Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Iran says will act on U.S. court ruling on Trump’s travel ban

FILE PHOTO: A young boy stands behind an Iranian flag at Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport, Iran, May, 5, 2010. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl/File Photo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Iran said on Wednesday it would take “reciprocal action” in response to the U.S. Supreme Court allowing a partial implementation of President Donald Trump’s travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries.

Lower U.S. courts had completely blocked Trump’s executive order issued on March 6, which includes a blanket 90-day ban on people from countries including Iran and Libya and a 120-day ban on all refugees. But the Supreme Court on Monday ruled there could be partial restrictions placed on refugees.

The decision is “an indication of the decision of the leaders of that country to discriminate against Muslims,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi was cited as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, after carefully examining the recent decision of the Supreme Court of America, will take proportional and reciprocal action,” Qassemi said. He did not elaborate.

U.S. citizens must apply for tourist visas before traveling to Iran, as opposed to others including Germans who are able to obtain these on arrival.

During his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump campaigned for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, arguing the measure is needed for national security.

The court also gave examples of who may qualify for exemptions, including those with close family ties in the United States, obtaining a place at a U.S. university, or offers of employment.

Qassemi also said the United States was targeting the wrong countries for a visa ban.

“It’s regrettable that the American government, because of their economic and commercial short-sightedness, have closed their eyes to the main perpetrators of terrorism in America,” he said.

Iran blames Saudi Arabia, a long standing U.S. ally, for Islamic militancy. Saudi citizens are not affected by the travel ban.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Helicopter attacks Venezuela court, Maduro denounces coup bid

Demonstrators holding a Venezuelan flag attend a rally against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, Venezuela June 27, 2017. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

By Silene Ramírez and Eyanir Chinea

CARACAS (Reuters) – A Venezuelan police helicopter strafed the Supreme Court and a government ministry on Tuesday, escalating the OPEC nation’s political crisis in what President Nicolas Maduro called an attack by “terrorists” seeking a coup.

The aircraft fired 15 shots at the Interior Ministry, where scores of people were at a social event, and dropped four grenades on the court, where judges were meeting, officials said.

However, there were no reports of injuries.

“Sooner rather than later, we are going to capture the helicopter and those behind this armed terrorist attack against the institutions of the country,” Maduro said.

“They could have caused dozens of deaths,” he said.

The 54-year-old socialist leader has faced three months of protests from opposition leaders who decry him as a dictator who has wrecked a once-prosperous economy. There has been growing dissent too from within government and the security forces.

At least 75 people have died, and hundreds more been injured and arrested, in the anti-government unrest since April.

Demonstrators are demanding general elections, measures to alleviate a brutal economic crisis, freedom for hundreds of jailed opposition activists, and independence for the opposition-controlled National Assembly legislature.

Maduro says they are seeking a coup against him with the encouragement of a U.S. government eager to gain control of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.

Venezuela’s government said in a communique the helicopter was stolen by investigative police pilot Oscar Perez, who declared himself in rebellion against Maduro.

Images shared on social and local media appear to show Perez waving a banner from the helicopter reading “Liberty”, and the number “350” in large letters.

The number refers to the constitutional article allowing people the right to oppose an undemocratic government.

A video posted on Perez’ Instagram account around the same time showed him standing in front of several hooded armed men, saying an operation was underway to restore democracy.

Perez said in the video he represented a coalition of military, police and civilian officials opposed to the “criminal” government, urged Maduro’s resignation and called for general elections. “This fight is … against the vile government. Against tyranny,” he said.

Local media also linked Perez to a 2015 action film, Suspended Death, which he co-produced and starred in as an intelligence agent rescuing a kidnapped businessman.

On Tuesday, witnesses reported hearing several detonations in downtown Caracas, where the pro-Maduro Supreme Court, the presidential palace and other key government buildings are located.

Opponents to Maduro view the Interior Ministry as a bastion of repression and also hate the Supreme Court for its string of rulings bolstering the president’s power and undermining the opposition-controlled legislature.

VOTE CONTROVERSY

Opposition leaders have long been calling on Venezuela’s security forces to stop obeying Maduro.

However, there was also some speculation among opposition supporters on social media that the attack could have been staged to justify repression or cover up drama at Venezuela’s National Assembly, where two dozen lawmakers said they were being besieged by pro-government gangs.

