House passes a housing bill as the Supreme Court blocks an Alabama execution

The United States House of Representatives voted 396 to 13 on May 20 to pass the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. The bill is aimed at offsetting the cost of living and supporting affordable housing. It headed back to the Senate for any revisions before it could become law.

The margin was large for a chamber often split on domestic spending. Supporters framed the measure as a response to housing costs rather than a narrow tax tweak. The vote itself did not fund a single project, but it moved a long-discussed package to the next chamber.

On the judicial side, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by Alabama in Hamm v. Smith. The state had challenged a lower-court decision blocking the execution of Joseph Clifton Smith, an intellectually disabled man convicted of a 1997 murder. The court said executing Smith would violate his constitutional rights.

The dismissal left the lower-court block in place. It was a capital-punishment ruling rather than a new trial of the 1997 case. Alabama did not receive the green light it had sought from the justices.

Other legal headlines sat nearby. A grand jury in Miami indicted former Cuban Communist Party first secretary Raul Castro and five others on murder charges tied to the 1996 shootdown of a Brothers to the Rescue aircraft. Two Capitol Police officers who defended the building on January 6, 2021, sued to block rioters from receiving payouts from a 1.8 billion dollar settlement fund.

In the Philippines, the Supreme Court rejected an injunction sought by senator Ronald dela Rosa against arrest on an International Criminal Court warrant connected to the drug war. In France, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted Airbus and Air France of manslaughter over the 2009 crash of Flight 447, which killed 228 people, and ordered both companies to pay the maximum corporate fine plus compensation to families. The week's courts moved housing, capital punishment, and older cases at the same time.