Government
NPR
Supreme Court to decide if domestic abusers may own firearms
NPR
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously handed a major victory to religious groups by greatly expanding how far employers must go to accommodate the religious views of their employees.
The court ruled in favor of Gerald Groff, an evangelical Christian postal worker, who refused to work on Sundays for religious reasons and said the U.S. Postal Service should accommodate his religious belief. He sued USPS for religious discrimination when he got in trouble for refusing to work Sunday shifts.
Supreme Court upholds North Carolina ruling that congressional districts violated state law – ABC7 Chicago
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that North Carolina's top court did not overstep its bounds in striking down a congressional districting plan as excessively partisan under state law.
The justices rejected the broadest view of a legal theory that could have transformed elections for Congress and president.
The court declined to invoke for the first time the "independent state legislature" theory, which would leave state legislatures virtually unchecked by their state courts when dealing with federal elections.
The high court did, though, suggest there could be limits on state court efforts to police elections for Congress and president.
The practical effect of the decision is minimal in that the North Carolina Supreme Court, under a new Republican majority, already has undone its redistricting ruling.
21-1271 Moore v. Harper (06/27/2023) – 21-1271_3f14.pdf
Justices take up cases on veterans’ education benefits and 16th Amendment – SCOTUSblog
In Moore v. United States, the justices agreed to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of a provision of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act known as the “mandatory repatriation tax,” which required U.S. taxpayers who owned shares in foreign corporations to pay a one-time tax on their share of the corporation’s earnings, even if those earnings were reinvested in the corporation and the taxpayers did not receive them.
Article I of the Constitution requires Congress to apportion any “direct taxes” among the states. The 16th Amendment carves out an exception to that rule, allowing Congress to tax “incomes, from whatever source derived,” without apportioning that tax among the states.
A Washington state couple, Charles and Kathleen Moore, went to federal court to challenge the tax. They own a 13% stake in an Indian corporation that supplies power tools to small Indian farms. The corporation reinvested its earnings rather than distributing dividends, and the Moores never received any income from their shares. The couple contended that the mandatory repatriation tax – which increased their tax liability by approximately $15,000 – violated the 16th Amendment. Under the Supreme Court’s cases interpreting the 16th Amendment, they argued, income must be distributed before it can be taxed, and therefore the mandatory repatriation tax is a direct tax that is not apportioned among the states.