Search
Filter Search
How Much Do You Know About State Constitutions and Courts?
Learn why state constitutions are so long, which high court is almost completely made up of women, and more.
Griffin v. State Board of Elections
A candidate for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, who lost by over 700 votes, claims that the state board of elections followed an incorrect process for registering voters and seeks to invalidate more than 60,000 votes.
Mount Laurel at 50: New Jersey’s Blueprint for Dismantling Residential Segregation
Fifty years ago, the New Jersey Supreme Court created a groundbreaking affordable housing framework. A new law gives it real teeth.
Jag Davies
Jag Davies is the director of communications for the Fair Share Housing Center, located in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The organization is currently leading efforts to implement the state’s new...
Adkins v. State
Idaho trial court denied motion to dismiss claim that the state's abortion bans — as applied to pregnant people that have "an emergent medical condition that poses a risk of death or risk to their health (including their fertility)" — violate the state constitution's "inalienable rights" clause, finding that the Idaho Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Planned Parenthood Great Northwest v. State that the bans were not facially invalid in all applications did not preclude this as-applied challenge.
State v. Hall
Kansas intermediate appellate court held that the state constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" should be applied independently of, and not in lockstep with, the federal Second Amendment. Applying strict scrutiny, the court found a state ban on gun possession by people convicted of certain felonies for a term of years after their release from prison to be narrowly tailored to a compelling interest in ensuring public safety.
League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa v. Pate
Iowa Supreme Court held organization did not have standing to seek to dissolve an injunction entered in a separate case that barred the secretary of state from providing voter registration forms in languages other than English, by claiming such materials fall within an exception to the state law underlying the injunction. The law generally requires all "official documents" to be in English but exempts "language usage required by or necessary to secure" state constitutional or federal law rights. According to the court, an organization's expenditure of resources in response to a law that does not violate or regulate its rights, status, or legal relations is not a legally cognizable injury.
Edwards v. Montana
Montana trial court held that a law — which defines “female,” “male,” and “sex” wherever used in the state code as two binary categories — facially violates the state constitutional right to privacy by interfering with individuals' "ability to make personal and intimate decisions concerning their bodies and psyches." The court also found as-applied state equal protection violations based on sex and cultural discrimination.
Law Student Cheat Sheet: Understanding State Courts and Constitutions
As the school year kicks off, we’ve rounded up some of our top explainer essays on how state courts and state constitutions work, protect rights, and influence major U.S. legal issues. Consider it your “State Constitutions 101.”
Back-to-School Scholarship Roundup: State Courts, Constitutional Law, and Federalism
Recent books and law review articles discuss voter disenfranchisement, separation of church and state, and much more.
