Girls’ Stand Against Trans Participation in Sports Sets Up 2024 Legal Battle

Four high school female track athletes in Connecticut have stood against the influx of transgender athletes seeking to compete against girls in school sports, likely setting up a defining legal battle of 2024.

The U.S. Court of Appeals rescued the legal challenge, Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools, in December after a lower court dismissed the case. Now, the case will be heard in federal district court and will be a defining moment in the ongoing debate, which has been ramped up by a string of injuries to female athletes at the hands of transgender athletes in recent months.

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Ohio Think Tank Asks Supreme Court to Kill Biden Student-Debt-Forgiveness Plan

A center-right policy-research center based in Columbus, OH is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to nix President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive almost $500 billion in unpaid student loans. 

Nebraska and six other states sued the Biden administration to stop the program that Congress never authorized. Last November, petitioners succeeded in getting a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit to pause implementation of the plan. The following month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and oral arguments have been scheduled for February 28. 

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Ohio’s Buckeye Institute Urges Circuit Court to Kill Biden Tax Mandate

The Columbus-based Buckeye Institute this week filed an amicus brief in the federal court case challenging the authority the Biden administration has asserted to limit state tax-reduction efforts. 

Opponents of the White House policy are urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to rule in Texas v. Yellen that a provision of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) cannot condition states’ receipt of federal aid on accepting “ambiguous” federally prescribed tax policy. Plaintiffs and their supporters further argue that President Joe Biden and his Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cannot invoke their regulatory power to fix ARPA’s lack of clarity.

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Supreme Court Hands Biden Admin Major Win for Climate Agenda

The Supreme Court denied a petition from 10 Republican-led states Thursday requesting it to block a key Biden administration climate policy.

The decision ensures that President Joe Biden’s so-called “social cost” of carbon policy — which assigns an estimated dollar value or cost to every ton of carbon emissions, according to the Government Accountability Office — can remain in place and be used for future federal permitting processes. The high court rejected states’ April 27 petition without giving a reason or listing which justices opposed it, according to a one-page filing published on the Supreme Court docket.

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Trump Has Appointed Second-Most Federal Judges Through November 1 of a President’s Fourth Year

President Donald Trump has appointed and the Senate has confirmed 220 Article III federal judges through Nov. 1, 2020, his fourth year in office. This is the second-most Article III judicial appointments through this point in all presidencies since Jimmy Carter (D). The Senate had confirmed 260 of Carter’s appointees at this point in his term.

The average number of federal judges appointed by a president through Nov. 1 of their fourth year in office is 200.

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Court Decides in Favor of the Trump Administration in Curbing Transgenders’ Service in the Military

US Army

A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a Trump administration policy of restricting transgender people from serving in the military. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Friday that a lower court judge was wrong to block the Pentagon from implementing its plan…

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Here Are Three Cases to Watch at the Supreme Court

by Elizabeth Slattery and Ashley Vaughan   The Supreme Court is back in session after a two-week break. The justices will hear arguments in a number of important cases, including ones dealing with coercive class-action settlements, using hovercrafts for moose hunting in Alaska, and Virginia’s ban on uranium mining. Here…

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