Virginia native Carola Rupert Enriquez knew what she wanted to do when she grew up, so she majored in museum studies, got some experience under her belt and landed a job in Bakersfield as director of the Kern County Museum.Read more

The Bakersfield Police Department is asking for the public’s help in finding an at-risk 16-year-old who it said went missing at 7:30 a.m. Monday.Read more

A neurotechnology startup launched in the UK has spun off a Bakersfield company it says will attract clinical trials to hospitals in Kern County.Read more

Bakersfield police arrested a 40-year-old man Sunday on suspicion of impersonating a peace officer.Read more

The Supreme Court on Monday night granted a request to immediately finalize its opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down that state’s congressional map, to allow Louisiana to draw a new map in time for the 2026 elections. That map is expected to favor Republicans, who currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives but could pick up one or even two more under a revised map.The court’s decision drew sharp criticism from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter. Jackson argued that the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana.” Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, wrote a concurring opinion that responded to Jackson with equally sharp words, countering that her rhetoric “lacks restraint.”In an unsigned, one-paragraph order, the court explained that, to give the losing party time to ask the justices to reconsider their decision, the Supreme Court’s clerk normally waits 32 days after a decision is issued before sending a copy of the opinion and the judgment to the lower court. But, the court wrote, in this case the Black voters defending the map at the center of the dispute “have not expressed any intent to ask this Court to reconsider its judgment.”The court issued its decision in Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday, April 29. By a vote of 6-3, it invalidated a map adopted by the Louisiana Legislature in 2024, which created two majority-Black districts after two lower courts ruled that an earlier map with just one majority-Black district likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars racial discrimination in voting.Later that day, the “non-African-American” voters who had challenged the 2024 map came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to bypass its normal 32-day waiting period and finalize the opinion as soon as possible. The voters told the justices that the Louisiana Legislature was “considering pushing back” the deadlines for the state’s congressional primaries to allow them “to occur under a remedial map.” Finalizing the opinion immediately, they argued, could give the state more breathing room in which to operate, given the short timeframe in which the state would need to revise the map.One day later, Louisiana told the court that it would indeed postpone the state’s primary elections for Congress, which had been scheduled for May 16. In the view of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, the use of the 2024 map would constitute the kind of emergency that justifies a postponement under Louisiana law, because “electing members to Congress under an unconstitutional map flies in the face of the United States Constitution and subjects Louisiana voters to representatives that are impermissibly elected as determined by the United States Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision.”In her four-page dissent, Jackson suggested that the court itself was taking sides in the battle over redistricting. She wrote that developments in the wake of last week’s ruling in Callais “have a strong political undercurrent.” Louisiana’s effort to redistrict, she said, “unfolds in the midst of an ongoing statewide election, against the backdrop of a pitched redistricting battle among state governments that appear to be acting as proxies for their favored political parties.”Moreover, Jackson noted, in the last 25 years, when one litigant has objected to a request to fast-track the issuance of its final opinion, the court has only granted the request twice. “To avoid the appearance of partiality,” she emphasized, “we could … opt to stay on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default procedures.” But by granting the challengers’ request, she said, the court’s action “is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.” In a five-paragraph concurring opinion, Alito called Jackson’s suggestion that the court should allow the 32-day waiting period to expire “to ‘avoid the appearance of partiality’” “baseless and insulting.” Complying with the waiting period, Alito posited, could itself be construed as partisan, because it would favor the defenders of the 2024 map. Alito also pushed back against Jackson’s contention “that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power,” calling it a “groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”The Louisiana Legislature plans to hear public comments on Friday on a new proposed map, which would include one majority-Black district. Meanwhile, lawsuits have been filed in both federal and state courts in Louisiana, challenging Landry’s postponement of the May 16 primary.Read more

