Legal Docket: Rights, relief, and redress

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 16th day of June, 2025. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Quick update on the June Giving Drive: In case you missed it, we reported Friday that you blew past the first $130-thousand-dollar challenge gift. That scoreboard lit up fast—thank you!

EICHER: It did, and a whole new circle of WORLD Movers took the field, loving what they heard and decided to crank up the stakes—issuing a new challenge gift of $161-thousand-dollars. Think of it as the next step, level two, and let’s see how quickly we can clear this one.

REICHARD: Maybe you ask: Why $161-thousand-dollars? Pretty simple, that’s what came in, and it nudges the grand total into a whole new weight class and keeps the momentum rolling, all without having to break out the boring budget spreadsheets on the air.

EICHER: So if you haven’t jumped in yet, now’s the moment. As you heard David Bahnsen at the beginning of the program today, your gift in whatever amount pushes us toward that next benchmark of listener support for Biblically grounded journalism.

REICHARD: Would you make your gift today at WNG.org/JuneGivingDrive. Again, WNG.org/JuneGivingDrive. Let’s top that new challenge and keep the story going!

EICHER: All right! Time now for Legal Docket.

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down six opinions. We’ll run through all of them today, in brief.

And we begin with a big win for a student with disabilities.

Ava Tharpe, we told you about her case last week.

This young lady suffers from a rare, severe form of epilepsy. Her seizures are worst in mornings. Before her family had to move, the school she attended in Kentucky worked around that by offering classes from noon to six. After she moved to Minnesota, the new district refused. Ava got far less instruction than did other students

REICHARD: So the family sued—and won some relief. A court ordered the school to provide more instruction time to Ava under one disability law. But they lost out on money damages under other laws.

That’s because the federal appeals court, the Eighth Circuit, set a tougher standard.

I called up an expert to understand this. Perry Zirkel spent 40 years as a professor at Lehigh University, teaching education law:

ZIRKEL: In other words, if the district said, “Sorry, maybe we should have given this child evening instruction, but we didn't do it for sort of nasty or vindictive or bad faith reasons. We were just under the impression that the school day ends at that time and our limited budgets, etc.” And so unless you can show bad faith or gross misjudgment, your case is dismissed.

EICHER: That’s the standard the lower courts used and the Supreme Court said no to it, another unanimous decision.

Now, the test is deliberate indifference. It’s the same standard used in other disability disputes. And it’s easier to prove.

But Zirkel says it’s not a free-for-all.

ZIRKEL: So in most jurisdictions, predictably, it'll be easier to get money damages, but still, there is a hurdle to go over: this deliberate indifference standard. …So that's the major question that the court did not address, and it will have to address in future litigation, if a case bubbles up to the Supreme Court.

Next up: Martin v. United States, another unanimous decision, and a partial win for a Georgia homeowner.

Curtrina Martin was jolted awake at four in the morning, when an FBI SWAT team showed up, guns drawn. Turns out they were at the wrong house. The agents realized the mistake and left. But Martin says the damage was already done, she and her family were traumatized. So she sued.

REICHARD: Normally, you don’t get to... sue the government, that is. But there is an exception for things like trespass or assault, unless the agents were using their “discretion,” meaning their professional judgment. If they were, the law protects the agents. So the key question: Was the botched raid a judgment call—or a flat-out mistake?

The Supreme Court says the discretionary judgment rule lives on. So this means the case returns to lower court. There, a judge will decide: Did the agents act within that protected gray area? If they did, Curtrina Martin’s claim will be tossed. If they were not, then she’ll have a chance to prove the government was at fault.

Martin’s then-boyfriend Toi Cliatt is also part of the lawsuit as he was in the home at the time of the raid. Sound from NBC’s 11alive:

CLIATT: We’re hoping that some of their procedures change. I would actually like for them to ban no-knock warrants if it was possible. We don’t want to see any other[s] … victimized the same way that we were.

EICHER: Now, three quick rulings: First a win for the IRS, but not for taxpayers. Jennifer Zuch challenged a tax bill for $36-thousand-dollars after the IRS credited all her joint estimated payments to the account of her ex-husband.

She appealed but before the case could be heard, the IRS seized her refund money to pay off what it considered her debt and declared the case moot.

The Supreme Court went along with that, 8-to-1, saying once the IRS collects, that’s the end of the jurisdiction of the Tax Court. One justice dissented, Justice Neil Gorsuch. Quoting him now: Bullies should lose, he said. Today … the court allows one to prevail.

REICHARD: Now a win for a disabled Green Beret. Simon Soto served two combat tours in Iraq. The V-A rated him 100 percent disabled. And so he applied for Combat-Related Special Compensation—a benefit that makes up for lost retirement pay due to combat injuries. The Navy approved it but gave him only six years of back pay. Soto sued … arguing the six-year limit didn’t apply to this kind of compensation. The justices agreed unanimously. The case now goes back to figure out how much more he’s owed, not to mention other veterans like him.

EICHER: Now to a loss for an inmate in Texas.

Danny Rivers is serving 38 years for child sex abuse and child pornography. He challenged his conviction once, claiming his lawyer failed him. While that was still pending, he discovered new evidence and filed another petition.

But the court said, too late for that. You get one shot at federal habeas relief, as it’s known. No second tries.

Here’s Justice Gorsuch during oral argument:

GORSUCH: I mean you’re asking us to treat habeas differently than any other form of civil litigation. I’ve never heard of being able to amend my complaint when I’m on appeal after a 12(b)(6) dismissal. Boy, I would have liked to amend my complaint on appeal a few times." (Laughter.)

Gorsuch never could, and now Rivers never will.

REICHARD: And finally, a ruling favoring fairness over formality.

Federal prisoner Donte Parrish didn’t learn that his case had been dismissed until after was transferred to another prison. But once he found out, he filed a notice to appeal. A judge gave him a new window to do it again—but the appeals court said he missed that one, too. The Supreme Court said, stop it. Parrish’s first notice was good enough.

Here’s Justice Sonia Sotomayor in oral argument.

SOTOMAYOR: We have to consider efficiency and not to read the rules literally but with a view to what’s just, correct?

In other words, serve justice—don’t try to trip people up. She wrote the 8-1 majority opinion.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

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