Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is made up of nine justices who were each appointed by a sitting president and usually serve life terms. They take cases unsettled between lower state courts in order to provide a ruling on important decisions for the entire country, having immense political and social impacts on people and legislation for decades to come.

Who Should Decide Whether a Patient Needs an Abortion: A Doctor or an Opinion Columnist?

PUBLISHED 9/8/2026 by

In case you missed it, a Washington Post columnist published a so-called op-ed late last month that can only be described as an antiabortion, whine-weary litany of complaints about blue states’ targeting of crisis pregnancy centers (its headline, “In Massachusetts, ‘reproductive freedom’ goes only one way”)—a response to the decriminalization of abortion care later in pregnancy in the Commonwealth this summer.

It is fatuous and lazy commentary, recycling antiabortion movement talking points and a tired victim narrative about crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). It reads like straight-up CPC industry PR—something you’d find in the right-wing Washington Examiner. An embarrassment, even to Jeff Bezos’ Post. And yet: It’s still a win for the extremists to have their talking points platformed in such a mainstream outlet.

Beyond Abortion: How the ERA Could Transform Pregnancy, Work and Family Life

PUBLISHED 8/26/2026 by

On Women’s Equality Day, the unfinished fight for constitutional equality extends far beyond abortion. State equal rights amendments—and, ultimately, a robust federal ERA—could reshape how the law treats pregnancy, motherhood, work and family life.

Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, says state ERAs could be used to counter discrimination against pregnant women. Chu uses the example of a Tennessee case last year where a pregnant woman was denied prenatal care because she was unmarried.

“If they’re only asking about marriage in the specific context of pregnancy, then they’re treating pregnancy differently from other medical conditions,” she says. “And the other theory [of discrimination] is that they’re asking this question because they want women to be married before getting pregnant, enforcing the stereotype that only married women should receive prenatal care or should have pregnancies that are recognized.”

“I can imagine a robust ERA that says that it is a violation of our equality rights to die or to face the risk of dying from something that one of the wealthiest nations in the world should have rendered as an anomaly, as an exceptional circumstance that just doesn’t happen here anymore,” University of California, Berkeley, law professor Khiara M. Bridges says.

“The ERA can give us a real basis for making more intersectional arguments about equality, and pushing courts to consider the intersection of sex discrimination and race discrimination in ways that they have been unwilling to do until now.”

‘Chaos and Uncertainty’: Trump’s Mail-Voting Restrictions Can Now Proceed—But the Legal Fight Is Far From Over

PUBLISHED 8/25/2026 by | UPDATED 8/27/2026 at 8:10 A.M. PT

On Monday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gave the Trump administration a temporary procedural victory in its effort to interfere with mail-in voting ahead of the November midterms.

Two days later, the practical consequences of that decision became more urgent.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani reluctantly lifted the last remaining injunction blocking the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new restrictions on mail ballots, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling had tied her hands. The decision clears the way for the administration’s plan to proceed—for now—even as multiple new challenges are already underway.

The Postal Service’s final rule requires state and local election officials to submit information about mail-ballot voters through a new federal portal and place unique federal barcodes and markings on ballot envelopes. Mailings that do not satisfy the new requirements could be refused by the Postal Service.

But neither the Supreme Court nor Talwani ruled that President Trump has the constitutional authority to rewrite state election rules. Neither court upheld the legality of the administration’s restrictions. And neither decision ends voting by mail.

Mifepristone, Mail-In Voting and the Midterms Are All on the Line

PUBLISHED 8/22/2026 by

Trump has officially nominated Dr. Heidi Overton as the FDA commissioner. Overton previously called the abortion pill “telebortion,” and called on Congress to strictly regulate it.

With the FDA currently reevaluating its approval of mifepristone and its regulations permitting providers to mail the medication, Overton’s nomination represents yet another challenge to mifepristone’s widespread usage—accounting for over two-thirds of all abortions, including in states with bans. Not to mention the fact that Overton also recently appeared next to Trump during a press conference in which he spouted dangerous misinformation about childhood vaccines.

Asking for a friend: Will the physician in the Senate who holds a key vote on the Health Committee cave again?

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court might be on summer break—but its shadow docket is still up and running. And nothing is certain before this Supreme Court, which has committed itself to expanding Trump’s executive powers.

Thanks to SCOTUS and state legislators’ rollback of many fundamental rights, state supreme court races have been receiving increased attention, and attracted significant outside spending.

