SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal on behalf of some U.S. veterans who want disability benefits because they were exposed to radiation while responding to a Cold War-era hydrogen bomb accident in Spain.

The justices not did comment in turning away an appeal from Victor Skaar, an Air Force veteran in his mid-80s.

Skaar, of Nixa, Missouri, filed class-action claims seeking benefits for him and others who say they became ill from exposure to radiation during the recovery and cleanup of the undetonated bombs at the accident site in Palomares, a village in southern Spain, in 1966.

A federal appeals court rejected the class-action claims. The Supreme Court's action leaves that ruling in place.

The Justice Department, arguing against high-court review, noted that Congress last year enacted legislation that expands eligibility for benefits for many Palomares veterans. But the department also acknowledged that Skaar is not covered by the legislation.

Skaar's lawyers told the Supreme Court that he suffers from leukopenia, described as a condition that can be caused by exposure to radiation. Skaar also has had skin cancer, now in remission, the lawyers wrote in a court filing.

He was among 1,400 U.S. service members who were sent to Palomares to help clean up what has been called the worst radiation accident in U.S. history.

continues....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation on Thursday in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River.

States that draw water from the river — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — and water districts in California that are also involved in the case had urged the court to decide for them, which the justices did in a 5-4 ruling. Colorado had argued that siding with the Navajo Nation would undermine existing agreements and disrupt the management of the river.

The Biden administration had said that if the court were to come down in favor of the Navajo Nation, the federal government could face lawsuits from many other tribes.

Lawyers for the Navajo Nation had characterized the tribe’s request as modest, saying they simply were seeking an assessment of the tribe's water needs and a plan to meet them.

The facts of the case go back to treaties that the tribe and the federal government signed in 1849 and 1868. The second treaty established the reservation as the tribe’s “permanent home” — a promise the Navajo Nation says includes a sufficient supply of water. In 2003 the tribe sued the federal government, arguing it had failed to consider or protect the Navajo Nation’s water rights to the lower portion of the Colorado River.

Writing for a majority made up of conservative justices, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that “the Navajos contend that the treaty requires the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajos — for example, by assessing the Tribe's water needs, developing a plan to secure the needed water, and potentially building pipelines, pumps, wells, or other water infrastructure.”

But, Kavanaugh said, "In light of the treaty's text and history, we conclude that the treaty does not require the United States to take those affirmative steps.”

Kavanaugh acknowledged that water issues are difficult ones.

“Allocating water in the arid regions of the American West is often a zero-sum situation,” he wrote. It is important, he said, for courts to leave “to Congress and the President the responsibility to enact appropriations laws and to otherwise update federal law as they see fit in light of the competing contemporary needs for water.”

A federal trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit, but an appeals court allowed it to go forward. The Supreme Court's decision reverses that ruling from the appeals court.

In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that he would have allowed the case to go forward and he characterized the Navajo's position as a “simple ask.”

“Where do the Navajo go from here?” he wrote. “To date, their efforts to find out what water rights the United States holds for them have produced an experience familiar to any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.”

Gorsuch said one “silver lining” of the case may be that his colleagues in the majority recognized that the tribe may still be able to “assert the interests they claim in water rights litigation, including by seeking to intervene in cases that affect their claimed interests.”

Gorsuch, a conservative and Colorado native who has emerged as a champion of Native rights since joining the court in 2017, was joined by the court's three liberals: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

During arguments in the case in March, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that the Navajo Nation’s original reservation was hundreds of miles away from the section of the Colorado River it now seeks water from.

Today, the Colorado River flows along what is now the northwestern border of the tribe’s reservation, which extends into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. Two of the river’s tributaries, the San Juan River and the Little Colorado River, also pass alongside and through the reservation. Still, one-third of the some 175,000 people who live on the reservation, the largest in the country, do not have running water in their homes.

Here's the latest for Thursday June 22nd: Tornadoes strike North Texas; Search intensifies for missing submersible; House censures Congressman Adam Schiff; Striking Hollywood writers rally in Los Angeles.

