-
The supreme court ruled that Donald Trump’s firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook was unconstitutional, in a landmark ruling that limits a president’s authority over the central bank. In its opinion, the court said that Trump does not have the constitutional authority to fire a Fed governor without cause. The ruling is a major win for the central bank, which has spent the last year under attack from the White House.
-
But, in a separate case, the justices ruled that Trump can fire leaders of independent agencies or commissions, ending 90 years of court precedent that curbs executive power. That case centered on Rebecca Slaughter, whom Trump fired as Federal Trade Commission member in March last year over email, telling her that keeping her as a commissioner would be “inconsistent with [the] administration’s priorities”.
-
The court handed Trump another loss, refusing to hear his bid to overturn a $5m verdict in favor of E Jean Carrollin a case in which a jury found him liable for sexually abusing the former magazine columnist and then defaming her. The 2023 jury verdict and a $5m civil judgment remain in place. The high court declined to take up the case in a brief, unexplained order. There were no noted dissents.
-
The supreme court sided against national Republicans and the Trump administration to allow mail-in ballots that arrive after election day to be counted, upholding the law in more than a dozen states. The Republican National Committee had challenged a Mississippi state law allowing mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of election day, so long as they were postmarked by election day. The court’s liberal justices pointed to federal laws that allow for grace periods, while noting that a ruling here could also implicate early voting, another common practice.
-
The court also refused to revive a $300m defamation lawsuit filed against CNN over its coverage of a prominent attorney’s remarks made while defending Trump during his 2020 impeachment. Alan Dershowitz said CNN aired only a portion of the comment made during his defense of the president, distorting his meaning to make him look like he’d “lost his mind”. The network said that multiple outlets had interpreted his remarks in a similar way, and Dershowitz couldn’t show CNN was trying to mischaracterize what he said. The court’s majority declined to take up the case in a brief, unexplained order.
-
And finally, the supreme court threw out a judicial decision involving a Virginia man’s challenge to a “geofence” warrant used by police to access cellphone location data near a crime scene leading to his conviction for armed robbery. The justices threw out a lower court’s ruling against defendant Okello Chatrie, who had argued he was subjected to an illegal search and that evidence in his case should be excluded. The court agreed that a search had occurred, but sent the case back to a lower court to conduct further analysis.
