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International Criminal Court hit with cyber security attack
State Law Issues |
2025/07/02 10:29
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The International Criminal Court has been targeted by a “sophisticated” cyberattack and is taking measures to limit any damage, the global tribunal announced Monday.
The ICC, which also was hit by a cyberattack in 2023, said the latest incident had been contained but did not elaborate further on the impact or possible motive.
“A Court-wide impact analysis is being carried out, and steps are already being taken to mitigate any effects of the incident,” the court said in a statement.
The incident happened in the same week that The Hague hosted a summit of 32 NATO leaders at a conference center near the court amid tight security including measures to guard against cyberattacks.
The court declined to say whether any confidential information had been compromised.
The ICC has a number of high-profile investigations and preliminary inquiries underway in nations around the world and has in the past been the target of espionage.
In 2022, a Dutch intelligence agency said it had foiled a plot by a Russian spy using a false Brazilian identity to work as an intern at the court, which is investigating allegations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine and has issued a war crimes arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine.
Arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza have also drawn ire. U.S. President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, in February and earlier this month also sanctioned four judges at the court.
The court is still feeling the effects of the last cyberattack, with wifi still not completely restored to its purpose-built headquarters.
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What’s next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court’s ruling
Court Updates |
2025/06/28 11:36
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The legal battle over President Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship is far from over despite the Republican administration’s major victory Friday limiting nationwide injunctions.
Immigrant advocates are vowing to fight to ensure birthright citizenship remains the law as the Republican president tries to do away with more than a century of precedent.
The high court’s ruling sends cases challenging the president’s birthright citizenship executive order back to the lower courts. But the ultimate fate of the president’s policy remains uncertain.
Here’s what to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court’s ruling and what happens next.
What does birthright citizenship mean?
Birthright citizenship makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally.
The practice goes back to soon after the Civil War, when Congress ratified the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, in part to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” the amendment states.
Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the U.S. to Chinese parents, was refused re-entry into the U.S. after traveling overseas. His suit led to the Supreme Court explicitly ruling that the amendment gives citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., no matter their parents’ legal status.
It has been seen since then as an intrinsic part of U.S. law, with only a handful of exceptions, such as for children born in the U.S. to foreign diplomats.
Trump has long said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship
Trump’s executive order, signed in January, seeks to deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the U.S. illegally or temporarily. It’s part of the hardline immigration agenda of the president, who has called birthright citizenship a “magnet for illegal immigration.”
Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase in the amendment — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” – saying it means the U.S. can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally.
A series of federal judges have said that’s not true, and issued nationwide injunctions stopping his order from taking effect.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said at a hearing earlier this year in his Seattle courtroom.
In Greenbelt, Maryland, a Washington suburb, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that “the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed” Trump’s interpretation of birthright citizenship.
Is Trump’s order constitutional? The justices didn’t say
The high court’s ruling was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited an individual judge’s authority in granting nationwide injunctions. The administration hailed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges, whom Trump supporters have argued want to usurp the president’s authority with rulings blocking his priorities around immigration and other matters.
But the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump’s bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order.
“The Trump administration made a strategic decision, which I think quite clearly paid off, that they were going to challenge not the judges’ decisions on the merits, but on the scope of relief,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the administration is “very confident” that the high court will ultimately side with the administration on the merits of the case.
Questions and uncertainty swirl around next steps
The justices kicked the cases challenging the birthright citizenship policy back down to the lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and the parties time to sort out the next steps.
The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves open the possibility that groups challenging the policy could still get nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits and seek certification as a nationwide class. Within hours after the ruling, two class-action suits had been filed in Maryland and New Hampshire seeking to block Trump’s order.
But obtaining nationwide relief through a class action is difficult as courts have put up hurdles to doing so over the years, said Suzette Malveaux, a Washington and Lee University law school professor.
“It’s not the case that a class action is a sort of easy, breezy way of getting around this problem of not having nationwide relief,” said Malveaux, who had urged the high court not to eliminate the nationwide injunctions.
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Court widens options for vaping companies pushing back against FDA rules
Law Firm Press Release |
2025/06/22 11:37
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The Supreme Court sided with e-cigarette companies on Friday in a ruling making it easier to sue over Food and Drug Administration decisions blocking their products from the multibillion-dollar vaping market.
The 7-2 opinion comes as companies push back against a yearslong federal regulatory crackdown on electronic cigarettes. It’s expected to give the companies more control over which judges hear lawsuits filed against the agency.
The justices went the other way on vaping in an April decision, siding with the FDA in a ruling upholding a sweeping block on most sweet-flavored vapes instituted after a spike in youth vaping.
The current case was filed by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., which had sold a line of popular berry and menthol-flavored vaping products before the agency started regulating the market under the Tobacco Control Act in 2016.
The agency refused to authorize the company’s Vuse Alto products, an order that “sounded the death knell for a significant portion of the e-cigarette market,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion.
