Last month, a federal judge known for creatively reading the law to achieve conservative policy outcomes handed down a decision that would open a significant loophole in US gun laws. Now it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide whether to let this decision, which would make it quite easy for violent criminals to obtain firearms, go into effect.

The case involves so-called “ghost guns,” weapons that are sold dismantled in ready-to-assemble kits. Judge Reed O’Connor’s opinion in VanDerStok v. Garland would effectively immunize these weapons from federal laws requiring gun buyers to submit to a background check, as well as laws requiring all guns to have a serial number, which can be used to track them.

The laws requiring background checks and serial numbers apply to “any weapon ... which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” It also applies to “the frame or receiver of any such weapon,” the skeletal part of a firearm that houses other components, such as the barrel or trigger mechanism. Thus, even if someone purchases a series of firearm parts to assemble a gun at home, they will still face a background check when they purchase the gun’s frame or receiver.

Ghost guns are often sold as kits, a collection of gun parts that can be assembled into a functional gun. Often, the frame or receiver in this kit is sold in a condition that isn’t entirely ready for use — though, according to the Justice Department, these incomplete frames and receivers are often very easy to finish. In some cases, a ghost gun buyer can build a working gun after drilling a single additional hole in the kit’s frame. In other cases, they merely need to sand off a small plastic rail.

Nevertheless, O’Connor ruled in his VanDerStok decision that these kits are exempt from the background check and serial number laws. Recall that these laws apply to “any weapon” that can be “readily converted to expel a projectile.” O’Connor reasoned that “weapon parts ... are not ‘weapons,’” only a fully complete firearm is. And thus the kit as a whole does not count as a “weapon.”

(Reuters) - A group founded by the conservative activist instrumental in the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision rejecting affirmative action in collegiate admissions on Wednesday sued an Atlanta-based venture capital fund that supports Black women who own small businesses, accusing it of unlawful racial discrimination.

The nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights, founded by affirmative action foe Edward Blum, said in its lawsuit that the firm, called Fearless Fund, is violating Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a U.S. law barring racial bias in private contracts, by making only Black women eligible in a grant competition. It was filed in federal court in Atlanta.

Fearless Fund was launched in 2019 by three prominent Black women - actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, entrepreneur Arian Simone and corporate executive Ayana Parsons - and counts as investors Bank of America, Costco Wholesale, General Mills, Mastercard and JPMorgan Chase.

Lawsuits brought by another group founded by Blum led to the Supreme Court's June ruling declaring unlawful the race-conscious student admissions policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The new lawsuit is Blum's first since that decision.

A group that supports people who need out-of-state abortions in the Deep South sued Alabama’s Republican attorney general Monday, following his threats to prosecute anyone who assists residents who want to travel out of state for an abortion.

The Yellowhammer Fund argued Attorney General Steve Marshall’s threats create an illegal chilling effect on the group’s freedom of expression and have forced the group to stop operating its abortion fund due to fear of prosecution.

Alabama banned nearly all abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, even in cases of rape or incest. Lawmakers in the state are also considering legislation that would allow people who get abortions to be prosecuted for murder and assault in certain situations.

Earlier this year, Marshall threatened to prosecute anyone who “aids and abets” in an abortion. The confusion surrounding that statement resulted in “an increased sense of fear and uncertainty for Plaintiff and pregnant people alike,” the group said in its complaint.

“The Attorney General’s threats violate Yellowhammer Fund’s constitutional rights to free expression, association, travel, and due process and intrude on the sovereignty of states where abortion is legal,” the group wrote.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) fired back at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) after the 2024 presidential candidate attacked a state law Pitzker signed letting non-U.S. citizens apply to be police officers.

“This man isn’t smart enough to be president,” Pritzker said of DeSantis on Monday, writing a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“I proudly signed the bill allowing legal permanent residents & DACA recipients in IL to serve their communities as police officers. Our military already does it & it’s the right thing to do—no matter what lies the right-wing spreads,” Pritzker continued.

DeSantis, in a post on X on Sunday, blasted Pritzker for the bill, echoing much of the criticism from Illinois conservatives after the bill was signed last week.

In theory, there is no branch in the American constitutional system that exists above or beyond the reach of the others.

“The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others,” James Madison observed in Federalist No. 51.

Last week, Justice Samuel Alito gave a slightly different account of the relationship between the “departments” of government, at least as it relates to the relative power of the Supreme Court.

“Congress did not create the Supreme Court,” Alito said in an interview with writers from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito continued. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

Alito was responding to a question about the prospect of ethics rules for the court. And he’s probably right that Congress has no authority to micromanage the conduct of individual justices. The legislature can’t force the justices to use one interpretive method over another or promulgate rules on how they reason through particular cases and decide them.

But Alito’s claim is much bigger than a narrow point about the overall independence of the court; it is a categorical statement of judicial supremacy that also stands as a glimpse into the arrogance of one justice on a court that falsely sees itself as the only and final authority on what the Constitution means.

MADISON – The new liberal majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is taking its first step by firing the director of the state courts system.

Randy Koschnick, who has held the position since 2017 when he was appointed by the outgoing conservative majority, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he received a phone call Monday afternoon from Justice Jill Karofsky informing him there were enough votes to "fire you tomorrow."

Koschnick received the call a day before a swearing in ceremony for the court's newest justice, Janet Protasiewicz, was set to take place in the Wisconsin State Capitol while he was attending a conference for court administrators.