Earlier on Tuesday, Maduro warned that he and supporters would take up arms if his socialist government was violently overthrown by opponents.

“If Venezuela was plunged into chaos and violence and the Bolivarian Revolution destroyed, we would go to combat. We would never give up, and what couldn’t be done with votes, we would do with arms, we would liberate the fatherland with arms,” he said.

Maduro, who replaced Hugo Chavez in 2013, is pushing a July 30 vote for a special super-body called a Constituent Assembly, which could rewrite the national charter and supersede other institutions such as the opposition-controlled congress.

He has touted the assembly as the only way to bring peace to Venezuela. But opponents, who want to bring forward the next presidential election scheduled for late 2018, say it is a sham poll designed purely to keep the socialists in power.

They are boycotting the vote, and protesting daily on the streets to try and have it stopped.

Maduro said the “destruction” of Venezuela would lead to a huge refugee wave dwarfing the Mediterranean migrant crisis.

“Listen, President Donald Trump,” he said earlier on Tuesday. “You would have to build 20 walls in the sea, a wall from Mississippi to Florida, from Florida to New York, it would be crazy … You have the responsibility: stop the madness of the violent Venezuelan right wing.”

Opposition to the July 30 vote has come not just from Venezuelan opposition parties but also from the chief state prosecutor Luisa Ortega and one-time government heavyweights such as former intelligence service boss Miguel Rodriguez.

Rodriguez criticized Maduro for not holding a referendum before the Constituent Assembly election, as his predecessor Chavez had done in 1999.

“This is a country without government, this is chaos,” he told a news conference on Tuesday. “The people are left out … They (the government) are seeking solutions outside the constitution.”

The government said pilot Perez was linked to Rodriguez.

Neither men, nor representatives for them, could be reached immediately to comment on the accusations.

(Additional reporting by Deisy Buitrago, Girish Gupta, Eyanir Chinea, Andrew Cawthorne and Andreina Aponte; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Andrew Hay, Paul Tait and Himani Sarkar)

Supreme Court breathes new life into Trump’s travel ban

The building of the U.S. Supreme Court is seen after it granted parts of the Trump administration's emergency request to put his travel ban into effect immediately while the legal battle continues, in Washington, U.S., June 26, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by reviving parts of a travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries that he said is needed for national security but that opponents decry as discriminatory.

The justices narrowed the scope of lower court rulings that had completely blocked key parts of a March 6 executive order that Trump had said was needed to prevent terrorism attacks, allowing his temporary ban to go into effect for people with no strong ties to the United States. [http://tmsnrt.rs/2seb3bb]

The court issued its order on the last day of its current term and agreed to hear oral arguments during its next term starting in October so it can decide finally whether the ban is lawful in a major test of presidential powers.

In a statement, Trump called the high court’s action “a clear victory for our national security,” saying the justices allowed the travel suspension to become largely effective.

“As president, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive,” Trump added.

Trump’s March 6 order called for a blanket 90-day ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day ban on all refugees while the government implemented stronger vetting procedures. The court allowed a limited version of the refugee ban, which had also been blocked by courts, to go into effect.

Trump issued the order amid rising international concern about attacks carried out by Islamist militants like those in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin and other cities. But challengers said no one from the affected countries had carried out attacks in the United States.

Federal courts said the travel ban violated federal immigration law and was discriminatory against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Critics called it a discriminatory “Muslim ban.”

Ahmed al-Nasi, an official in Yemen’s Ministry of Expatriate Affairs, voiced disappointment.

“We believe it will not help in confronting terrorism and extremism, but rather will increase the feeling among the nationals of these countries that they are all being targeted, especially given that Yemen is an active partner of the United States in the war on terrorism and that there are joint operations against terrorist elements in Yemen,” he said.

Groups that challenged the ban, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said that most people from the affected countries seeking entry to the United States would have the required connections. But they voiced concern the administration would interpret the ban as broadly as it could.

“It’s going to be very important for us over this intervening period to make sure the government abides by the terms of the order and does not try to use it as a back door into implementing the full-scale Muslim ban that it’s been seeking to implement,” said Omar Jadwat, an ACLU lawyer.

