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Posts tagged as “United States Supreme Court”

Ketanji Brown Jackson Officially Sworn in to Serve as Justice on U.S. Supreme Court

Ketanji Brown Jackson Officially Sworn in to Serve as Justice on U.S. Supreme Court

By goodblacknews on June 30, 2022

According to the New York Times, just after noon today, Ketanji Brown Jackson took the judicial oath, becoming the first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

Justice Jackson, 51, was confirmed in April, when the Senate voted 53 to 47 on her nomination. She has replaced Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who she once clerked for. Breyer stepped down at the conclusion of the court’s current term.To quote nytimes.com:

Justice Jackson took both a constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, and a judicial oath, administered by Justice Breyer. The brief swearing in ceremony took place in the West Conference Room at the Supreme Court, before a small gathering of Judge Jackson’s family. Her husband, Patrick G. Jackson, held the Bible.

“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Judge Jackson said in April at a White House celebration following her confirmation. “But we’ve made it. We’ve made it. All of us.”

[To listen to GBN’s recent bonus podcast about Jackson’s life and career on our site and read the transcript, click here. To go to Apple Podcasts, click below:]

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/us/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-sworn-in-supreme-court.html

U.S. Supreme Court Rules Title VII of Civil Rights Act Protects LGBTQ Workers

U.S. Supreme Court Rules Title VII of Civil Rights Act Protects LGBTQ Workers

By goodblacknews on June 15, 2020

In an historic and majority 6-3 decision this morning, the United States Supreme Court ruled that workplace discrimination against LGBTQ workers is prohibited by federal law.

According to the New York Times, SCOTUS said the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination, applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

To quote nytimes.com:

“The vote was 6 to 3, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch writing the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The case concerned Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex. The question for the justices was whether that last prohibition — discrimination “because of sex”— applies to many millions of gay and transgender workers.

The decision, covering two cases, was the court’s first on L.G.B.T. rights since the retirement in 2018 of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinions in all four of the court’s major gay rights decisions.”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/us/gay-transgender-workers-supreme-court.html

U.S. Supreme Court to Examine Racial Bias in Jury-Selection Case

By goodblacknews on November 3, 2015
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U.S. Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. (MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES)
The United States Supreme Court will be looking into racial prejudice in jury selection Monday, with the justices considering a case of a black teenager who was sentenced to death by an all-white jury in Georgia, The Guardian reports.
According to the report, lawyers bringing forth the appeal on behalf of Timothy Foster, who admitted to participating in the murder of a 79-year-old white woman in 1987, say that he was sentenced to death because jurors, when recommending capital punishment, did not fairly consider evidence that he was intellectually disabled, The Guardian notes.
The prosecution has long insisted that race had nothing to do with the fact that five black individuals were excluded from the jury in the trial held in Rome, Ga. However, notes found almost two decades after Foster’s sentencing indicate that all the potential black jurors had a “B” marked next to their names by the prosecution, which had recommended the death penalty in order to “deter other people out there in the projects.”
“This is a pervasive problem,” the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s litigation director, Christina Swarns, told The Guardian. “It hasn’t gone away. This is not a problem that is limited to the Deep South.”
The Guardian notes that one black woman, Marilyn Garrett, was ruled out for the jury because she was too close in age to the defendant. Garrett was 34, while Foster was 19 at the time. Another black juror was ruled out for being a member of the Church of Christ, which prosecutors said was anti-death penalty, even though the prosecution itself had notes showing that the church had left such judgments up to members.
If the Supreme Court decides that the reasons for dismissing black jurors were not justified or credible, the case could have a huge impact on the U.S. judicial system, including a legal procedure referred to as the “Batson test,” which requires prosecutors to show nonracial reasons for eliminating a juror if a racial pattern can be found in the pre-emptory strikes.
“The criminal-justice system is the part of society least affected by the civil rights movement: Ninety-five percent of the prosecutors in this country are white,” Stephen Bright, Foster’s lawyer, told The Guardian. “When I go ’round the South [a lot has changed] in terms of who is on the school board, who is on the legislature … [but] I go to the courthouse, it’s just like 1940.”
Read more at The Guardian. 
article by Breanna Edwards via theroot.com