May a single post have multiple categories with the same name ("headlines" in this case)?

post have multiple categories, "headlines" are one of them.. and no, a single post, can't have 2 "headlines" category or any 2 same category

what i need to do is, sort the posts, dpending on the category.

In that case, I think something like this could be done (never tested it, though):

$headlines = Post::with(array('categories' => function($query) {
    $query->where('name', 'headlines');
}))->whereHas('categories', function($query) {
    $query->where('name', 'headlines');
})->where('published_at', Session::get('date'))->get()->sortBy(function($post) {
    return $post->categories->first()->id;
});