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U.S. Supreme Court

  • COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio was in the throes of a bitter debate over abortion rights this fall when Brittany Watts, 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant, began passing thick blood clots.That was a Tuesday in September. What followed was a harrowing three days entailing: multiple trips to the hospital; Watts miscarrying into, and then flushing and plunging, a toilet at her home; a police investigation of those actions; and Watts, who is Black, being charged with abuse of a corpse. That’s a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.Her case was sent last week to a grand jury. It has touched off a national firestorm over the treatment of pregnant women, and especially Black women, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump elevated Watts’ plight in a post to X, formerly Twitter, and supporters have donated more than $100,000 through GoFundMe for her legal defense, medical bills and trauma counseling.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday it will take up a First Amendment fight about a 2021 Florida law that placed restrictions on major social-media companies.The Supreme Court said it will hear cases involving the Florida law and a similar measure in Texas. Both sides in the Florida case, along with the U.S. solicitor general, had urged justices to take up the issues.
  • The Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action in college admissions, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.
  • NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with NYU law professor Stephen Gillers about whether Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas might have violated ethics rules for accepting luxury trips for decades.
  • In its final decision of the term, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to set limits on carbon emissions from existing power plants, limiting the federal government’s regulatory authority to force power plants to shift away from generating power through the burning of fossil fuels that release greenhouse gasses that cause global warming.We’ll explore the Supreme Court ruling and what it could mean for Florida with Director of the Center for Environment and Society at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Water School, Jennifer Jones, Ph.D.
  • About 200 people converged outside the old Lee County Courthouse in downtown Fort Myers to protest the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision earlier that morning, overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Until Friday’s ruling in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Roe v. Wade had established the constitutional right to an abortion.
  • Pointing to “protectionism,” a major satellite-television company is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a constitutional challenge to a Florida...
  • In a legal battle drawing attention from medical groups across the country, the U.S. Supreme Court could be close to deciding whether to hear a Florida...
  • Attorneys for a man arrested in 2012 in St. Lucie County asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to take up a challenge to the constitutionality of a...
  • The US Supreme Court is refusing to take up a further challenge in Florida’s precedent setting capital case Hurst v. Florida.