The government argued that it has helped the tribe secure water from the Colorado River’s tributaries and provided money for infrastructure, including pipelines, pumping plants and water treatment facilities. But it said no law or treaty required the government to assess and address the tribe’s general water needs. The states involved in the case argued that the Navajo Nation was attempting to make an end run around a Supreme Court decree that divvied up water in the Colorado River’s Lower Basin.

In a statement, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren called the ruling “disappointing" and said the tribe's lawyers “continue to analyze the opinion and determine what it means for this particular lawsuit.”

“My job as the President of the Navajo Nation is to represent and protect the Navajo people, our land, and our future,” Nygren said. “The only way to do that is with secure, quantified water rights to the Lower Basin of the Colorado River.”

Rita McGuire, a lawyer who represented states opposing the tribe’s claims, said the court “ruled exactly right” and that “we’re very pleased.”

____

Associated Press reporter Michael Phillis in St. Louis contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Republican-led challenge to a Biden administration policy that prioritizes the deportation of immigrants who are deemed to pose the greatest risk to public safety or were picked up at the border.

The justices voted 8-1 to allow the long-blocked policy to take effect, recognizing there is not enough money or manpower to deport all 11 million or so people who are in the United States illegally.

The case was one of two immigration cases decided Friday, the other upholding a section of federal law used to prosecute people who encourage illegal immigration..

In the deportation case, Louisiana and Texas had argued that federal immigration law requires authorities to detain and expel those in the U.S. illegally even if they pose little or no risk.

But the court held that the states lacked the legal standing, or right to sue, in the first place.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his opinion for the court that the executive branch has no choice but to prioritize enforcement efforts.

“That is because the Executive Branch invariably lacks the resources to arrest and prosecute every violator of every law and must constantly react and adjust to the ever-shifting public-safety and public welfare needs of the American people,” Kavanaugh wrote.

At the center of the case is a September 2021 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that paused deportations unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “egregious threats to public safety.” The guidance, issued after Joe Biden became president, updated a Trump-era policy to remove people who were in the country illegally, regardless of criminal history or community ties.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas applauded Friday's decision, saying it would allow immigration officers “to focus limited resources and enforcement actions on those who pose a threat to our national security, public safety and border security.”

The case displayed a frequently used litigation strategy by Republican attorneys general and other officials that has succeeded in slowing Biden administration initiatives by going to Republican-friendly courts.

Texas and Louisiana claimed in their lawsuit that they would face added costs of having to detain people the federal government might allow to remain free inside the United States, despite their criminal records.

Last year, a federal judge in Texas ordered a nationwide halt to the guidance and a federal appellate panel in New Orleans declined to step in.

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati had earlier overturned a district judge’s order that put the policy on hold in a lawsuit filed by Arizona, Ohio and Montana.

But 11 months ago, when the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices voted 5-4 to keep the policy on hold. At the same time, the court agreed to hear the case, which was argued in December.

In Friday's decision, Kavanaugh's opinion spoke for just five justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberals. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the outcome for other reasons.

Justice Samuel Alito filed a solo dissent, writing that the decision improperly favors the president over Congress. “And it renders states already laboring under the effects of massive illegal immigration even more helpless,” Alito wrote.

In a separate immigration-related decision also issued Friday, the court upheld a section of federal law that is used against people who encourage illegal immigration.

The justices by a 7-2 vote reinstated the criminal conviction of a California man, Helaman Hansen, who offered adult adoptions he falsely claimed would lead to U.S. citizenship. At least 471 people paid Hansen between $550 and $10,000 each, or more than $1.8 million in all, the government said.

He was prosecuted under a section of federal immigration law that says a person who “encourages or induces” a non-citizen to come to or remain in the United States illegally can be punished by up to five years in prison. That’s increased to 10 years if the person doing the encouraging is doing so for personal financial gain. The justices rejected an appeals court ruling that the law is too broad and violates the Constitution.