U.S. Supreme Court

WASHINGTON — The majority conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical Tuesday that the Biden administration had the authority to implement a federal student debt relief program that was estimated to potentially aid millions of borrowers. The conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority on the court, questioned whether the Department of Education could implement a program without explicit congressional approval that would cost more than $400 billion over the course of 30 years. 

Whew… what a year. If you closely follow ag doings, you know there’s plenty to talk about. If not, well let me get you caught up. First, three stories that fall just a wee bit short of the most impactful agricultural story of 2022.

In recent years, more states have crafted environmental justice policies to help communities of color plagued by polluted air and water, poor health outcomes and limited access to green space. But now they fear that work could be upended by a pair of pending U.S. Supreme Court cases examining affirmative action admissions policies at universities. If the court strikes down affirmative action, many state lawmakers believe, the ruling could open legal challenges to “race-conscious” laws that seek to help marginalized communities.

WASHINGTON — North Carolina Republicans appeared to have at least three of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices on their side Wednesday in a case that could determine the future of elections nationwide, and leave decisions about federal elections in the hands of state legislatures and beyond the reach of state courts. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an appeal of a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that threw out congressional districts drawn by the Republican-led legislature.

Gorgi Talevski did not live long enough to see his case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this month. A Macedonian-born resident of Indiana, Talevski operated a crane for three decades, raised a family and loved to dance before his dementia deepened, and he died last year. But the court’s decision, expected in spring, could have profound effects for tens of millions of beneficiaries of federal safety net programs, including those that provide health care, housing, education services and heating aid.

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Join us Thursday, August 4 at 3:00 p.m. for a very special (and online) Crucial Conversation: Moore v. Harper: The latest NC gerrymandering case and its implications for American democracy At the end of its most recent term in June, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear a North Carolina redistricting case...

And a case from North Carolina threatens to topple American democracy It’s pretty hard not to take it personally when the highest court in the land erases your humanity. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has rolled back a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, the power of the state reaches right through us, deciding what happens inside our bodies. What we think and feel doesn’t matter. It doesn’t get more personal than that.

Relentless heat -- Raleigh is running well ahead of the 30-year average in the number of 90-degree days. The city has already recorded 24 days that hit 90 or above, on pace to blow past the average of 43 days -- and there are still two months until meteorological fall. Persistent drought — 99 of North Carolina's 100 counties are classified as experiencing some level of drought, as of June 28.

Last week’s U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that Americans no longer have a constitutional right to control their own reproduction is a disaster of monumental proportions. Never before in American history has the nation’s high court taken away such a well-established and long exercised fundamental right.

The United States of America is no longer a free country. Women are no longer full citizens with equal rights. The theocracy also known as the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that our bodies don’t belong to us. Anyone who is or can become pregnant will be a ward of the state, captive of a misogynist minority.

We had been married a little over a year when I had an abortion. Put down your rocks and torches. If I had not had the abortion, I might well have died. Not so simple now, is it? If I had been your wife, your daughter, your sister, your friend.

Sexual violence survivor details some of the horrors that await if the Supreme Court ends abortion rights When I was raped in 2016, one of my attackers reached inside me and pulled out my NuvaRring, an internal birth control device, and asked me what it was. When I told him, he cast it aside where it was lost until police retrieved it a couple days later.

A step taken by a former chief justice 50 years ago provides the model In 1972, not long after the decision in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a nearly 50-year-old right to abortion would lead to strict restrictions or bans by states across nearly half the country almost immediately. The court is poised to overturn the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade, as well as a subsequent ruling on fetal viability, according to an initial draft of a majority opinion in a pending abortion case published Monday by Politico.