The New York Times (12/22, A40) editorializes that in “a lamentable 5-to-4 decision earlier this year” in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, “the Supreme Court discarded 50 years of legal precedent to make it significantly harder for Americans to assert their legal rights in federal court.” The case “involved a Muslim man swept up on immigration charges after the Sept. 11 attacks,” but the “damage went beyond the case or the national security sphere.

The court altered the procedural rules for initiating a lawsuit, raising the bar in a fashion destined to make it far harder to bring valid ...