"It's a wrecking ball," Koschnick said in a phone interview while at a New York Yankees home game. "I'm not sure what my options are. I'm still exploring my options. I'd like to continue to serve."

Karofsky did not respond to email messages and voicemails from the Journal Sentinel late Monday. Conservative radio host Dan O'Donnell first reported the phone call from Karofsky.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced his 2024 Republican presidential primary bid with a big claim.

Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, Suarez boasted about turning his “Democrat-dominated city into one that has successfully reelected this Republican mayor in 2017 and 2021 by nearly 80% of the vote.”

Suarez is right. He won election and reelection in Miami with 85% and 78% of votes cast, respectively. And that sounds impressive. But here’s what he didn’t say: Just 14% of voters went to the polls — fewer than 31,000 in a city with more than 217,000 registered voters in 2021.

That’s not a mandate from his constituents. Far from it.

Poor voter engagement is not a Suarez problem — it’s a Miami problem. It’s partly — though probably not entirely — the result of the elections for mayor and City Commission taking place in odd years when no other big races are on the ballot. Off-cycle voter turnout is generally lower.

So why does Miami put important decisions on the ballot when voters aren’t paying attention? In November, most of the City Commission will be up for reelection, and we doubt many residents know about it.

Voter participation is an embarrassment for Miami-Dade County’s largest city — a world-class destination, tech hub and financial center. Turnout hasn’t surpassed 16% in any election in the past decade. It once got as low as 8.5% in a 2015 runoff, data from the county’s Supervisor of Elections office shows.

A U.S. judge on Monday blocked the state of Idaho at least temporarily from prosecuting doctors who refer patients out of state to get an abortion, finding that would violate a medical provider's right to free speech.

District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the District of Idaho agreed with a challenge led by Planned Parenthood that Republican Attorney General Raul Labrador's interpretation of the state's criminal abortion law was "chilling" to providers' First Amendment rights.

Idaho's abortion ban calls for revoking the license of any healthcare professional who assists in performing an abortion. Labrador interpreted the word "assists" as prohibiting an Idaho medical provider from referring a woman across state lines for an abortion.

But the judge found Labrador's interpretation went too far and enjoined him from prosecuting such cases until an underlying legal challenge to the abortion law is settled in court.

"The Court finds that the Medical Providers have established that there is a genuine threat of prosecution. This threat has resulted in the chilling of the Medical Providers' speech - a well-established concrete injury," wrote Winmill, who was appointed by Democratic former President Bill Clinton.

The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section published a softball interview with Samuel Alito on Friday in which the Supreme Court justice once again flaunted his ability to troll the public without facing any consequences. The piece—authored by a conservative commentator and a Republican lawyer rather than real journalists—centered on Alito’s claim that Congress cannot impose an ethics code, or perhaps any rules whatsoever, on the Supreme Court. “No provision in the Constitution,” he declared, gives Congress “the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.” That declaration drew the most attention and controversy, in part because the justice appears to have forgotten about a provision of the Constitution that explicitly grants Congress authority to regulate the court, even using the word regulation.

This focus on Alito’s claim of absolute immunity from democratic accountability, however, obscured an equally strange and offensive comment from the interview. After describing his conservative colleagues’ differing methodologies, the justice told his interlocutors: “I don’t see that there’s a difference in interpretive method” among the three liberal members of the court. His message was hard to miss: The Republican-appointed justices have unique and complex approaches to the law, “very serious differences” that lead to fissures within the 6–3 supermajority, demonstrating intellectual integrity over results-based judging. The Democratic-appointed justices, by contrast, apply the exact same methods, which typically lead to the same outcomes. The implication seems to be that the conservatives are neutral arbiters of the law who follow unbiased judicial philosophies to their logical conclusions, while the progressive justices are inclined toward activist judging to reach liberal ends.

Conservative media figures frequently flatten the three progressive justices’ jurisprudence in this way, accusing them of voting in lockstep to reach Democrats’ preferred results. It is no surprise that Alito would echo this complaint, given his evidently avid consumption of right-wing media. But only a victim of late-stage Fox News–brain could support this conclusion. Today’s left-leaning justices use very different tools to interpret the law. Their methodologies are principled and personal, leading to surprise rulings every term. On many big issues of the day, do they reach the same bottom-line conclusion? Sure. But on plenty of other big issues, they disagree sharply. And even when they do reach parallel verdicts, they often follow divergent paths to reach their destination.

Before turning to those justices, let’s examine the dichotomy that Alito set out in his therapy session with the article’s authors, James Taranto and David Rivkin. (Side note: Rivkin is a lawyer with business before the court in a case next term and also is representing Leonard Leo’s efforts to block the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigations into Leo’s dark money groups). Alito highlighted his own disagreement with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and John Roberts to illustrate divisions within the conservative bloc. Of Thomas, he noted a tendency to give “less weight” to precedent, which Alito deemed “a virtue of his jurisprudence” because he “sticks to his guns.” Of Gorsuch, he pointed out a focus on pure legal questions over real-world impact, calling the justice “definitely not a consequentialist.” Of Roberts, he said the chief justice “puts a high premium on consensus” and seeks “to protect the prerogatives of the judiciary.” Then, on the other hand, he put the progressive justices in the same box, accusing Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson of using the same “method,” without elaborating on what it might be. (A real journalist might have asked the justice to flesh out this remark, but there were no real journalists in the room.)

Alito is mistaken.