Court rejects two Virginia white nationalist rally cases
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is leaving in place the convictions of two men who as members of a white supremacist group participated in a white nationalist rally in Virginia in 2017 that turned violent.
The high court said Monday that it would not take the case of Michael Miselis or Benjamin Daley, who participated in the rally as members of the "Rise Above Movement," or "RAM." Both pleaded guilty to federal rioting charges in connection with the Virginia rally.
As is typical, the high court didn't comment in turning away their cases.
Miselis and Daley admitted they punched and kicked demonstrators who showed up to protest against white nationalists during the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. One person died after a car plowed into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the rally. Shortly after, a Virginia State Police helicopter that officials said was assisting with the rally crashed, killing the pilot and a trooper.
Miselis and Daley had challenged their convictions by arguing that the Anti-Riot Act, a law they pleaded guilty to violating, is overbroad under the First Amendment's free speech clause. A federal appeals court had ruled against them.
Daley was sentenced to 37 months in prison. Miselis was sentenced to 27 months.
Justices rule against low-level crack cocaine offenders
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that low-level crack cocaine offenders convicted more than a decade ago can't take advantage of a 2018 federal law to seek reduced prison time.
The justices affirmed the nearly 16-year prison term handed out to Tarahrick Terry of Florida, who was arrested with 3.9 grams of crack on him in 2008.
Terry's case concerned the reach of the First Step Act, a bipartisan 2018 law signed by former President Donald Trump. Aimed at reducing racial disparities in sentencing, the law allows prisoners convicted of older crack crimes to seek reduced sentences.
But the law specifically addresses crack possession only above 5 grams for one category of possession and above 50 grams for another category.
That allowed crack cocaine kingpins to seek reduced sentences, but it left convicts like Terry in a legal limbo, with courts around the country coming to different conclusions.
In an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the high court said Terry and those like him who were not subject to a mandatory prison term based on how much crack they possessed are out of luck.
"The question here is whether crack offenders who did not trigger a mandatory minimum qualify. They do not," Thomas wrote.
Terry is in the final months of his prison term. And he apparently is serving his remaining time on home confinement, according to the Biden administration.
The outcome probably affects no more than a couple hundred prison inmates since most people convicted of possessing relatively little crack that long ago already have finished serving their sentences.
The 2018 law, like the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, was partly aimed at addressing disparities, which fell disproportionately hard on Black people, in the treatment of people convicted of crack and powder cocaine offenses.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed with the outcome but wrote a separate opinion in which she criticized Thomas' treatment of the history of the disparity between powder and crack possession, which was as large as 100 to 1. Some prison terms were the same for people who were convicted of possessing 100 times more powder than crack.
Sotomayor called said Thomas provided "an unnecessary, incomplete, and sanitized history of the 100-to-1 ratio. The full history is far less benign."
The case only affects people whose crimes took place before August 2010 because the Fair Sentencing Act took effect then and covered crimes committed from that point forward.
The Trump administration had argued that Terry is not eligible to seek a sentence reduction, but the Biden administration changed course.
In another decision issued Monday, the court made it harder for people appealing their convictions to take advantage of an earlier ruling that benefitted defendants charged with violating federal gun laws.
In 2019, the court decided that prosecutors must prove that people charged with violating federal gun laws knew they were not allowed to have a weapon. Federal law prohibits a person who was previously convicted of a crime from possessing a gun.
But on Monday, the court ruled against two defendants who were convicted before the 2019 decision and tried to invoke it on appeal.
Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said defendants in these cases face "an uphill climb" in trying to show that their cases would have come out differently if it had to be shown they knew they couldn't have guns.
"The reason is simple: If a person is a felon, he ordinarily knows he is a felon," Kavanaugh wrote.
Court defers Harvard case on race in college admissions
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — With abortion and guns already on the agenda, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court is considering adding a third blockbuster issue — whether to ban consideration of race in college admissions.
The justices on Monday put off a decision about whether they will hear an appeal claiming that Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants, in a case that could have nationwide repercussions. The court asked the Justice Department to weigh in on the case, a process that typically takes several months.
"It would be a big deal because of the nature of college admissions across the country and because of the stakes of having this issue before the Supreme Court," said Gregory Garre, who twice defended the University of Texas' admissions program before the justices.
The presence of three appointees of former President Donald Trump could prompt the court to take up the case, even though it's been only five years since its last decision in a case about affirmative action in higher education.
In that Texas case, the court reaffirmed in a 4-3 decision that colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions. But they must do so in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity, the court said in a decision that rejected the discrimination claims of a white applicant. Schools also bear the burden of showing why their consideration of race is appropriate.
Two members of that four-justice majority are gone from the court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September. Justice Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018.
The three dissenters in the case, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, remain on the court. Roberts, a moderating influence on some issues, has been a steadfast vote to limit the use of race in public programs, once writing, "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race."
The court's willingness to jump into major cases over abortion and gun rights also appear to turn on the new, more conservative composition of the court because similar appeals had been turned away in the past.
Like the abortion case, the Harvard case lacks a split among appellate courts that often piques the high court's interest in a case.
The Supreme Court has weighed in on college admissions several times over more than 40 years. The current dispute harks back to its first big affirmative action case in 1978, when Justice Lewis Powell set out the rationale for taking account of race even as the court barred the use of racial quotas in admissions.
In the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Powell approvingly cited Harvard as "an illuminating example" of a college that takes "race into account in achieving the educational diversity valued by the First Amendment."
Twenty-five years later, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor likewise invoked the Harvard plan in her opinion upholding the University of Michigan's law school admissions program.
Now it's Harvard program in the crosshairs of opponents of race-based affirmative action.
The challenge to Harvard is led by Edward Blum and his Students for Fair Admissions. Blum has worked for years to rid college admissions of racial considerations.
The group claims that Harvard imposes a "racial penalty" on Asian American applicants by systematically scoring them lower in some categories than other applicants and awarding "massive preferences" to Black and Hispanic applicants.
Harvard flatly denies that it discriminates against Asian American applicants and says its consideration of race is limited, pointing out that lower courts agreed with the university.
In November, the federal appeals court in Boston ruled that Harvard looked at race in a limited way in line with Supreme Court precedents.
The class that just finished its freshman year is roughly one-quarter Asian American, 15% Black and 13% Hispanic, Harvard says on its website. "If Harvard were to abandon race-conscious admissions, African-American and Hispanic representation would decline by nearly half," the school told the court in urging it to stay out of the case.
The Trump administration backed Blum's case against Harvard and also filed its own lawsuit alleging discrimination against Asian Americans and whites at Yale.
The Biden administration already has dropped the Yale suit and almost certainly will take Harvard's side at the Supreme Court if the case goes forward.
The lead attorney on the appeal is William Consovoy, who also represented Trump in his unsuccessful bid to shield his tax returns from the Manhattan district attorney.
When the court upheld the Michigan's law school program in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, O'Connor took note of the quarter-century that had passed since the Bakke decision.
"We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today," O'Connor wrote.
O'Connor's timeline set 2028 as a potential endpoint for racial preferences. A more conservative court than the one on which she served could advance that expiration date by several years.
