Showing 1–50 of 58 items published in September 2017, most recent first.
In District of Columbia v. Wesby, the Supreme Court has once again been asked to address the scope of qualified immunity, which bars constitutional claims against public officials unless they were found to have violated clearly established law.
Yesterday the Supreme Court added 11 cases to its docket for the upcoming term, for a total of nine hours of oral argument. Amy Howe has this blog‘s coverage, which first appeared at Howe on the Court.
Supreme Court justices’ speaking engagements typically make headlines for what happens inside, not outside, the venue. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s keynote speech yesterday at The Fund for American Studies’ Defending Freedom Luncheon proved an exception to the rule, sparking protests in front of the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
Court-watchers are looking ahead to October Term 2017’s first oral arguments, which begin next Monday. At Howe on the Court, Amy Howe reports that the court has released the hearing list for the first argument session, which “contains a critical mass of veteran Supreme Court litigators,” noting that “women are relatively few and far between on the hearing list,” occupying only three of the 24 October argument slots.
[This post was updated at 12:48 p.m. to include more thorough discussions of Byrd v. United States, McCoy v. Louisiana, Rosales-Mireles v. United States, Hall v. Hall and the trio of cases consolidated under Dalmazzi v. United States.]
The state of Missouri today urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the dispute over two of the state’s abortion requirements. Last week, Planned Parenthood asked the justices to reinstate a lower court’s order blocking the state from enforcing those requirements, arguing that the requirements are identical to two Texas regulations that the Supreme Court struck down last year.
When District of Columbia police officers Andre Parker and Anthony Campanale responded to reports of unauthorized goings-on at a supposedly vacant home nearly a decade ago, they probably didn’t expect the evening’s events to lead to all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
To be frank, Rodney Class appears to be what Second Amendment friends and foes alike might call a gun nut. He allegedly told the FBI after his arrest that he is a “constitutional bounty hunter” who travels around the country with guns and other weapons in order to help enforce federal criminal laws against judges who he believes have acted unlawfully.
For the Associated Press, Kate Brumback reports that “[t]he U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of execution Tuesday night for a Georgia inmate whose attorneys argue that the 59-year-old black man’s death sentence was tainted by a juror’s racial bias.” At Reuters, David Beasley reports that
With the new term about to start, we thought it was time to look back and see what lessons we could learn from the relist statistics for October Term 2016.
Detention as a tool of immigration enforcement has increased dramatically following immigration reforms enacted in 1996. Two Supreme Court cases at the dawn of the new millennium offered contrasting approaches to the review of decisions of the U.S. government to detain immigrants.
[Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post ran on August 7, as an introduction to the blog’s symposium on Gill v. Whitford, as well as at Howe on the Court, where it was originally published.]
After Sunday’s imposition of new restrictions on entry into the United States by nationals from eight countries, the Supreme Court yesterday removed the pending entry-ban cases from the October argument calendar and directed the parties to address the effect on the cases of both the new order and the scheduled October 24 expiration of the refugee provisions in the previous order.
Recent years have seen the Supreme Court regularly review criminal immigration cases. That should be no surprise in light of the fact the immigration courts have relied on criminal-removal grounds to remove hundreds of thousands of noncitizens annually from the United States.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco today notified the Supreme Court that President Donald Trump has issued a new proclamation restricting travel to the United States by citizens from eight countries.
Yesterday President Donald Trump announced new restrictions on entry into the United States by nationals from eight countries; the government has asked the Supreme Court to order briefing addressing the effect of the new order on the entry-ban case now pending before the court.
(This post was updated at 3:13 p.m. to account for the court’s September 25 order granting motions for divided argument by the U.S. solicitor general and the National Labor Relations Board.)
The Supreme Court’s September 25 “long conference” is now behind us; if the past is any guide, the grants out of that conference should be released on Thursday, September 28.
Today the Supreme Court announced that it had removed the challenges to President Donald Trump’s March 6 executive order, sometimes known as the “travel ban,” from its argument calendar for October.
On Monday, the justices met for their September 25 conference. The justices removed Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project and Trump v. Hawaii from the court’s October sitting.
Bloomberg BNA’s Cases and Controversies podcast features a discussion of Epic Systems v. Lewis, in which the court will decide whether employment agreements that ban collective resolution of workplace disputes violate federal employment laws, calling the case “a major showdown between businesses
[Update on Monday, September 25: Justice Neil Gorsuch has asked Missouri to respond by 3 p.m. on Thursday, September 28, to Planned Parenthood’s application.]
