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3 weeks ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot |Gene Downing |David Brown |Rex Bossert
The court has perhaps never been friendlier to criminal justice reform. This month, the Michigan Supreme Court announced that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for people under the age of 21 violate the state constitution’s ban on cruel or unusual punishment. The court also held, based on a separate recent decision, that this rule applies retroactively. These decisions are the latest from a court that’s been steadily carving out a path against excessive sentencing.
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2 months ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot |Andrew Garber |Michael Milov-Cordoba |Sarah Kessler
Civic organizations and voters allege that Washington’s signature verification process for vote-by-mail ballots disproportionally disenfranchises minority voters, young voters, military personnel, voters with disabilities, and non-native English speakers, in violation of state constitutional voting rights protections. The plaintiffs and the state defendants are appealing their respective denials of summary judgment.
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2 months ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Eric M. Ruben |Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot |Sarah Kessler |Erin Smith
Issues on the dockets include controversial ballot counting rules, a minimum wage hike, and “dark money” contributions. Each month, State Court Report previews upcoming oral arguments in prominent or interesting state court cases.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
statecourtreport.org | Mary Ziegler |Alicia Bannon |Erin Smith |Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
Texas has one of the nation’s most stringent abortion bans. Now, it’s going after a New York doctor who mailed abortion pills to a Texas resident — and launching a new era in state court litigation over abortion. Texas’s attorney general is suing the doctor, Margaret Daly Carpenter, in state civil court, claiming she practiced medicine in Texas without a Texas license and improperly aided an abortion.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
statecourtreport.org | Mary Ziegler |Alicia Bannon |Erin Smith |Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
The dispute over whether the 1849 law bans nearly all abortions in the state is a sign of a “world gone mad,” one justice said. The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week over an 1849 law that state Republicans say bans abortion from contraception to birth, with only very narrow exceptions. After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v.
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Jul 18, 2024 | 
statecourtreport.org | Marcus Gadson |Erin Smith |Quinn Yeargain |Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
Courts considering removal of Confederate monuments have ignored southern states’ historic commitments to maintaining national unity and respecting racial equality. More than 150 years after slavery ended, southern states are still debating whether it is appropriate to continue celebrating white supremacy and slavery through monuments and other public symbols — and make the descendants of enslaved people contribute their tax dollars to the effort.
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
statecourtreport.org | Alicia Bannon |Mary Ziegler |Erin Smith |Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling has breathed new life into long-unenforced abortion laws. Earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an 1864 law that bans virtually all abortions in the state is still operative. The decision upended state and national politics in a key swing state and brought new attention to so-called zombie laws — long-unenforced statutes that remain on the books.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
commondreams.org | Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
President Joe Biden’s recent nomination of a Harvard-educated litigation partner from a white-shoe law firm to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit should have been pretty run of the mill, as far as judicial confirmation processes go. But one aspect of the nominee’s bio has contorted what would likely otherwise have been an uneventful confirmation process into a grotesque spectacle: The nominee, Adeel Mangi, is a Muslim American of Pakistani descent.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
commondreams.org | Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
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Apr 2, 2024 | 
statecourtreport.org | Anthony Sanders |Walter Olson |Nancy Watzman |Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
Can singing or writing violent song lyrics be used as evidence that a person has committed a violent crime? Over and over again, in state courts across the country, prosecutors are trying to do just that. The question for courts, including in a recent case in Iowa, is whether this tactic risks convicting people not because of what they did or didn’t do, but because of how jurors react to their taste in music. But it’s not all musical genres that have the attention of prosecutors.
