Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a diminutive yet towering women's rights champion who became the court's second female justice, has died at her home in Washington. She was 87.

Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said. Ginsburg announced in July that she was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for lesions on her liver, the latest of her several battles with cancer.

Update: Friday, September 18, 6:40 p.m.: The faculty Senate at the University of Michigan has voted "no confidence" in President Mark Schlissel's administration.  

That announcement, however, comes two days after the vote itself took place. That's because the "no confidence" motion was initially ruled to have failed during the September 16 meeting, when 957 faculty members voted in support of the motion, 953 voted in opposition, and 184 said they were abstaining. A majority of all votes cast is required for a motion to pass, and the Senate's interim secretary incorrectly counted those abstentions as part of the total votes. 

"Abstentions should not have been counted as votes, and Motion 6 should have passed," faculty Senate chair Colleen Conway said in an email addressed to all faculty Friday afternoon. "We ask for your patience and understanding while we not only discussed how abstentions should be handled, but we also discussed in depth our concerns about the lack of accessibility to voting experienced by some of our colleagues."

The Michigan Supreme Court has appointed a special master to help decide whether a Wayne County judge committed judicial misconduct.

Two female prosecutors have accused Third Circuit Court Judge Bruce Morrow of making sexually suggestive and explicit comments during a 2019 homicide trial—from derogatorily comparing one prosecutor’s questioning of a medical examiner to sexual intercourse, to asking another about her height and weight (see the accusations here, and Morrow’s response to them here).

The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to municipal clerks across the state reminding them to follow Michigan's voters’ rights laws.

“We’ve sent this letter...to make sure that clerks are prepared to follow the requirements of the law,” says Sharon Dolente, a voting rights strategist with the ACLU.

The letter reminds clerks to respond to absentee ballot requests within 24 hours. Clerks’ offices must be open for in-person voting during regular business hours. People without a photo ID can still legally register and vote after signing an affidavit.  

This has been a lingering controversy – when is the cutoff for absentee votes to be counted?

Republicans have argued that any ballots that arrive after the polls closed should not be counted. Democrats say anything postmarked before polls close election night should be included.

An absentee ballot dropped in the mail no later than the day before the November 3rd elections must be counted. That decision came down Friday from a state Court of Claims judge.

A two-month-old boy — who Michigan’s top health official said this week had died from COVID-19 — had serious health conditions beyond the virus.

The child was born with gastroschisis, a birth defect in which a baby’s intestines develop outside the body. The condition was listed as the cause of his death Sunday, according to the Milwaukee County Medical examiner’s office, with the coronavirus as one of two complicating factors.

Millions of teens are experiencing a social disruption like never before: global pandemic, remote school, nationwide protests. 

Michigan Radio's latest podcast, Kids These Days, is a collaboration with Community High School in Ann Arbor. The show not only captures what life is like for teens right before COVID-19, it also sheds light on how young people are dealing with this new normal. 

New legislation in the Michigan Senate would increase the timeframe during which legal action could be taken against polluters in Michigan.

Under current state law, the clock on when legal action can be taken starts ticking at the moment pollution occurs.