The company is based in North Carolina and typically would have been limited to challenging the FDA in a court there or in the agency’s home base of Washington. Instead, it joined forces with Texas businesses that sell the products and sued there. The conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the lawsuit to go forward, finding that anyone whose business is hurt by the FDA decision can sue.
The agency appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that R.J. Reynolds was attempting to find a court favorable to its arguments, a practice often referred to as “judge shopping.”
The justices, though, found that the law does allow other businesses affected by the FDA decisions, like e-cigarette sellers, to sue in their home states.
In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said she would have sided with the agency and limited where the cases can be filed.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids called the majority decision disappointing, saying it would allow manufacturers to “judge shop,” though it said the companies will still have to contend with the Supreme Court’s April decision.
Attorney Ryan Watson, who represented R.J. Reynolds, said that the court recognized that agency decisions can have devastating downstream effects on retailers and other businesses, and the decision “ensures that the courthouse doors are not closed” to them.
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Virginia Democrats move to round out ticket in key off-year election
Legal Information |
2025/06/19 11:37
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Former Del. Jay Jones will look to be the face of legal resistance to President Donald Trump in Virginia after winning Tuesday’s closely watched Democratic state primary for attorney general.
Jones will face Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares in the November general election. His victory was a critical step for Democrats in rounding out their ticket ahead of a bellwether election later this year.
Democrats are also nominating their pick for lieutenant governor from a field of six candidates. State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi led Former Richmond City Mayor Levar Stoney in the tightly locked race Tuesday night, and she declared victory, but The Associated Press deemed the race too early to call.
The November election is sure to make history as Virginia is set to elect its first female governor since the state’s first governorship 250 years ago. Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who ran for the Democratic nomination unopposed, will battle Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — the only Republican who qualified for the ballot.
Virginia is one of two states that host statewide elections the year after a presidential election — New Jersey is the other — and the races are typically seen as referendums on the party in power before Congress heads into midterm elections.
Analysts will be looking for clues in both states about voter sentiment with Trump back in the Oval Office and Republicans controlling power in Washington.
Democrats’ hold on Virginia has slipped in recent years, moving it close to swing-state status nationally. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin beat former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2021.
Still, Democrats have history on their side: The party of the sitting president typically suffers defeat in Virginia’s statewide races. And considering Trump has never won the state, Democrats are probably better positioned to make gains once their ticket solidifies.
Jones won the Democratic nomination in the race for attorney general despite his opponent casting him as lacking criminal prosecutorial experience.
Jones, who represented Norfolk in the House of Delegates for four years, comes from a long line of Hampton Roads politicians. His father was also a delegate, and his grandfather was the first Black member of the Norfolk School Board. Jones previously ran for attorney general in 2021 but lost the primary to Democratic incumbent Mark Herring.
He defeated Democrat Shannon Taylor, who has served more than a decade as the top prosecutor in the suburbs outside Richmond after flipping the open seat in 2011.
On the campaign trail, Jones touted himself as a candidate with the experience best suited for the job: He had worked as an assistant attorney general in Washington, where he said he had litigated consumer protection cases.
If elected attorney general, he also vowed to push back against Trump in court.
“I am ready for this fight and to win this November,” Jones said in a victory statement.
The six Democrats vying to be Virginia’s next lieutenant governor aren’t all that different on the issues: They support rights to abortion, a living wage, affordable housing and accessible health care. They also share similar criticisms of Trump.
The candidates notably fracture along regional lines.
Stoney has touted his ties to the Democratic Party and experience working under former Govs. Mark Warner and Terry McAuliffe.
Hashmi is also from the Richmond area, representing part of the city and suburbs. She has pushed reproductive health in her bid and has been endorsed by abortion rights political action committees.
Virginia Sen. Aaron Rouse, from Virginia Beach with ties to southwest Virginia, has also highlighted his legislative accomplishments.
Prince William County School Board Chair Barbur Lateef, former federal prosecutor Victor Salgado and retired U.S. Department of Labor worker Alex Bastani are from northern Virginia.
Only one Republican candidate in each statewide contest is advancing to the ballot.
Earle-Sears became the gubernatorial nominee after Republicans Dave LaRock and Amanda Chase failed to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Both LaRock and Chase initially challenged Earle-Sears for not being fully aligned with Trump.
Conservative talk-radio host John Reid became the de facto nominee for lieutenant governor after his primary opponent left the race, and despite intraparty quarreling over whether he was tied to a social media account reposting pornography.
Miyares sailed to his spot on the ballot as the nominee for attorney general after announcing his reelection bid. On Tuesday night, he said of Jones’ victory: “My opponent’s ideological record makes Virginia families less safe and our streets more violent.”
All 100 seats of the House of Delegates are up for election in November.
In Virginia’s more competitive districts, Democrat May Nivar won her primary race and will be taking on Republican incumbent Del. David Owen in a Richmond-area district that House liberals are vying to flip. Democrat Lindsey Dougherty won her primary race and will battle Republican Del. Carrie Coyner in a Petersburg-area district.
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