During the 2016 presidential race, Trump campaigned for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The travel ban was a signature policy of Trump’s first few months as president.

‘BONA FIDE RELATIONSHIP’

In an unusual unsigned decision, the Supreme Court on Monday said the travel ban will go into effect “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

A lack of a clearly defined relationship would bar from entry people from the six countries and refugees with no such ties.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin, who successfully challenged the ban in lower courts, said that students from affected countries due to attend the University of Hawaii would still be able to do so.

Both bans were to partly go into effect 72 hours after the court’s decision. The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department pledged to implement the decision in an orderly fashion.

“We will keep those traveling to the United States and partners in the travel industry informed as we implement the order in a professional, organized, and timely way,” a State Department spokeswoman said.

Trump signed the order as a replacement for a Jan. 27 one issued a week after he became president that also was blocked by federal courts, but not before it caused chaos at airports and provoked numerous protests.

Even before the Supreme Court action the ban applied only to new visa applicants, not people who already have visas or are U.S. permanent residents, known as green card holders. The executive order also made waivers available for a foreign national seeking to enter the United States to resume work or study, visit a spouse, child or parent who is a U.S. citizen, or for “significant business or professional obligations.” Refugees “in transit” and already approved would have been able to travel to the United States under the executive order.

A CONSERVATIVE COURT

The case was Trump’s first major challenge at the Supreme Court, where he restored a 5-4 conservative majority with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, who joined the bench in April. There are five Republican appointees on the court and four Democratic appointees. The four liberal justices were silent.

Gorsuch was one of the three conservative justices who would have granted Trump’s request to put the order completely into effect. Fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he warned that requiring officials to differentiate between foreigners who have a connection to the United States and those who do not will prove unworkable.

“Today’s compromise will burden executive officials with the task of deciding – on peril of contempt – whether individuals from the six affected nations who wish to enter the United States have a sufficient connection to a person or entity in this country,” Thomas wrote.

The state of Hawaii and a group of plaintiffs in Maryland represented by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the order violated federal immigration law and the Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring any particular religion. Regional federal appeals courts in Virginia and California both upheld district judge injunctions blocking the order.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley. Additional reporting by Andrew Chung and Yeganeh Torbati in Washington and Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa, Yemen; Editing by Will Dunham and Howard Goller)

U.S. top court backs church in key religious rights case

Activists rally outside U.S. Supreme Court after the Court sided with Trinity Lutheran Church, which objected to being denied public money in Missouri, in Washington, U.S.,

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a church that objected to being denied public money in Missouri, potentially lessening America’s separation of church and state by allowing governments more leeway to fund religious entities directly.

The justices, in a 7-2 ruling, found that Missouri unlawfully prevented Trinity Lutheran Church access to a state grant program that helps nonprofit groups buy rubber playground surfaces made from recycled tires.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, said that the exclusion of the church “solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution.”

In denying the church’s bid for public funding, Missouri cited its constitution that bars “any church, sect or denomination of religion” or clergy member from receiving state money, language that goes further than the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state.

Trinity Lutheran, which runs a preschool and daycare center, wanted a safer surface for its playground. Its legal fight was led by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative Christian legal advocacy group.

The dispute pitted two provisions of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment against each other: the guarantee of the free exercise of religion and the Establishment Clause, which requires the separation of church and state.

Supreme Court to hear major case on political boundaries

FILE PHOTO - A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S., November 15, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether the U.S. Constitution limits how far lawmakers can go to redraw voting districts to favor one political party over another in a case that could have huge consequences for American elections.

The high court has been willing to invalidate state electoral maps on the grounds of racial discrimination, as it did on May 22 when it found that Republican legislators in North Carolina had drawn two electoral districts to diminish the statewide political clout of black voters.

But the justices have not thrown out state electoral maps drawn simply to give one party an advantage over another.

The justices will take up Wisconsin’s appeal of a lower court ruling last November that state Republican lawmakers violated the Constitution when they created state legislative districts with the partisan aim of hobbling Democrats in legislative races. The case will be one of the biggest heard by the Supreme Court during its term that begins in October.

The case involves a long-standing practice known as gerrymandering, a term meaning manipulating electoral boundaries for an unfair political advantage. The lower court ruled that the Republican-led legislature’s redrawing of state legislative districts in 2011 amounted to “an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.”

