Now, we look at our final case of this four-part series, a 2015 SCOTUS case, where notably a government regulation passed strict scrutiny. Thus, even though a law may infringe on a fundamental right, the strict scrutiny standard can be used to hold the law or policy constitutionally valid if the gov ...

Background Adam Briggs, Paula Briggs, Joshua Briggs, and Sarah H. Briggs are all owners of property in Harford Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. Their property lays adjacent to property leased by Southwestern Energy (SWN), a U.S. natural gas and energy company.  On Nov. 5, 2015 the B ...

Facts: In 2004, John Ramirez murdered a convenience store clerk, which resulted in him being sentenced to the death penalty. On Feb. 5, 2021, Texas notified Ramirez of his execution date, which was scheduled for Sept. 28, 2021. Consequently, Ramirez filed a prison grievance requesting that the St ...

Facts of the Case In 1981, Lynn Goldsmith, a famous photographer of rock stars and the like, published a would-be famous image she took of Prince. Newsweek had commissioned Goldsmith to photograph him as his alluring style of music and performance entered pop culture. The magazine went on to use ...

Background In 2018, North Carolina created Senate Bill 824, which required that all citizens have with them “one of ten forms of authorized photographic identification” in order to vote. The North Carolina section of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a m ...

North Carolina has long been the battleground for gerrymandering litigation. Harper v. Hall is the most recent example, in which voters sued legislators and the state’s elections board over the congressional map for the 2020 election. They claimed it violated the Free Elections Clause and Equal Prot ...

Facts of the Case In February of 2015, National Association of African American Owned Media (NAAAOM) and Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN), both owned by Byron Allen, filed suit against Comcast Corp. ESN and NAAAOM are “100% African-American owned” California based television and motion pictur ...

Background The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared that the opioid crisis was a public health emergency in 2017. According to the CDC, the total number of fatal drug overdoses has increased from 70,000 people in 2017 to 92,000 people in 2020, and opioids accounted for near ...

A case that affirmed stricter regulations on the actions of a judge was Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. The ruling from this case emphasized that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires judges to recuse themselves not only when actual bias has been demonstrated or when the judge ...

Background Fifty-four million gallons of radioactive waste sit underground at the Hanford site, a federal nuclear production site in Washington state that operated between 1944 and 1989. As part of the Manhattan project, the Hanford site produced substantial amounts of radioactive and chemical wa ...