Both Indiana Senators Todd Young and Mike Braun praised 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s intelligence, commitment to the law and love for her family during Monday’s opening round of her confirmation hearing to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Democrats and their allies said Tuesday they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether absentee ballots in battleground Wisconsin that are received up to six days after the election can be counted — a move being fought by Republicans who have opposed other attempts across the country to expand voting.
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is vowing to bring no “agenda” to the court, batting back senators’ questions Tuesday on abortion, gun rights and the November election, insisting she would take a conservative approach to the law but decide cases as they come.
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett declared Monday that Americans “deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written,” encapsulating her conservative approach to the law that has Republicans excited about the prospect of her taking the place of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before Election Day.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has given parties just days to file briefs in an expedited appeal over a state law requiring election officials to receive absentee ballots by noon on Election Day. The court’s fast track positions it to rule on the matter just weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 election, while it issued a sharply divided opinion Thursday upholding a somewhat similar law in a Wisconsin case.
The Supreme Court might prefer to avoid politics, but politics has a way of finding the court.
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett served as a “handmaid,” the term then used for high-ranking female leaders in the People of Praise religious community, an old directory for the group’s members shows.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday reversed a stay of execution for a Louisiana man scheduled to die by lethal injection in an Indiana federal prison, finding he does not meet the stringent requirements for savings-clause eligibility.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on the Justice Department to provide any missing materials from a questionnaire completed by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Confirmation hearings for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and Notre Dame law professor remain scheduled to begin next week.
The effort to allow all Hoosiers to vote by absentee ballot in the November presidential election has been blocked by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals which, in an echo of the state’s argument, found Election Day is too close to make any changes now. In a separate case, a judge temporarily stayed pending appeal an order blocking an Indiana law that requires absentee ballots be received by noon to be counted.
A split 7th Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed a grant of summary judgment to the Social Security Administration on Monday in a class-action suit brought by a Canadian woman with dual citizenship who alleged her U.S. Social Security benefits were wrongly reduced based on similar benefits she receives from Canada.
News in recent days that Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals this summer had COVID-19 was overwhelmed by President Donald Trump’s diagnosis and hospitalization, and a 7th Circuit spokesman said Tuesday the court would have no comment on Barrett’s earlier case.
The United States Supreme Court, already poised to take a significant turn to the right, opened its new term Monday with a jolt from two conservative justices who raised new criticism of the court’s embrace of same-sex marriage.
Attorney General Curtis Hill’s office is appealing a judge’s ruling that absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 must be counted. Meanwhile, the state acknowledged in its filing that election officials are taking steps to count those ballots if the judge’s order stands.
Supreme Court nominee, 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge and University of Notre Dame Law School professor Amy Coney Barrett and her husband, Jesse, had coronavirus earlier this year and recovered, according to two administration officials.
Plaintiffs in Indiana’s vote by mail case are questioning the state’s assertion made this week in oral arguments to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that Hoosiers can request a special exemption from the Indiana Election Commission to cast an absentee ballot if they do not meet one of the law’s categories of who may vote by mail.
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett signed a 2006 newspaper ad sponsored by an anti-abortion group in which she said she opposed “abortion on demand” and defended “the right to life from fertilization to the end of natural life.”
During oral argument in the dispute over Indiana’s restrictions on absentee voting, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals panel focused on Hoosier voters by asking which of the proposed remedies would cause the least confusion and what remedies are currently available to the electorate.
President Donald Trump’s stark expectation that the Supreme Court will intervene to “look at the ballots” in what he calls a rigged election cast new questions Wednesday on the Senate’s rush to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the vacant seat before Nov. 3.
Indiana’s prohibition against no-excuse absentee voting goes before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday afternoon, with the plaintiffs trying to convince the appellate panel to reverse the district judge’s ruling and allow all registered Hoosier voters to cast their ballots by mail in the Nov. 3 presidential election. The federal appeals court will livestream oral arguments in the case.