Keeping Score: Trump Disapproval Hits a New Low; Continued ICE Violence; AOC on Freezing Her Eggs: ‘Don’t Be Weird About This’

PUBLISHED 8/12/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is freezing her eggs and documenting the process on social media to normalize this facet of women’s reproductive healthcare.
—The top brands donating to members of Congress trying to expand ICE’s power include SpaceX, Home Depot, UPS and Walmart. 
—Organizations speak out after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero were shot and killed by federal agents, and Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva died in ICE custody.
—Epstein survivors warn the Senate not to confirm Todd Blanche as Attorney General.
—The Trump administration continues its attacks on immigrants, students, disabled people, gun control and more.
—Pete Hesgeth blocked the promotion of women Navy officers.
—Nicole Tung won the IWMF’s Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award.
—Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) has been accused of abusing his ex-wife and their young daughter.
—President Trump finally paid E. Jean Carroll $5.6 million for sexually abusing and defaming her.
—84 percent of women’s organizations working in crisis-affected countries say the need for humanitarian services has increased since January 2025, but almost 90 percent don’t have the funding to meet those needs.
—The United States is unique among similar countries, with single mothers participating in the workforce more often than partnered mothers.

… and more.

Another Blow to Women’s Equality at Work: The Trump Administration Is Trying to Weaken a Key Workplace Discrimination Protection

PUBLISHED 8/6/2026 by

The Trump administration is attempting to weaken one of the nation’s most important workplace discrimination protections—a legal standard that has, for decades, allowed workers to challenge hiring and promotion policies that unfairly exclude qualified people, even when those policies appear neutral on their face.

A new opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), issued in June, argues these longstanding interpretations of Title VII’s “disparate-impact” standard are unconstitutional, and contends certain Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance improperly allows employers to be held liable based on discriminatory effects rather than intent. The opinion is meant to guide executive branch enforcement.

Civil rights advocates are pushing back, arguing the new OLC opinion misstates decades of Supreme Court precedent and congressional action.

Below is a joint explainer—issued by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), Democracy Forward, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), Equal Rights Advocates, and LatinoJustice PRLDEF—originally published as “The Office of Legal Counsel’s Opinion on the ‘Constitutionality of Disparate-Impact Liability Under Title VII’: What You Need to Know.”

The organizations argue that the opinion does not change federal law. Instead, they emphasize that only Congress can amend Title VII and that courts—not the executive branch—determine how the law is interpreted. Employers, they say, remain legally obligated to comply with existing anti-discrimination protections.

“Across America, workers are struggling to find living-wage jobs to support themselves and their families. Too often, qualified workers are blocked from getting hired and promoted due to employer policies that screen out applicants based on factors unrelated to whether the applicant could do the job, from unnecessary college degree requirements and credit checks to commute-radius limitations and AI resume reviews. The Trump-Vance administration is making this problem worse.

“For decades, under Supreme Court precedent, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), and other legal authority, workers have been able to challenge exclusionary policies like these using a legal tool known as “disparate-impact liability.” That tool has resulted in employers adopting more thoughtful, rigorous standards in evaluating their own selection criteria and advancing their business objectives. The administration is now attacking this tool, encouraging employers to ignore the harms caused by their own policies while denying workers the ability to question whether those policies are justified and fair.

“In its latest move, the Trump-Vance administration’s Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) released an opinion claiming that longstanding U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance on disparate-impact liability under Title VII is unconstitutional. The OLC opinion is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. Only Congress and the courts have authority to change the law or its impact.”

On the Voting Rights Act’s Anniversary, Short Film ‘Selma Sisters March On’ Captures 1965’s Fight for the Right to Vote

PUBLISHED 8/6/2026 by

Aug. 6, 2026, marks the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, the VRA sought to end Jim Crow-era voter disenfranchisement. Particularly in Southern states, voting officials routinely required Black voters to jump through hoops such as “literacy tests” or arbitrary rules such as having to name every county in the state before voting. Even if a Black voter managed to make it this far, election administrators sometimes intentionally sent them to the wrong location to vote, ensuring their vote never actually got counted.

The Voting Rights Act made it illegal for states to discriminate against voters by race, color or language-minority status, thereby reaffirming all U.S. citizens’ constitutional right to vote. The VRA also introduced additional changes to make voting more widely accessible, such as ballots in languages other than English and protections for blind, disabled and illiterate voters.

However, the VRA only became law after decades of struggle and widespread civil rights protests, including the famous marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in March 1965. Protesters, many of whom were young students, faced violent attacks from law enforcement, from tear gas to imprisonment, as they fought for their right to vote.

Sisters Alice and Denise Thomas were only 16 and 14 when they joined the Selma to Montgomery marches and other protests in their home state of Alabama before the VRA became law. In the new short documentary Selma Sisters March On, the Thomas sisters describe in their own words the fateful events of 1965 as they experienced them as high school-aged civil-rights activists.

