EMERGENCY DOCKET

Detainees under Alien Enemies Act urge justices to leave judge’s bar on removal in place

Lawyers for alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to leave in place an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that prohibits the federal government from removing them, or anyone else, from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that until now has only been invoked during wartime.

In a 39-page filing, the plaintiffs noted that “it is becoming increasingly clear that many (perhaps most) of the men” who were sent to El Salvador on March 15 “were not actually members of” TdA, “and were instead erroneously listed” as TdA members largely because of their tattoos. The order by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the plaintiffs say, “is thus essential to ensure that more individuals who have no affiliation with the gang will not be sent to a notorious foreign prison.”

President Donald Trump issued the executive order at the center of the case on March 15. It targets Tren de Aragua, a large Venezuelan gang that began in that country’s prisons and then expanded into other parts of Latin America. The order directs government officials to quickly remove, without a hearing, noncitizens who are designated as members of TdA.

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Tuesday, April 1

The court this morning will hear arguments in a dispute over whether Americans injured in terror attacks abroad, or the family members of Americans killed in such attacks, can sue the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority in U.S. courts. Listen live. 

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read:

• GOP lawmakers take aim at anti-Trump rulings, nationwide injunctions (Justin Jouvenal, Theodoric Meyer, Marianna Sotomayor, & Clara Ence Morse, The Washington Post)
• Supreme Court Leans Toward Catholic Charity in Tax Case (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)
• Supreme Court seems ready to let religious groups opt out of unemployment compensation laws (Nina Totenberg, NPR)
• Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood. They are asking for the Supreme Court’s help (Maureen Groppe, USA Today)
• Justices Sotomayor and Jackson criticize court’s refusal to clarify criminal appeal rights (Jordan Rubin, MSNBC)

OPINION ANALYSIS

Justices validate IRS’s right to retain fraudulent pre-bankruptcy tax payments

United States v. Miller presents the kind of simple facts that populate law-school hypotheticals. A business is in financial distress. The shareholders (who control the business) use some of its funds to pay off their own debts, including taxes owed to the federal government. When the business files for bankruptcy, the creditors of the business justifiably complain that the shareholders should not have used the business’s money to pay off the shareholders’ personal tax liabilities. Can the Internal Revenue Service keep the money? The Supreme Court held last week that the answer is yes.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s opinion (joined by all the justices except for Justice Neil Gorsuch) presents this as a straightforward textual exercise, turning on “the interplay” between two sections of the Bankruptcy Code. The first is Section 544, which creates a federal cause of action allowing the bankrupt to recover funds it paid out before bankruptcy whenever the transfer “is voidable under applicable law.” The second is Section 106, which waives the federal government’s sovereign immunity for a long list of particular sections of the Bankruptcy Code, including Section 544.

CASE PREVIEW

Supreme Court considers Americans’ suit against Palestinian Authority

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in the latest chapter of the justices’ efforts to lay out rules for personal jurisdiction – whether courts have the power to hear a case against certain defendants. Tuesday’s case is a particularly high-profile dispute, and one that the federal government says has national security and foreign policy implications. At issue is whether a law enacted by Congress six years ago to allow U.S. victims of terrorist attacks to sue the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization in federal courts in the United States violates the Constitution’s guarantee of due process.

The case has had a long and circuitous route to the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs are U.S. citizens injured in terrorist attacks in Israel, as well as the families of U.S. citizens killed in such attacks. They filed a lawsuit in U.S. court against the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the Palestinian people’s official representative for foreign affairs, and the Palestinian Authority, the governing body for parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows U.S. nationals to bring lawsuits to recover for injuries resulting from “an act of international terrorism.”

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Monday, March 31

The justice will hear oral arguments in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission and Rivers v. Guerrero this morning. Catholic Charities is one of three religious rights cases the justices will hear in the final weeks of the 2024-25 term’s arguments. The social ministry arm of the Catholic diocese in Wisconsin urges the justices to rule that the state violated the group’s constitutional rights when Wisconsin failed to give it a religious tax exemption from state unemployment tax. 

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles and commentary related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• Supreme Court hears Catholic groups’ claim for religious tax exemption (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News)
• Is helping people with disabilities a religious act? The core question in a Supreme Court case (Maureen Groppe, USA Today)
• Will Religion’s Remarkable Winning Streak at the Supreme Court Continue? (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)
• Trump increasingly asks the Supreme Court to overrule judges blocking key parts of his agenda (Mark Sherman & Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press)
• Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court for Power to Resume Deportation Flights (Jess Bravin, The Wall Street Journal)