Updated on May 4 at 11:28 a.m. to reflect the court’s administrative staysOn Saturday, two companies that manufacture mifepristone came to the court, asking the justices to pause a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a lawsuit by Louisiana that reinstated the requirement that the drug, which is used in about 60% of abortions nationwide, be dispensed only in person. The companies, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, both told the justices that the 5th Circuit’s order was “unprecedented.” Danco argued that the order “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions,” while GenBioPro said that the order “has unleashed regulatory chaos.”In a brief order on Monday morning, Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency requests from the 5th Circuit, issued an administrative stay putting the 5th Circuit’s order on hold and temporarily restoring access to mifepristone by mail while the justices consider the drug companies’ request, and instructed the FDA and Louisiana to respond by 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, May 7. The administrative stay expires on Monday, May 11, at 5 p.m. EDT.Nearly two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that doctors and medical groups opposed to abortion did not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s expansion of access to mifepristone.The 2024 case, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, was filed in federal court in Texas by several individual doctors who are opposed to abortion on religious or moral grounds, as well as medical groups whose members are opposed to abortion. The plaintiffs asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to rescind both the FDA’s initial approval of the drug in 2000 and its 2016 and 2021 expansions of access to the drug, arguing that mifepristone is unsafe and that the process that the FDA used to approve the drug was flawed.The FDA, as well as several leading medical groups, countered that, based on extensive evidence, mifepristone is safe and effective. Kacsmaryk, however, suspended the FDA’s approval of the drug and the agency’s later changes, made in 2016 and 2021, to the conditions on the use of the drug – which included allowing the drug to be used through the 10th week of pregnancy, allowing health-care providers who are not physicians to prescribe the drug, and permitting it to be prescribed without an in-person visit.The FDA and Danco, which manufactures mifepristone, appealed to the 5th Circuit. The court upheld the part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling that rolled back the agency’s 2016 and 2021 changes that had expanded access to mifepristone.In April 2023, the Supreme Court temporarily put the 5th Circuit’s ruling on hold, ensuring continued access to the drug. In June 2024, it reversed the lower court’s ruling and sent the case back to the lower courts.In his opinion for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged what he characterized as the challengers’ “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections” to elective abortion “by others” and to the FDA’s 2016 and 2021 changes to the conditions on the use of the drug. But the challengers could not contest those changes, he said, because they had not shown that they would be harmed by the FDA’s mifepristone policies; under the Constitution, these kinds of objections are not enough to bring a case in federal court.In October 2025, Louisiana filed its own lawsuit in federal court to seek the reinstatement of the in-person dispensing requirement. It emphasized that it had standing to sue because it had “incontrovertible evidence that … doctors and others are (as the Biden administration intended) sending streams of mifepristone by mail into Louisiana for the express purpose of causing thousands of abortions in Louisiana every year. That conduct directly violates Louisiana’s abortion laws, which – subject to very narrow exceptions (such as to save the life of the mother) – bar virtually all abortions, and prevents Louisiana from protecting the lives of unborn babies despite the promise of Dobbs” v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision holding that the Constitution does not confer a right to an abortion. “That conduct has directly generated medical emergencies that harm Louisiana women,” the state wrote, “and emergency room visits that harm the state.”Rosalie Markezich, an individual plaintiff who joined the state’s lawsuit, said that in 2023 she was coerced into taking abortion drugs “that her boyfriend obtained via the U.S. Postal Service from a doctor in California.” If the in-person dispensing requirement had been in effect, she said, she “would have received the protection of a private in-person medical appointment,” during which she would “have been able to tell a doctor that she did not want an abortion.”After a federal judge put the case on hold while the FDA conducts its own review of mifepristone’s safety, Louisiana went to the 5th Circuit, asking that court to re-impose the requirement while litigation continues. The court of appeals ruled that Louisiana has a right to sue because, by allowing mifepristone to be prescribed by telehealth and sent by mail, the “FDA ‘opened the door for mifepristone to be remotely prescribed to Louisiana women,’” even though Louisiana generally bars abortion.In its emergency application, Danco tells the justices that, like the doctors and medical groups in 2024, “Louisiana is not required to ‘prescribe or use mifepristone’ or to ‘do anything or to refrain from doing anything’ as a result of FDA’s actions.” It argues that the 5th Circuit should have applied the same analysis that the Supreme Court used in holding that the doctors and medical groups did not have standing in 2024. It stresses that the Supreme Court “has already held that claims of downstream financial harm by doctors who provide follow-up care for treating complications after a medication abortion is too attenuated” to provide standing to sue. Here, it says, “Louisiana’s theory—that it can base standing on having to pay those doctors if someone who received FDA-approved mifepristone through the mail seeks follow-up care to treat a complication—is a more attenuated version of the” theories that the court specifically rejected two years ago. And Louisiana’s claim that it is injured because of the disconnect between federal law and its own state law is not the kind of injury that courts can review, it said.GenBioPro contends that lifting the 5th Circuit’s order “will allow the years-long status quo to remain in force while the Food and Drug Administration (‘FDA’) completes its ongoing review” of mifepristone’s safety. If that order remains in place, it argues, “it would eliminate access to mifepristone through certified pharmacies and by mail, abruptly cutting off access for patients nationwide—including in the States that do not ban abortion.” Moreover, the company added, the 5th Circuit’s ruling requires the FDA “‘to alter the regimen for medical abortion’ based on the ‘court’s own evaluation’ of whether the FDA got the science right.”What’s more, GenBioPro writes, the lower court’s “‘unusually broad and novel view of standing’” “would allow States to challenge virtually any agency action whenever they allege downstream costs or interference with state policy.”The drug companies also ask the court to issue a short-term order, known as an administrative stay, that would put the 5th Circuit’s ruling on hold while the justices consider their request. On Monday, Alito granted that request.Disclosure: John Elwood, a contributor to SCOTUSblog, represents GenBioPro in his role as a partner at the firm Arnold & Porter.Read more

The Supreme Court on Monday morning turned down a request from NBA Hall of Famer John Stockton to weigh in on whether his lawsuit against the Washington Medical Commission, arguing that the agency’s efforts to investigate and sanction licensed physicians in the state who discourage COVID-19 vaccination and promote treatments such as ivermectin violate the First Amendment, can go forward. The denial of review in Stockton v. Brown was part of a list of orders released from the justices’ private conference on Friday, May 1. The justices did not add any new cases to their docket for the 2026-27 term.As Kelsey Dallas recounted last month, the former point guard for the Utah Jazz became a prominent critic of vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. A federal appeals court stressed that his lawsuit, which was joined by (among others) Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit formerly headed by current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., could not move forward because none of the plaintiffs had suffered the kind of concrete injury that would give them a right to sue. Stockton went to the Supreme Court, which denied his petition for review without comment.The justices also declined to take up the case of an Indiana gun dealer located 10 miles from the border of Illinois and which argued that it did not have the kind of contacts with Illinois that would allow the City of Chicago to sue it for its intentional sale of guns to “straw purchasers” – that is, to buyers who then sell or give the guns to others, who often are not able to purchase the guns themselves – that then made their way into Chicago.The justices will meet again for a private conference on Thursday, May 14. Orders from that conference are expected on Monday, May 18, at 9:30 a.m. EDT.Read more