A federal appeals court on Thursday made it harder for Black and Hispanic voters to form coalitions to elect the candidates they prefer in three southern states, overruling long-standing precedents. In a 12-6 decision, it ruled the language in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and decisions from the Supreme Court do not require coalition districts.

As the Missouri Department of Correction was finalizing Christopher Dunn’s release papers Wednesday, the warden got the call. The state Supreme Court had halted the release order after the state attorney general appealed to keep him in prison.

Justice Elena Kagan said Thursday that she would support the creation of a committee of judges to examine potential violations of the Supreme Court’s new ethics code, speaking out on a contentious subject as President Biden and others are increasingly calling for reform at the high court.

Michigan is the latest state to ban the “gay and trans panic” criminal defense. The American Bar Association has long called for legislative action to “curtail the availability and effectiveness” of the defense, saying that “successful gay and trans panic defenses constitute a miscarriage of justice.”

A business executive and philanthropist has pledged $30 million to launch a first-of-its-kind center pushing to overhaul the Supreme Court, after several ethics controversies and conservative rulings prompted rising scrutiny of the justices.

Lawyer Doug Emhoff made history as America’s first male vice-presidential spouse, and who could do so again in November if Harris were to win the presidency.

The cost of phone calls will drop dramatically for incarcerated people under new rules that federal regulators have approved, concluding a decades-long effort to provide relief to the nation’s 2 million inmates and their families.

As President Joseph Biden tries to hand over the Biden-Harris campaign committee’s millions in remaining cash to Harris, Republican lawyers and operatives are saying “not so fast.”

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked President Biden’s new student loan repayment plan, leaving millions of borrowers enrolled in the cost-cutting program in the lurch.

The country’s largest private provider of housing for unaccompanied immigrant children subjected some in its care to pervasive sexual abuse and harassment for almost a decade, the U.S. Justice Department is alleging in a lawsuit.