
Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg is NPR's award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. She is often featured in documentaries — most recently RBG — that deal with issues before the court. As Newsweek put it, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg."
In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.
That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, including the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.
Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."
Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. On a lighter note, Esquire magazine twice named her one of the "Women We Love."
A frequent contributor on TV shows, she has also written for major newspapers and periodicals — among them, The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and New York Magazine, and others.
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At issue is whether a Texas law requiring clinics to meet surgical-center standards is aimed at safeguarding women's health or unconstitutionally limiting a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy.
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The court will test the constitutionality of a sweeping Texas abortion law that, if upheld, would allow the kind of major abortion restrictions not permitted in more than 40 years.
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No telling yet which side will win. But did Justice Kennedy's mixed signals Wednesday hint that he was leaning toward the administration's view of federal subsidies for health insurance?
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In King v. Burwell, Obamacare's opponents are challenging the ACA again, this time contending that a section of the law doesn't authorize subsidies to make mandated insurance affordable in 34 states.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a North Carolina case that a board made up largely of dentists may not regulate whitening services.
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An Arizona law aiming to limit prescription of RU-486 to the first seven weeks of pregnancy was blocked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Monday, Supreme Court justices let that stand.
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Driver Peggy Young sued UPS for suspending her job and health insurance during her pregnancy. She claims the company was required to accommodate her, but UPS says its policy was within the law.
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One U.S. appeals court panel tossed out federal subsidies for low-income insurance buyers, while another three-judge panel affirmed them. The issue has the potential to gut the health care overhaul.