A panel of three federal judges in Madison ruled 2-1 that the way the Republicans redrew the districts violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection under the law and free speech by undercutting the ability of Democratic voters to turn their votes into seats in Wisconsin’s legislature.

In a possible sign of deep ideological divisions among the nine justices over the issue, the court’s conservative majority granted Wisconsin’s request, despite opposition from the four liberal justices, to put on hold the lower court’s order requiring the state to redraw its electoral maps by Nov. 1.

That means Wisconsin will not need to put in place a new electoral map while the justices consider the matter.

A Supreme Court ruling faulting the Wisconsin redistricting plan could have far-reaching consequences for the redrawing of electoral districts due after the 2020 U.S. census. State and federal legislative district boundaries are reconfigured every decade after the census so that each one holds about same number of people, but are sometimes draw in a way that packs voters who tend to favor a particular party into certain districts so as to diminish their statewide voting power.

Wisconsin Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel welcomed the justices’ decision to hear the state’s appeal and called the state’s redistricting process “entirely lawful and constitutional.”

The case in the short term could affect congressional maps in about half a dozen states and legislative maps in about 10 states, before having major implications for the post-2020 redistricting, according to the New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

‘POLITICS GOING HAYWIRE’

“Wisconsin’s gerrymander was one of the most aggressive of the decade, locking in a large and implausibly stable majority for Republicans in what is otherwise a battleground state,” said Brennan Center redistricting expert Thomas Wolf. “It’s a symptom of politics going haywire and something that we increasingly see when one party has sole control of the redistricting process.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the court’s liberals in major cases, could cast the decisive vote. Kennedy, writing in a 2004 case, indicated he may be open to the idea that racial gerrymanders could violate the Constitution. Though a “workable standard” defining it did not exist, he suggested one might emerge in a future case.

Democrats have accused Republicans of taking improper actions at the state level to suppress the turnout of minority voters and others who tend to support Democrats and maximize the number of party members in state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans call their actions lawful.

Republicans control the U.S. Congress. They also have majorities in an all-time high of 69 of 99 state legislative chambers, according to the Republican State Leadership Committee.

After winning control of the state legislature in 2010, Wisconsin Republicans redrew the statewide electoral map.

They were able to amplify Republican voting power, gaining more seats than their percentage of the statewide vote would suggest. In 2012, Republicans received about 49 percent of the vote but won 60 of the 99 state Assembly seats. In 2014, the party garnered 52 percent of the vote and 63 Assembly seats.

A dozen Wisconsin Democratic Party voters in 2015 sued state election officials, saying the redistricting divided Democratic voters in some areas and packed them in others to dilute their electoral clout and benefit Republican candidates.

The lower court found that redistricting efforts are unlawful partisan gerrymandering when they seek to entrench the party in power, and have no other legitimate justification.

The state argues recent election results favoring Republicans were “a reflection of Wisconsin’s natural political geography,” with Democrats concentrated in urban areas like Milwaukee and Madison.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court sides with officials sued over post-Sept. 11 detentions

FILE PHOTO -- U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (R) and FBI Director Robert Mueller speak about possible terrorist threats against the United States, in Washington, May 26, 2004

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to former President George W. Bush’s attorney general, FBI chief and other officials, ruling they cannot be sued over the treatment of detainees, mainly Muslims, rounded up in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The justices, in a 4-2 decision, reversed a lower court’s decision that said the long-running suit brought by the detainees could proceed against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and others. Mueller is now the special counsel investigating possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump’s campaign team in the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

Three of the justices did not participate in the ruling.

The civil rights lawsuit sought to hold the various former officials responsible for racial and religious profiling and abuse in detention that the plaintiffs said they endured after being swept up following the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda Islamic militants on the United States.

Writing for the court, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy said the allegations were serious and that the Supreme Court did not condone the treatment of the detainees. But, Kennedy said, the only issue for the court was whether Congress had authorized such lawsuits against public officials. It had not, the justices concluded.

The court sent one part of the case back to lower courts to determine if claims against Dennis Hasty, the warden in charge of the detention facility in Brooklyn where the detainees were held, could go forward.

