JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the appointment of four state court judges in the majority-Black county that is home to Mississippi's capital city — appointments that drew protests from local residents who said white state officials were stomping on civil rights.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate issued the temporary restraining order at the request of the NAACP, and he set a May 22 hearing to consider extending the order.

The national civil rights organization, its Mississippi chapter and its local chapter in Jackson filed a federal lawsuit April 21, hours after Gov. Tate Reeves signed laws to expand state policing in the capital city of Jackson, establish a court with an appointed judge and authorize four appointed judges to work alongside the four elected circuit court judges in Hinds County.

Members of the majority-white and Republican-led Legislature who pushed for the changes said they were trying to curb crime in Jackson. Local residents protested that state officials were usurping power in Jackson and Hinds County, which are majority-Black and governed by Democrats.

Under one of the laws, Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph was supposed to appoint four circuit judges by this week to serve until the end of 2026 — most of the current four-year term.

Billy Corriher
@BillyCorriher

Montana Supreme Court reaffirms the right to abortion care under the state constitution, striking down a law that bans abortion care by nurses. https://juddocumentservice.mt.gov/getDocByCTrackId?DocId=429865

Jesse Kodadek
@j_kodadek

7-0 decision from the Montana Supreme Court just now. #appellatetwiiter



Article II, Section 10:



Opinion: https://juddocumentservice.mt.gov/getDocByCTrackId?DocId=429865

That's right:

Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner

BUT: Illinois filed a letter today, noting a Seventh Circuit order today keeping the Illinois law in effect during the appeal of *6* cases — which could cause procedural complications for the application currently at #SCOTUS, which only involves 1 of them. https://supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22A948/266803/20230512165212306_NAGR%20v.%20Naperville%20-%20State%20of%20Illinois%20Letter.pdf

Billy Corriher
@BillyCorriher

Montana Supreme Court reaffirms the right to abortion care under the state constitution, striking down a law that bans abortion care by nurses. https://juddocumentservice.mt.gov/getDocByCTrackId?DocId=429865

Jesse Kodadek
@j_kodadek

7-0 decision from the Montana Supreme Court just now. #appellatetwiiter



Article II, Section 10:



Opinion: https://juddocumentservice.mt.gov/getDocByCTrackId?DocId=429865

That's right:

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC

Trump Judge T. Kent Wetherell II kicks off his decision this way: “The Southwest Border has been out of control for the past 2 years. And it is about to get worse because, at midnight tonight, the Title 42 Order expires.”

Very judicial, very impartial, very independent.

Love to see Trump judges regurgitate Republican talking points about the southern border nearly verbatim—definitely how the judiciary is supposed to function.

Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner

Breaking: Trump appointee grants Florida's emergency request halting the Biden administration's post-Title 42 parole policy from going into effect. Ruling goes into effect at 11:59p. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flnd.464923/gov.uscourts.flnd.464923.10.0.pdf

The Supreme Court’s decision in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, which the Court handed down Thursday morning, reads like a breath of fresh air. For once, the justices decided not to make themselves even more powerful than they already are.

National Pork involved very difficult questions about just how much impact one state’s laws may have on residents of other states. In 2018, California enacted Proposition 12, a ballot initiative that imposes some of the strictest animal welfare rules in the country. Among other things, Prop 12 forbids pork farmers from confining a breeding sow “with less than 24 square feet of usable floor space per pig.” And it forbids any pork from being sold in California if it was produced on a farm that does not comply with this rule.

Because California is such a large state — its residents buy approximately 13 percent of all pork sold in the United States — the pork industry claimed that this law would require pork farms throughout the country to change their practices to ensure that their products would not be excluded from the California market, and that this would drive up the price of pork nationwide. Indeed, the industry claimed that Prop 12 would “increase farmers’ production costs by over $13 per pig, a 9.2% cost increase,” and those costs will need to be passed on to the consumer.

To save itself from paying these predicted costs, the pork industry sued, invoking a doctrine known as the “Dormant Commerce Clause,” which places some limits on each state’s ability to enact laws that impact other states.

The problem with this legal theory, however, is that all state laws will have some impact on other states. If one state legalizes recreational marijuana, for example, residents of nearby states where cannabis remains illegal will inevitably cross the border to buy weed and bring it back to their home state. If a state raises its minimum wage, that could lead residents of neighboring states to cross the border and work for businesses there instead. If it lowers the speed limit on its highways, that could marginally depress commerce in other states because it will take slightly more time for people and goods to travel in those states.

(Reuters) - U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman of the Federal Circuit sued the appeals court's chief judge and others in Washington federal court on Wednesday, seeking to block their investigation into her fitness to hold office.

Newman, who is 95, said in her complaint that the probe violated her constitutional rights, and she denied that there were legitimate concerns about her mental and physical capacity.

The judge asked the district court to halt or transfer the investigation.

An attorney for Newman said the complaint "speaks for itself." Representatives for the Washington D.C.-based Federal Circuit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Newman, a leading intellectual property law jurist, was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1984 to the patent law-focused Federal Circuit, which often hears major cases involving technology and pharmaceutical companies.

On New England fishing boats, cramming another person into a space that barely fits a half-dozen employees already is a big ask. But the National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal agency within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Commerce, requires that herring fisheries notify it before embarking on fishing trips, and on half of such trips, a federal inspector rides along. The inspector checks the crew’s compliance with federal rules about where they can fish, how many of which types of fish they can catch, and what kind of gear they can use in the process. The rule also requires that companies help foot the bill for its inspectors’ salaries—about $710 a day. Fishery owners say this reduces their annual returns by about 20 percent.

Last year, four fisheries challenging the rule asked the Supreme Court to put a stop to this practice. And last week, the Court granted certiorari in the case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The justices will hear oral argument sometime next fall.

This case is about much more than the frustrations of a handful of hardworking fishermen, though: The fisheries are represented by Paul Clement, a prominent Supreme Court lawyer for conservative causes, and are supported by a bevy of conservative legal movement organizations intent on kneecapping the power of executive agencies to do the day-to-day work of governing. Together, they are asking the Court to overturn Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a landmark 1984 Supreme Court case requiring judicial deference to agencies’ interpretations of an agency’s own authority, as long as the interpretation is “reasonable.”

Overturning Chevron would open the door for the federal judiciary to make itself the arbiter of what administrative agencies that provide critical services can and can’t do. For decades, conservative organizations have pushed this result, reliably popping up in any case that might whittle away at the power of the administrative state. Now that the Court is controlled by a six-justice conservative supermajority, they are on the verge of winning at last.

Among the organizations urging the justices to take the case are the Cato Institute, which conservative megadonor Charles Koch co-founded in 1977; the Pacific Legal Foundation, which staffers for then-California Governor Ronald Regan founded in 1973; the New England Legal Foundation, founded in 1977 and now run by Daniel Winslow, a former Massachusetts state lawmaker and advisor to Mitt Romney; and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, founded by the notoriously anti-union Congressman Fred Hartley in 1968. The New England Legal Foundation’s amicus brief urges that “it is well past time” for the Court to “acknowledge forthrightly that Chevron did not undo, and could not have undone, the judicial duty to provide an independent judgment of the law’s meaning.”