Tag: Walter Shapiro

After the Trump administration asked the supreme court to issue an unusually quick ruling on the Pentagon’s policy of restricting military service by transgender people, critics said the request was likely only to complicate a deteriorating relationship between the president and the federal judiciary. The Trump administration is “forcing [the court] into a minefield that many justices would almost surely prefer to avoid”, Matz said. Administration officials also asked the high court to stop a trial in a climate change lawsuit and to intervene in a lawsuit over the administration’s decision to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. The supreme court almost always waits to get involved in a case until both a trial and appeals court have ruled. One famous past example is when the Nixon administration went to court to try to prohibit the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of US involvement in the Vietnam war. The appeals court has since ruled but the administration’s request that the court hear the case stands. Trump dismisses Roberts rebuke and blames judges for 'bedlam and chaos' Read more In the military case, the administration argued that the supreme court should step in before an appeals court rules because the case “involves an issue of imperative public importance: the authority of the US military to determine who may serve in the Nation’s armed forces”. Trump revisited that policy, the president issuing an order banning most transgender troops from serving except under limited circumstances. Still ongoing in lower courts are the census and climate change cases. The court will hear arguments in the census question case in February.