The suit was filed by a group of Muslim, Arab and South Asian non-U.S. citizens who, their lawyers said, were held as terrorism suspects based on their race, religion, ethnicity and immigration status and abused in detention before being deported.

The lawsuit claimed that the senior Bush administration officials were liable because they made the policy decisions that led to the round-up and confinement of the plaintiffs.

Liberal justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

Breyer took the relatively unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench, saying such lawsuits should be allowed to go forward in order “to provide appropriate compensation for those deprived of important constitutional rights and in times of special national-security need.”

The plaintiffs were charged with only civil immigration violations. But they said they were subjected at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center to 23-hours-a-day solitary confinement, strip searches, sleep deprivation, beatings and other abuses and denied the ability to practice their religion.

They said their rights under the U.S. Constitution to due process and equal protection under the law were violated.

During the U.S. Justice Department’s massive investigation after the Sept. 11 attacks, certain immigrants in the country illegally were detained until being cleared of involvement.

The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ashcroft, Mueller and former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar could be sued, based on a 1971 Supreme Court precedent. In 2013, a judge had dismissed the claims against them but allowed some against detention facility wardens.

Government lawyers have said there is no proof Ashcroft or Mueller personally condoned any potential unconstitutional actions.

The plaintiffs included Benamar Benatta, an Algerian Muslim who was seeking refugee status in Canada, and Ahmed Khalifa, an Egyptian Muslim who said he was on vacation.

In a similar previous case, the Supreme Court in 2009 backed Ashcroft, saying a lawsuit by detainees failed to contain specific details on Ashcroft’s involvement.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Trump set for first U.S. Supreme Court visit as justices weigh travel ban

FILE PHOTO: The Supreme Court is seen ahead of the Senate voting to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch as an Associate Justice in Washington, DC, U.S. on April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For the first time since he was elected, President Donald Trump is set to attend the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, presenting a potentially awkward moment as the court weighs what to do about his contentious executive order that attempts to restrict U.S. entry by people from six Muslim-majority countries.

Trump is scheduled to visit the ornate, marble-clad courthouse in Washington for the investiture of new Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose Senate confirmation in April was his first major accomplishment.

Attention will be focused on whether Trump, known for his off-the-cuff remarks and incendiary tweets, will follow the rules of an institution known for its courtesy and tradition.

The stakes are heightened by the fact that Trump’s so-called travel ban, one of his signature policies, is now before the justices after being blocked by lower courts.

The president is expected to sit in the courtroom during the brief ceremony in which Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the judicial oath to Gorsuch.

Trump is not expected to make a speech at the event, but he is likely to talk briefly to the justices beforehand in the court’s conference room, as other presidents have done in the past, according to a court spokeswoman.

In deciding whether to allow the travel ban to go into effect, the justices are set to weigh whether Trump’s harsh election campaign rhetoric can be used as evidence that the March 6 order was intended to discriminate against Muslims.

Trump has spoken out against courts blocking the ban and has also criticized his own lawyers. The court is currently considering an emergency request from the administration seeking to put its travel ban into effect while litigation continues.

Federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii blocked Trump’s 90-day ban on travelers from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The Hawaii judge also blocked a 120-day ban on refugees entering the United States. The injunctions blocking the ban were upheld on appeal.

Trump’s appointment of conservative Gorsuch has been his most significant win since taking office in January.

Gorsuch, who has been sitting on the bench since April 10, restored the high court’s 5-4 conservative majority. There was a vacancy on the court for more than a year following the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Lisa Shumaker)

Venezuela chief prosecutor accuses government of harassment; violence flares

A protester holds a national flag as a bank branch, housed in the magistracy of the Supreme Court of Justice, burns during a rally against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Andreina Aponte and Corina Pons

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s chief prosecutor said on Monday her family had been threatened and followed by intelligence agents since she split with the government, and violence broke out in protests at the Supreme Court over a bid to change the constitution.

Luisa Ortega, a former ally of President Nicolas Maduro who has turned against him and the ruling Socialist Party, has questioned Maduro’s handling of opposition street protests in recent weeks and challenged his plan to rewrite a constitution brought in by late leader Hugo Chavez.

“Somebody is threatening my family,” she said in a radio interview. “They harass them. They follow them, patrol cars that look like SEBIN,” she said, referring to the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN).

