SCOTUS

One of Alabama’s longest-serving death row inmates could soon receive a new trial after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state’s appeal of a lower court's ruling that prosecutors violated his rights by intentionally rejecting potential Black jurors.

The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump's tariff policy. This was considered a significant loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda. However, published reports indicate that tariffs impacting Alabama, including actions against steel and automobile imports, remain in effect.

Governor Kay Ivey signed The Child Predator Death Penalty Act into law. The measure strengthens Alabama’s criminal penalties against those who are convicted of felony sexual crimes against a child. Crimes of first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy, and first-degree sexual assault of victims under the age of 12 would automatically become punishable by death.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to gut a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that has helped root out racial discrimination in voting for more than a half century, a change that would boost Republican electoral prospects, particularly across the South. Just two years ago, A earlier ruling created Alabama's new minority majority U.S. House seat in District 2, now occupied by Democrat Shomari Figures.

A Republican attack on a core provision of the Voting Rights Act that is designed to protect racial minorities comes to the Supreme Court this week, more than a decade after the justices knocked out another pillar of the 60-year-old law. Lawyers for Louisiana and the Trump administration will try to persuade the justices to wipe away the state's second majority Black congressional district and make it much harder, if not impossible, to take account of race in redistricting.

Senate Democrats reintroduced a bill Tuesday to restore and expand protections enshrined in the Voting Rights act of 1965, their latest long-shot attempt to revive the landmark law just days before its 60th anniversary and at a time of renewed debate over the future administration of American elections. The bill is named for the late John Lewis, who was injured during the 1965 attack on voting rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

The Supreme Court on Friday put off ruling on a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, instead ordering new arguments in the fall. The case is being closely watched because at arguments in March several of the court's conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court will consider making it harder for convicted murderers to show their lives should be spared because they are intellectually disabled, according an order released early on Friday after an apparent technological glitch.

The Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general in 19 states aimed at blocking climate change suits against the oil and gas industry from Democratic-led states. The Republicans' complaint, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, asserts that the Democratic states are trying to dictate national energy policy.

Alabama's congressional map is at stake in a federal trial beginning Monday to decide if the state will keep the new court-created district that led to the election of a second Black representative. The new minority majority U.S. House seat was at the heart of Alabama Public Radio’s eight-month investigation titled “…a new U.S. House seat, if you can keep it.”