The Voting Rights Act Turns 61 as New Threats to the Ballot Box Mount

PUBLISHED 8/5/2026 by

This year’s midterm elections have the power to dramatically alter representation in the current Republican-leaning Congress: All 435 congressional seats in the U.S. House are up for grabs, as is two-thirds of the Senate. Public health, women’s health, abortion access, the cost of living, healthcare affordability, immigration justice and a host of other issues hang in the balance.

However, the Trump administration is working to quietly disrupt voting this November, from firing the remaining U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) members, to continuing to challenge the legality of mail-in ballots and lobby the Supreme Court to do Trump’s bidding—part of an ongoing effort to expand federal control over election administration ahead of the midterms.

“There’s just this onslaught that’s coming from the administration itself, and then the judiciary,” Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, told Ms. “I don’t think it gives people a lot of confidence that [the Supreme Court justices] understand how important voting rights are … You can see the erosion on the Court as they move toward supporting the administration more and moving away from public discourse and public opinion.”

Thursday, Aug. 6, will mark the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, first passed in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson to prohibit racial discrimination in voting. Congress passed the VRA in order to end post-Civil War and Jim Crow-era voter disenfranchisement, especially in southern states, by prohibiting “literacy tests,” mass voter challenges and other techniques states were using to stop Black Americans from voting.

On Saturday, Aug. 8, the League of Women Voters is leading a nationwide “Unite and Rise for Voting Rights” Day of Action to commemorate the VRA’s anniversary and call attention to SCOTUS’ attempt to decimate it. The Day of Action will also bring together League of Women Voters chapters and partner organizations across the country to lead hundreds of events with the goal of mobilizing voters before November’s midterms.

The Day of Action is part of the League’s Unite and Rise 8.5 initiative, started in 2025, which hopes to engage 8.5 million U.S. voters before November’s midterms—10 percent of the 89.2 million who did not vote in the 2024 presidential election.

And on the VRA’s anniversary on Thursday, Aug. 6, the League will host a virtual rally.

Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Reclaims the Diversity of the Ancient World

PUBLISHED 7/21/2026 by

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey validates the culture through this quarter-billion-dollar Hollywood production—best seen and appreciated in movie theaters. So, why did some react to this latest retelling of The Odyssey as if the mere presence of a Black woman would delegitimize its place in history? And should we ignore them as out-of-touch fringe extremists? 

Before The Odyssey even reached theaters, Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy ignited predictable outrage from white supremacists and anti-“woke” commentators who claimed a Black actor had no place in one of Western civilization’s foundational myths. But as scholars of antiquity make clear, that backlash says far more about modern racial politics than it does about the ancient world itself.

Nolan’s sweeping adaptation arrives at a moment when the fight over history is also a fight over power. By embracing a multiracial cast, The Odyssey challenges centuries of whitewashing and reminds us that the ancient Mediterranean was far more diverse than many have been taught to believe.

The diversity of the ancient world is our collective heritage—not the exclusive property of those seeking to rewrite the past.

Even in Summertime, We Can’t Lose Focus: State-Level Democracy Dispatches From Maine, Kansas, Idaho and Virginia

PUBLISHED 7/20/2026 by

Summertime—and the fight for democracy—is sizzling, especially in the states. Here’s what is happening across the country.

Sudden shakeups in U.S. Senate elections have foisted reproductive rights front and center. The upcoming primary in Maine to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic candidate, combined with deep antipathy voters there have toward Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, is a golden opportunity to elevate abortion in the midterms—especially given Collins’ recent comment that she has no regrets about her pivotal vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

In South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s unexpected death last weekend has created a surge of public attention and momentum for the Democratic candidate, Dr. Annie Andrews, a pro-choice, pro-science pediatrician (with an A+ Instagram game).

Too often, summer is a season all too ripe for sneak attacks on direct democracy. Ohio Republicans made a case study out of the strategy when they orchestrated a special election in August 2023 to quietly raise the threshold for ballot measures—all in service of attempting to thwart a popular abortion proposal. In the end, voters saw the power grab for what it was and rejected the rules change while turning out in force that November for abortion.

Now Kansas is resurrecting the play and will hold an August election to decide how state Supreme Court justices are chosen.

In Maine, a measure was also proposed, but Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (one of the potential U.S. Senate candidates) invalidated more than 12,000 signatures on the citizens’ petition that had been forged and/or duplicated. Last week a judge upheld blocking the referendum; any appeal will need to be resolved by Aug. 25 for it to appear on the November ballot.

It is a tough balancing act—the need to revel in the lazy, hazy days of summer and grasp the reality that these fights require our constant vigilance. This is where we have to hold each other up. Please take the time to refresh and rejuvenate, and be ready to come back swinging.