State officials have launched a series of verbal attacks on Ortega, ranging from questioning her sanity to accusing her of promoting violence.

She said she would hold the government responsible if her family was harmed.

Fanned by anger at triple-digit inflation along with shortages of food and medicine, protests have grown smaller but more violent over the past two months, with at least 67 killed and thousands injured.

Ortega’s office said it was investigating the death on Monday of a man called Socrates Salgado, 49, in a coastal town near Caracas. Opposition politicians said he died during a protest.

“INEPT”

In April, Ortega successfully challenged a Supreme Court decision to assume the powers of the opposition-controlled legislature, making her the highest official in years to openly break with the ruling party.

She filed a Supreme Court challenge last week to Maduro’s plan to elect a legislative super-body known as a constituent assembly, that will have the power to rewrite the constitution and in some cases dissolve state institutions.

The Supreme Court rejected the challenge on Monday.

“The electoral chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice declares that the (challenge) filed by Luisa Ortega Diaz is inadmissible because it is an inept accumulation of pretensions,” the court said on Twitter.

In response, Ortega launched another legal challenge, this time claiming that 13 judges appointed to the court in 2015 were put there via an “irregular” process and that they should be replaced.

Protesters angry at the pro-government court’s ruling on Monday attacked a branch of the court with petrol bombs and damaged a bank in the same building, which was engulfed in smoke and flames. Several protesters were injured as security guards tried to repel them.

Police arrested 24 people for their involvement in the daylight attack on a busy office block, which was condemned by Maduro as a terrorist act. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles said it was the work of government agitators.

Outside the Supreme Court headquarters in downtown Caracas, protesters backing Ortega were confronted earlier by government supporters.

Maduro says Venezuela is the victim of an “economic war” that he says can only be addressed by a constituent assembly.

The elections council has set an election for the assembly for July 30. The opposition is refusing to participate in the vote, saying it is rigged in favor of the Socialist Party.

In a move seen as crimping opposition power, the Interior Ministry on Monday took direct control of the state police force in Miranda, a region that includes a wealthy part of Caracas. Capriles, a former presidential candidate, is its governor.

Citing the current constitution, Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the six-month “intervention” was justified because there was evidence the police force was involved in rights abuses and organized crime.

Capriles said the plan was to use the police force to repress protests and said members of the force should not obey any order that violated human rights or the constitution.

(Writing by Frank Jack Daniel and Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Cynthia Osterman and Paul Tait)

Supreme Court invalidates gender inequality in citizenship law

FILE PHOTO - The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, DC, U.S. April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a gender distinction in U.S. immigration law that treats mothers and fathers differently when determining a child’s citizenship, calling such inequality “stunningly anachronistic.”

The high court, in a 8-0 ruling authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, found that a provision in federal law that defines how people born overseas can be eligible for U.S. citizenship violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

The ruling, however, may not help the man who brought the case, New York resident Luis Morales-Santana, who was seeking to avoid deportation to the Dominican Republic after being convicted of several offenses.

The law requires that unwed fathers who are American citizens spend at least five years living in the United States – a 2012 amendment reduced it from 10 years – before they can confer citizenship to a child born abroad, out of wedlock and to a partner who is not a U.S. citizen.

For unwed U.S. mothers in the same situation, the requirement was only one year.

In the ruling, the Supreme Court said that until Congress revises the law, both women and men will be covered by the five-year requirement.

Ginsburg, known for her work on gender equality before she became a jurist, wrote for the court that in light of the Supreme Court’s various rulings regarding the equal protection guarantee since 1971, having separate “duration-of-residence requirements for unwed mothers and fathers who have accepted parental responsibility is stunningly anachronistic.”

The arguments made in defense of the law by former President Barack Obama’s administration before he left office in January “cannot withstand inspection under a Constitution that requires the government to respect the equal dignity and stature of its male and female citizens,” Ginsburg wrote.

Morales-Santana’s deceased father was an American citizen, while his mother was not. His father failed to meet the law’s five-year requirements by 20 days.

His lawyer, Stephen Broome, said he is reviewing how the ruling affects his client.

