Issued in a brief, unsigned opinion, the justices’ decision favors President Donald Trump’s administration, which opposes maintaining a practice that President Joe Biden formalized.
“In 2024, Biden’s administration adopted a regulation that formally codified administrative closure procedures, concluding that it lets judges efficiently manage their caseloads and promote the fair treatment of immigrants. That regulation replaced a prior rule adopted in 2020 during Trump’s first term in office that had been judicially blocked,” Reuters reported.
When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, however, he announced that he would no longer allow administrative closure of cases as a mechanism for reducing workloads in immigration courts.
The family of Renee Good, one of two US citizens fatally shot by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January,have sued the Trump administration, saying there had been "no accountability" for her killing during deportation sweeps.
Texas had already challenged that policy in a federal court, arguing that the rule lets immigration judges “effectively grant indefinite amnesty to aliens illegally present in this country.”
Three cities with large immigrant populations — Baltimore, Maryland; Columbus, Ohio; and New Haven, Connecticut — along with an immigrant rights advocacy group, filed a lawsuit seeking to preserve Biden’s decision. The courts rejected these requests, bringing the matter before the Supreme Court.
Administrative closure of deportation proceedings, however, has been practiced for decades. According to government statistics, the rule has benefited about 360,000 migrants since 1990.
The cross-examination of the complainant in the trial of suspended Paphos mayor Phedonas Phedonos concluded on Tuesday after three days before the Paphos criminal court.
The cross-examination followed the complainant’s earlier testimony, with proceedings held behind closed doors.
Judges and lawyers were present in the courtroom, while Phedonos remained in an adjacent room as the complainant gave evidence.
The trial is scheduled to resume on November 2 at 9am, when the prosecution’s final two witnesses are expected to testify.
One of the witnesses is a businessman whose testimony has been delayed because he was hospitalised at a private hospital in Nicosia.
It remains unclear whether he will be able to appear in person before the court.
Phedonos faces five charges: rape, indecent assault of a woman, indecent assault of a woman by another act, assault causing actual bodily harm, and administering a drug or other substance capable of intoxicating a person or overcoming their resistance.
Brazil’s Liberal Party, the party behind presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, on Monday recognized the election results leading to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory, even though the far-right leader has not conceded. Party president Valdemar Costa Neto said in a statement posted on the social platform X that the party recognizes the election results but…
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in Viramontes v. Cook County regarding the constitutionality of state and local bans on AR-15 semiautomatic rifles.
As the 2026 midterms approach, concerns are mounting over whether President Trump will attempt to overturn results through legal challenges, seizure of voting machines, or other controversial measures.
One of the more interesting developments at the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years has been the rise of a kind of sporadic alliance in defense of civil liberties between Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch.
In 2018, for example, Gorsuch, joined by Sotomayor, blasted the Supreme Court for refusing to even hear arguments in Stuart v. Alabama, an important case about forensic evidence, criminal trials, and the Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine one's accusers.
Similarly, in United States v. Davis (2019), Sotomayor joined Gorsuch's majority opinion striking down a federal law that called for enhanced sentencing when a gun was used in connection with certain federal crimes because the law at issue was too imprecisely written to pass constitutional muster. "When Congress passes a vague law," Gorsuch wrote, "the role of courts under our Constitution is not to fashion a new, clearer law to take its place, but to treat the law as a nullity and invite Congress to try again."
Gorsuch and Sotomayor have also been on the same page in a number of Fourth Amendment cases, though Sotomayor's overall Fourth Amendment record is arguably stronger than Gorsuch's. In Torres v. Madrid (2021), for instance, the Supreme Court held that when the police shoot a fleeing suspect, it still counts as a "seizure" for Fourth Amendment purposes even if the suspect kept on the move after being shot. "The application of physical force to the body with the intent to restrain is a seizure," the Court held, "even if the person does not submit and is not subdued." Sotomayor joined that pro-civil liberties decision; Gorsuch, along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, sided with the officers and voted in dissent.
Fortunately, the Gorsuch-Sotomayor band was back together last week to make some noise in support of the Bill of Rights in a dispute that pitted property rights against police powers. As Reason's Billy Binion reported, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging a lower court's "categorical rule" that "property destroyed in the exercise of [a state's] 'police power' is immune to claims under the Takings Clause, the U.S. Constitution's pledge that government cannot usurp private property without fairly compensating the owner."
Sotomayor, joined by Gorsuch, strongly implied that she thought the lower court's rule was unconstitutional, though she accepted that "further percolation" on the issue was needed before the Court should step in. "Where, as here, a person alleges a 'classic taking in which the government directly appropriates private property for its own use' or to pay an outstanding debt, like a tax lien," Sotomayor wrote, "the talismanic invocation of the State's 'law enforcement authority,' may be insufficient to avoid the requirement of just compensation." (Citations omitted.) Sotomayor then urged the lower courts that are "considering this issue to take care that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights."
Just as Gorsuch's Fourth Amendment record has its blemishes, Sotomayor's record on property rights has also been less than impressive at times. So it is doubly welcome to see these two justices back in the trenches together on this particular civil liberties front.
Elsewhere in the Law
Writing at SCOTUSblog, Anastasia Boden, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, has an interesting article about the Supreme Court's landmark 1926 decision in Euclid v. Ambler, in which, as Boden put it, the Court ruled in favor of a town's "power to pass comprehensive zoning, and against a local developer who had argued the town's plan exceeded the city's police power and destroyed the property's value." In effect, the Court's ruling was "the birth of modern zoning."
One of the things that has long fascinated me about Euclid v. Ambler is the fact that the opinion was authored by Justice George Sutherland, who is probably best remembered today for his role as a leading judicial foe of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. In Euclid v. Ambler, however, Sutherland endorsed a view of regulatory authority that has been celebrated by liberal academics as "a model of pragmatic and well-balanced Progressive jurisprudence."
I suppose we might call it an irony of legal history: The intellectual leader of the Supreme Court's anti–New Deal bloc actually left a greater mark on the law by shoring up the immense power of city planners.
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