a measure that would create new restrictions on public camping and establish court-supervised programs for individuals experiencing homelessness. The approval comes amid debate among lawmakers, advocates, and community members over how the state should address homelessness. Under to the legislation, unauthorized public camping could become a criminal [...]

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© JURIST / Jaclyn Belczyk

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed Senate Bill 121 (SB 121) into law on Friday, approving a new congressional map that dismantles a majority-Black district. The new map eliminates Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district, reverting the state largely to the configuration it used for the 2022 elections: five safe Republican seats and a single Democratic-leaning seat [...]

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation Friday that places limits on where and how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents can enforce immigration law in the state. The new legislation also prohibits state and local police from cooperating with ICE to enforce civil laws. The new laws are included in the state’s Fiscal Year [...]

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Photo: @victorqiuphoto / Instagram

The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Black prisoner on death row in Mississippi was unreasonably denied his right to challenge a prosecutor’s race-neutral justifications for removing Black jurors. According to the prosecution, Terry Pitchford was 18 years old in 2004 when he robbed a grocery store in Mississippi with an accomplice, a crime [...]

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