Morales-Santana, 54, was born in the Dominican Republican and has lived legally in the United States since 1975. He was convicted of several criminal offenses in 1995, including two counts of robbery and four counts of attempted murder. The U.S. government has sought to deport him since 2000.

The high court split 4-4 on the same issue in 2011.

In July 2015, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with Morales-Santana and struck down the law at issue, saying it applied “impermissible stereotyping” in imposing a tougher burden on fathers. The U.S. Justice Department sought to defend the law and asked the high court to take the case.

The case is one of several with immigration-related themes that are before the justices at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration is pursing efforts to strengthen immigration enforcement.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Another U.S. appeals court refuses to revive Trump travel ban

FILE PHOTO - International travelers arrive at Logan airport following U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order travel ban in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Dan Levine and Lawrence Hurley

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump suffered another legal setback on Monday as a second federal appeals court refused to revive his travel ban on people entering the United States from six Muslim-majority nations in a dispute headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used narrow grounds to reject the Trump administration’s bid to undo a Hawaii federal judge’s decision blocking the temporary ban. It said the Republican president’s March 6 order violated existing immigration law. But the three-judge panel – all Democratic appointees – did not address whether it was unconstitutional discrimination against Muslims.

A second court, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on May 25 upheld a Maryland judge’s ruling that also blocked Trump’s 90-day ban on travelers from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The 4th Circuit had ruled that the ban, which replaced an earlier Jan. 27 one also blocked by the courts, “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination” aimed at Muslims.

The 9th Circuit largely left in place a nationwide injunction by Judge Derrick Watson that stopped parts of the order, which Trump said was urgently needed to prevent terrorism in the United States. That ruling came in a lawsuit challenging the order brought by the state of Hawaii, which stated the ban would harm its universities and tourism industry.

Even before Monday’s ruling, the case was on the fast track to the Supreme Court, where the administration on June 1 filed an emergency request seeking to reinstate the order and hear its appeal of the 4th Circuit ruling. The Supreme Court could act on the administration’s request as soon as this week.

Trump has been on the losing side in all four court rulings on the March order. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the administration is reviewing Monday’s decision and expressed continued confidence that the order is fully lawful and ultimately will be upheld by the Supreme Court.

“I think we can all attest that these are very dangerous times and we need every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence,” Spicer told a briefing.

The 9th Circuit upheld the block on Trump’s three-month travel ban for the six countries and four-month suspension of all refugee admissions. But the court pared back part of Watson’s injunction in order to allow the government to conduct internal reviews on vetting procedures for these travelers.

The administration said the travel ban was needed to allow time to implement stronger vetting measures, although it has already rolled out some new requirements not blocked by courts, including additional questions for visa applicants.

Rather than focusing on Trump campaign statements as the Virginia-based court did, the 9th Circuit said the language in the executive order itself did not make a rational case for why a travel ban was needed.

“The order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality,” the court wrote, referring the combined populations of the six countries.

‘ATTRACTIVE WAY’

Under immigration law, the administration was required to make findings that entry of the people in question would be detrimental to the United States but failed to do so, the court said.

Stephen Vladeck, a professor at University of Texas School of Law, said the 9th Circuit provided an easier path for the Supreme Court to keep the travel ban on hold, because it avoided entirely the controversy over Trump’s campaign statements.

“It provides a very attractive way to leave the injunction in place without setting broader doctrinal rules about which they may have pause,” Vladeck said.

Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Monday was the deadline for the ban’s challengers to respond to the administration’s request that the order be allowed to go into effect. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents people challenging the ban in the separate Maryland suit handled by the 4th Circuit, filed court papers urging the court not to take up the case, saying the order will become moot on Wednesday, 90 days from when Trump issued it.

Lawyers for Hawaii called the order a “thinly veiled Muslim ban.”

Trump’s earlier Jan. 27 order also included Iraq among the countries targeted and a total ban on refugees from Syria. The March order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but was blocked before it could go into effect on March 16.

The suits by Hawaii and the Maryland challengers argued that the order violated federal immigration law and a section of the Constitution’s First Amendment that prohibits the government from favoring or disfavoring any particular religion.

Hawaii’s court papers mentioned a series of Trump Twitter posts on June 5. Trump described the order as a “watered down, politically correct” version of his original one.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Dan Levine In San Francisco and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington; Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)