Court rejects coach's appeal over prayer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is rejecting an appeal from a former Seattle-area football coach who lost his job because he refused to stop praying on the field.
But four conservative justices say Tuesday that they are interested in former Bremerton High School Coach Joe Kennedy's case and the legal issues it raises.
Lower courts said Kennedy was not immediately entitled to get his job back. Courts rejected Kennedy's claim that the school district violated his speech rights by putting him on paid leave after he continued to pray at midfield following games.
Justice Samuel Alito says the high court is right to reject the appeal for now, but says he is troubled by lower courts' handling of the case. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas joined with Alito.
Justices release censored appeal by foreign government
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - An unidentified foreign government is asking the Supreme Court to get involved in a case that may be part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
The justices on Tuesday granted the government's request to file a censored version of an appeal to the high court in which the country is fighting a grand jury subpoena and a $50,000-a-day fine for not complying with the subpoena.
The appeal doesn't identify the country, a company it controls or even the lawyers who are representing it. But the appeal says the justices should make clear that a federal law that generally protects foreign governments from civil lawsuits in the U.S. also shields them in criminal cases.
The justices had previously refused to block the subpoena and fine on an emergency basis.
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington had in December upheld the issuance of the subpoena and a contempt order issued by a district court judge when the company, identified only as wholly owned by a foreign country, failed to comply.
The country says that the appellate ruling would upset foreign relations in a big way if allowed to stand. It says the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is "the first appellate court in American history to exercise criminal jurisdiction over a foreign state."
The country says it is immune from being subpoenaed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and that complying would require it to violate its own laws.
The U.S. government has until Feb. 21 to respond to the appeal. An uncensored, sealed version of the appeal also has been filed with the court.
Both Politico and The Washington Post have reported that the subpoena apparently relates to the Mueller investigation. Prosecutors have been trying to obtain information from the foreign-owned company since last summer, Judge Stephen Williams wrote in an opinion that was released by the appeals court earlier in January.
The case has been shrouded in secrecy as it has moved through the court system. Federal marshals closed an entire floor of the federal courthouse in Washington last month when the case was argued before the three-judge appellate panel. The move stymied the efforts of a group of about 15 reporters to see whether any Mueller team members or other participants had entered the hearing room.
Court lets military implement transgender restrictions
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration can go ahead with its plan to restrict military service by transgender men and women while court challenges continue, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.
The high court split 5-4 in allowing the plan to take effect, with the court's five conservatives greenlighting it and its four liberal members saying they would not have. The order from the court was brief and procedural, with no elaboration from the justices.
The court's decision clears the way for the Pentagon to bar enlistment by people who have undergone a gender transition. It will also allow the administration to require that military personnel serve as members of their biological gender unless they began a gender transition under less restrictive Obama administration rules.
The Trump administration has sought for more than a year to change the Obama-era rules and had urged the justices to take up cases about its transgender troop policy immediately, but the court declined for now.
Those cases will continue to move through lower courts and could eventually reach the Supreme Court again. The fact that five justices were willing to allow the policy to take effect for now, however, makes it more likely the Trump administration's policy will ultimately be upheld.
Both the Justice and Defense departments released statements saying they were pleased by the Supreme Court's action. The Pentagon said its policy on transgender troops is based on professional military judgment and necessary to "ensure the most lethal and combat effective fighting force." Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said lower court rulings had forced the military to "maintain a prior policy that poses a risk to military effectiveness and lethality."
Before beginning to implement its policy the administration is expected to need to make a procedural filing in one case in Maryland challenging the plan. That request could be made this week.
Groups that sued over the Trump administration's policy said they ultimately hoped to win their lawsuits over the policy. Jennifer Levi, an attorney for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, said in a statement that the "Trump administration's cruel obsession with ridding our military of dedicated and capable service members because they happen to be transgender defies reason and cannot survive legal review."
Until a few years ago service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender. That changed under the Obama administration. The military announced in 2016 that transgender people already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. And the military set July 1, 2017, as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.
But after President Donald Trump took office, the administration delayed the enlistment date, saying the issue needed further study. And in late July 2017 the president tweeted that the government would not allow "Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military." He later directed the military to return to its policy before the Obama administration changes.
Groups representing transgender individuals sued, and the Trump administration lost early rounds in those cases, with courts issuing nationwide injunctions barring the administration from altering course. The Supreme Court put those injunctions on hold Tuesday, allowing the Trump administration's policy to take effect.
The Trump administration's revised policy on transgender troops dates to March 2018. The policy generally bars transgender people from serving unless they do so "in their biological sex" and do not seek to undergo a gender transition. But it has an exception for transgender troops who relied on the Obama-era rules to begin the process of changing their gender.
Those individuals, who have been diagnosed with "gender dysphoria," a discomfort with their birth gender, can continue to serve after transitioning. The military has said that over 900 men and women had received that diagnosis. A 2016 survey estimated that about 1 percent of active duty service members, about 9,000 men and women, identify as transgender.
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Associated Press reporter Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
Published: Thu, Jan 24, 2019
