In early July, by a 5-4 vote, the justices blocked a lower court order that would have suspended a witness requirement for mail-in ballots in Alabama.And in a case unrelated to the pandemic, the court turned away an effort to make it easier for convicted felons to conform to a new state law in Florida allowing them to vote.Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent who covers the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, based in Washington.The action was a departure from a series of decisions that refused to ease restrictions on voting procedures in light of the pandemic.Get breaking news alerts and special reports. "So far, efforts to prod Republicans to oppose filling a potential 2020 vacancy have proven difficult. "We will protect voting rights, fight systemic racism in the criminal justice system and in our economy, and restore a Supreme Court that looks out for people, not corporations," the New York Democrat vowed.That will be easier said than done. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) ORG XMIT: WX119Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (L) makes brief remarks before meeting with Judge Brett Kavanaugh (R) in McConnell's office in the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, on July 10, 2018. That list, which he called “more important than ever,” represents a return to his 2016 campaign playbook, when concerns about the ideological balance of the Supreme Court helped convince wary conservatives to turn out and vote for him.However, the latest polling shows Democrats are now slightly more likely than GOP voters to prioritize the Supreme Court when thinking about their vote for the 2020 presidential election, and it found a similar trend among voters who opted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton four years ago: 61 percent of Clinton voters now say the court is a very important factor to their voting decision, up 7 points from the spring, and more than the share of Trump voters who said the same (53 percent).Each survey was conducted among roughly 2,000 voters, with a 2-point margin of error for all respondents and a 4-point margin of error for the subsets mentioned. "Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote the lead dissent. "Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, praised the Supreme Court's decision in a statement, saying, "Today, by affirming that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Supreme Court has confirmed the simple but profoundly American idea that every human being should be treated with respect and dignity." In a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on … "At the end of his 33-page opinion, however, Gorsuch invoked several potential caveats. "LGBT people have come a long way in the last generation; the country has come a long way in the last generation; and the Supreme Court has come a long way in the last generation," said Eskridge, who is the coauthor of a forthcoming book, Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, added, "One big lesson from this opinion is don't give up. The Gorsuch opinion drew two dissents, one from the court's other Trump appointee, Brett Kavanaugh, so that Trump's two appointee were in a verbal version of what Yale Law Professor William Eskridge called "trench warfare.
It accused the majority of sailing under a "textualist flag," essentially pretending to remain true to the words of the statute but instead updating it "to better reflect the current values of society." Morning Consult's reporters and analysts help subscribers stay ahead of the trends transforming industries.
"Today," Gorsuch said, "we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. He's put 53 judges on federal circuit courts and 146 on federal district courts, outpacing all recent presidents.Republicans have more to gain if their focus on the courts, honed in 2016, translates into another victory this fall. As he told NPR in October, "Within months, I was fired for being gay.
"Another ad released last month focused on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's refusal in 2016 to consider President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. John Bursch, who represented the funeral home in the transgender firing case, agreed.