Justices nix appeal backed by Penn & Teller
Court agrees to hear case on immigrant detention
By: Maureen Groppe
USA Today
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on June 15 [2026] issued a list of orders that brought some cases to the nation;s highest court and left others as they stood.
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The justices will hear a case next term on whether it is legal to hold certain convicted immigrants or an extended time without bond hearings to potentially qualify for bail. But they rejected appeals on a gun law, free speech in schools and a Texas execution conviction drew the attention of magicians Penn & Teller.
..... The immigration case stems from the government's detention of two nonU. S. citizens who were convicted of aggravated felonies while living in the United Stats as lawful permanent residents, also known as green card holders. Both were attained during President Donald Trump's first term.
..... One of them, a Dominican man identified in court papers as G.M., spent 21 months in detention; he had pleaded guilty to assault. The other, a Jamaican citizen named Carol Black convicted of sexually abusing a child, was detained for seven months.
..... Federal immigration law esquires authorities to detain and seek the deportation of non-citizens who are convicted of certain serious crimes or accused of terrorism. However, the 2nd Circuit Court of appeals ruled that the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process entitled the men to a bond hearing and that it was unreasonable to detain them for that long without one, though that court stopped short of setting a strict time limited on such detentions.
..... The appeals court also said that if the government to seek a person detained in these circumstances, it must prove that a detainee poses a risk of flight or presents a den ager to the community.
..... The Supreme Court has backed Trump in several immigration-related rulings issued on an emergency basis.
..... The justices turned away a gun industry challenge to the New York law that permits civil lawsuits against gun makers, wholesalers and dealers for endangering people's safety through sales of firearms and ammunition.
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An industry trade group the National Shooting Sports Foundation, brought the suit. Gun companies including Smith & Wesson SWBLO, Ruger RGR,N, Beretta Glock, Sig Sauer and Sturm joined the appeal, and it was supported in filing by the National Rifle Association, 24 Republican state attorneys general and several dozen Republican members in Congress.
..... New York calls the 2021 law a public nuisance statute. it requires the gun industry to sue reasonable safeguards to protect against gun trafficking, theft and the use of "Straw purchasers" who buy firearms for someone else.
..... The National Shooting Sports Foundation said the law was preempted by a 2005 federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, that shields the gun industry from civil liability when its products are used in crimes.
..... The appeal did not hinge on the Second Amendment. But the trade group said laws such as New York's imperil such rights by allowing lawsuits that could saddle companies with "crushing liability" for crimes they had nothing to do with.
..... Appeals Judge Eunice Lee, an appointee of former President Joe Biden wrote that Congress intend to preserve "at least some causes of action" when a defendant;s knowing violation of feudal or state firearms sales and marketing laws was a proximate cause of harm.
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The Supreme Court has expanded gun rights in three major decision since 2008, when it found that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.
..... The justices also rejected an appeal from a former high school student's free speech challenge to an Indianapolis area public school district that barred her form displaying a flyer with an anti-abortion message on school walls.
..... Noblesville Schools allowed the student who has since graduated, to from a chapter of Students for Life of America and to advertise it at an activities fair with a tabletop poster with the group's mission statement and a sign and shirt that stated, "I am pro-life generation." But the school prevented her from hanging on school walls flyers that included photographs of students in front of the Supreme court building carrying signs that read, "I Reject Abortion,: "Defunct Planned Parenthood,: "I An the Pro-Life Generation" and similar message.
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The school has said its policy "categorically prohibited political content in flyer posted on tis walls." Such flyers should contain only the club's name and the location, time and date of its meetings an official told the girl.
..... When the student;s mother helped her seek approval for the flyer from a different administrator, school officials became concerned that the group was not truly student-led and suspended it for there of the semester, the school's court papers said.
..... In 1988's Hazzelwood School District V. Kuhlmeier, the Supreme Court ruled that schools may restrict student speech in channels that are not deemed "public forums' or where the speech at issue is inconsistent with the school's educational mission.
..... A district judge court decided that t eh school's policy did not violate the First Amendment, and found the school was authorized to regulate the content of student flyers displayed on school walls. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
..... In the Texas death row case, lawyers for Charles Flores, who was found guilty of shooting a woman in 1998 during an attempted robbery, argued his trial was "irreparably tauted by junk science and official misconduct."
..... Police used "investigative hypnosis" on a key witness who testified that she saw Flores go into the woman's house, they said.
..... The witness initially said she saw two White men with long hair go into the home. She failed to pick Flories - a Hispanic man who had short, shaved hair - out of a photo lineup. And the composite computer drawing she produced did not resemble him. Flores; lawyers argued that the witness was then primed to change her identification through a hypnosis session that included deceptively leading questions.
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Peen & Teller filed a brief supporting Flores, telling the Supreme Court that, as master manipulators of perception who had used similar techniques on audiences, they have an obligation to "expose flim-flam when they see it."
..... The Supreme Court has declined to hear two previous appeals from Flores.
..... Contributing: Reuters