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Marcelius Braxton
Marcelius Braxton is the director of the Center for Social Change and Belonging and an affiliate associate teaching professor of Philosophy and African Studies at Penn State University.
How State Courts Pushed Back on an Infamous U.S. Supreme Court Case
Dred Scott, widely considered a stain on the U.S. Supreme Court’s history, denied citizenship to Black Americans in 1857. Many state supreme courts refused to follow it.
Birthmark Doula Collective v. State of Louisiana
Reproductive healthcare providers and advocates challenge a state law that reclassifies mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances, arguing that the law unconstitutionally regulates and delays access to medications that people need for non-abortion reasons, often for emergencies such as postpartum hemorrhage, simply because those medications may also be used for an abortion. They allege the law violates the state constitution's equal protection clause and single-subject and germane-amendment rules.
Elliott v. City of College Station
Texas Supreme Court declined, based on constitutional avoidance and separation of powers principles, to resolve claim by residents of an extraterritorial jurisdiction that a clause preserving a “republican form of government” protects them from being subject to city regulations when they cannot vote in city elections. While the appeal was pending, the legislature changed the law to provide a process for opting out of the jurisdiction, of which the plaintiffs did not avail themselves.
Atlantic Games, Inc. v. Georgia Lottery Corporation
Concurral to denial of certiorari by Justice Peteerson questioned whether the court should reconsider existing caselaw on the nondelegation doctrine in a different case because, in their view, it does not comport with original public meaning
Universal Injunctions in State Courts
Debates over whether a judge in a single county can issue a statewide injunction are brewing. States should not follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s approach.
Michigan Supreme Court Justice Richard Bernstein Discusses Disability Rights
Bernstein, the court’s first blind justice, travels the world promoting access and equality for disabled people.
States Grapple with the Death Penalty
More people have been executed in 2025 than in any year of the past decade. But some states are strengthening protections against the death penalty.
Amdor v. Grisham
Denied portion of original petition alleging that governor's executive orders declaring or addressing gun violence and drug abuse as public health emergencies pursuant to the state's Public Health Emergency Response Act violate either the scope of that law or separation of powers. But granted petition to extent it challenged part of the orders suspending a juvenile detention program for exceeding the limits of the state's police power.
People v. Eads
Michigan Court of Appeals held that a 50-year minimum sentence for a defendant convicted of second-degree murder as a juvenile is "cruel or unusual" punishment, finding that sentence constitutionally equivalent to the life-with-the-possibility-of-parole sentence the Michigan Supreme Court found "cruel or unusual" in People v. Stovall. The court also held that the defendant's sentence was disproportionate given the sentencing court's failure to consider his youth and its attendant characteristics as mitigating factors.
