U.S. Supreme Court

The long-fought battle to release images depicting the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody appears over after Congress passed legislation today that specifically exempts them from public disclosure.

The images were initially the center of a denied request under the Freedom of Information Act, that later became the subject of a lawsuit -- which dragged on for years -- and recently were dropped into the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill as an amendment specifically exempting them from the law in an effort to supersede court decisions on the issue.

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted a request from several media outlets to release on the same day the audio recording of oral arguments in a major Voting Rights Act case, a Legal Times blog reports.

In the midst of the Supreme Court’s deliberation of whether the FCC permissibly fined broadcasters for “fleeting expletives” in FCC v. Fox,  the Commission this week requested that the Supreme Court grant review of another appellate court’s decision to revoke its fine for “fleeting images” relating to the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today rejected an attempt to place new limits on the right to request federal agency documents after a rejection of the same request had already been unsuccessfully litigated by another party.

Incredibly and inexplicably, camera coverage of federal courts continues to be shot down because of baseless speculation and misinformation. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) lost a battle to allow coverage of federal district courts after his colleagues got skittish. (The requirement to allow cameras in Supreme Court hearings lives on, but the Court will probably ignore it if it passes.)

The U.S. Supreme Court today let stand a federal appeals court ruling, which held that a Democratic congressman who lawfully obtained an illegally recorded audiotape and gave it to the press violated state and federal wiretapping laws.

Still daintily dipping its toe into the electronic world, the Supreme Court has again decided that the Earth won't stand still if it allows audio recordings of an oral argument to be released to the public immediately after the hearing, according to a USA Today account. This is the 17th time the court has done so, according to Joan Biskupic. C-SPAN is 8 for 15 in winning such requests before the Roberts court, and live audio and (of course) video have never been made available.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement Thursday filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to reverse a decision by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which in June rejected the Federal Communications Commission's policy on fleeting expletives.

The appeals court found that the FCC had not supported its position that isolated and sometimes unintentional language, often on live broadcasts, can make a program indecent and result in penalties for broadcasters.