Robert Barnes

The Supreme Court will consider whether the First Amendment prohibits a public official from blocking constituents from personal social media accounts when those accounts are used to communicate with the public. The court took two cases for the term that begins in October 2023 to decide a digital-age issue that has been active in lower courts.

The Supreme Court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on whether states may bar giant social media platforms from removing certain types of political speech, a major First Amendment case that could determine how the constitutional right to free speech applies to the marketplace of ideas on the internet. The request for the solicitor general's views will delay a decision on whether the high court takes up the issue.

The Supreme Court said Google did not violate copyright law when it developed its Android mobile operating system using code from Oracle, a much-anticipated ruling in the tech world that saves Google billions of dollars in potential damages. The court ruled 6 to 2 for Google in the case, which has major implications for the software industry. Matt Schruers, president of the trade group Computer and Communications Industry Association, said the court’s ruling “that fair-use extends to the functional principles of computer code means companies can offer competing, interoperable products.”

The Supreme Court vacated a lower court opinion that said President Donald Trump could not block critics from his Twitter feed, which since has been suspended by the company. The US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York had ruled that because the president had used the forum to regularly communicate with the public, he could not block critical individual users.

The Supreme Court on put on hold the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census form sent to every household, saying it had provided a “contrived” reason for wanting the information. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the splintered opinion. In a section agreed with by the court’s liberals, he said the Commerce Department must provide a clearer explanation. Agencies must offer “genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public,” Roberts wrote.

Apple suffered a significant defeat at the Supreme Court, when the justices ruled that consumers could forge ahead with a lawsuit against the tech giant over the way it manages its App Store. The 5-4 decision allows device owners to proceed with a case that alleges Apple has acted as a monopoly by requiring iPhone and iPad users to download apps only from its portal while taking a cut of some sales made through the store. The legal question in the case was whether the suit was barred by a 1977 decision, Illinois Brick Co. v.

Advocacy groups pouring money into independent campaigns to impact the Fall 2018 midterm races must disclose many of their political donors beginning the week of Sept 17 after the Supreme Court declined to intervene in a long-running case. The high court did not grant an emergency request to stay a ruling by a federal judge in Washington who had thrown out a decades-old Federal Election Commission regulation allowing nonprofit groups to keep their donors secret unless they had earmarked their money for certain purposes.

The Supreme Court largely upheld Texas congressional and legislative maps that a lower court said discriminated against black and Hispanic voters. The lower court was wrong in how it considered the challenges, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the 5 to 4 decision. The majority sided with the challengers over one legislative district. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent that was longer than Justice Alito’s majority decision. She said the decision “does great damage to the right of equal opportunity.

The Supreme Court sent back to a lower court a decision that Republicans in North Carolina had gerrymandered the state’s congressional districts to give their party an unfair advantage. The lower court will need to decide whether the plaintiffs had the proper legal standing to bring the case. The Supreme Court recently considered the question of partisan gerrymandering in cases from Wisconsin and Maryland. The court has never found a map so infected by politics that it violated the constitutional rights of voters. But the justices did not rule on the merits of the issue.

In a major win for privacy rights, the Supreme Court put new restraints on law enforcement’s access to the ever-increasing amount of private information about Americans available in the digital age. In the specific case before the court, the justices ruled that authorities generally must obtain a warrant to gain access to cell-tower records that can provide a virtual timeline and map of a person’s whereabouts. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 5 to 4 decision, in which he was joined by the court’s liberal members.