In The Wall Street Journal, Jess Bravin reports on Tuesday’s confirmation of Noel Francisco as solicitor general, noting that “[t]he Senate divided 50-to-47 along partisan lines, reflecting a distrust among some Democrats toward any lawyer—even an accomplished professional—who would step forward to
Yesterday the Senate confirmed Noel Francisco as solicitor general by a vote of 50-47. Amy Howe has this blog‘s coverage, which first appeared at Howe on the Court.
The new SCOTUSblog iOS app is now available in the App Store for free download. Users will have mobile access to the regular content on the blog – posts, case pages, stat packs, special features and videos, as well as “This week at the court,” the court’s calendar and the blog’s social media.
In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro highlights an amicus brief filed “on behalf of a group of ‘cake artists’ across the country” in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which stems from a baker’s refusal to create a wedding cake for a
By a vote of 50-47 that broke down almost completely on party lines, the Senate today confirmed Noel Francisco to serve as the solicitor general, the government’s top lawyer in the Supreme Court.
The challenge to President Donald Trump’s March executive order on immigration continues to generate headlines.
Mary L. Bonauto is the Civil Rights Project Director at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. This case is not really about a cake. It is about equal citizenship of gay people, and whether we may engage in the kinds of ordinary transactions others take for granted in the commercial marketplace and beyond.
At his eponymous blog, Lyle Denniston looks at the factors that may underlie the Supreme Court’s one-sentence order on Wednesday denying a request to expedite review of a partisan-gerrymandering case from Maryland, Benisek v. Lamone.
Early this week, the Supreme Court – over the dissent of the court’s four more liberal justices – granted Texas’ request to put on hold two lower-court orders that had invalidated two of the state’s federal congressional districts and the state’s maps for the lower house of the Texas legislature.
Richard W. Garnett is the Paul J. Schierl / Fort Howard Corporation Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. He joined an amicus brief with 33 other legal scholars in support of the cakeshop in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
At NPR, Nina Totenberg looks back at the life of Edith Windsor, “the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages,” who became “an octogenarian rock star in the gay rights community.” Another look at Windsor’s life and her legal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act comes from Lisa Keen at Keen News Service.
Tobias Barrington Wolff is Professor of Law at Penn Law. He served as lead appellate counsel for Vanessa Willock in Elane Photography, LLC v. Willock, in which the Supreme Court declined to review a ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court that a photography studio violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws when it refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.
Eric Rassbach and Hannah Smith are deputy general counsel and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioners in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
Helen Alvare is a professor of law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Many advocates have written about why a wedding cake is itself constitutionally protected expression.
Eric Segall is the Kathy and Lawrence Ashe Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law. Jack Phillips, the co-owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple because supporting their wedding violated his religious beliefs.
Just a few hours after it put an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on hold in the litigation over President Donald Trump’s “travel ban,” the Supreme Court blocked two more lower-court orders, which had invalidated two of Texas’ federal congressional districts and the state’s maps for the lower house of the Texas legislature.
Yesterday the Supreme Court granted the federal government’s request to stay a lower-court ruling that would have exempted from the government’s entry ban up to 24,000 refugees covered by formal agreements between the U.S. government and resettlement agencies.
Justice Anthony Kennedy yesterday put a temporary hold on a lower-court order that would have exempted up to 24,000 refugees from the government’s entry ban; the stay will remain in effect until the entry-ban challengers have responded to the Justice Department’s appeal of the order and Kennedy or the full Supreme Court issues a further ruling on the matter.
Mithun Mansinghani serves as solicitor general for the state of Oklahoma. Michael K. Velchik and Zach West, assistant solicitors general, also contributed to this article.
The state of Hawaii fired back this morning, urging the Supreme Court to stay out of the most recent skirmish in the battle over President Donald Trump’s March 6 executive order, often known as the “travel ban.” Yesterday the Trump administration went to the justices to ask them to block a ruling
Vanita Gupta is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. More than five decades ago, our country wrestled with the issue of whether businesses open to the public should be open to everyone on the same terms, regardless of their race.
At least for now, the federal government will be able to rely on President Donald Trump’s March 6 executive order, often known as the “travel ban,” to bar nearly 24,000 refugees from entering the country.
In The Economist, Steven Mazie takes issue with the amicus brief filed by the federal government in support of a baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, arguing that although the brief characterizes wedding cakes as “‘inherently communicative,'” it “provides no evidence
We’re just three weeks from the start of a blockbuster new term at the Supreme Court, but don’t let that fool you: The conference remains largely inert, essentially daring us at Historic First Mondays Studios to produce an episode with the scraps they’ve handed us. Challenge accepted.
Colorado’s anti-discrimination law bars places of public accommodation – that is, businesses that sell to the public – from discriminating based on (among other things) sexual orientation.
In late June, the Supreme Court agreed to review decisions by two lower courts blocking the Trump administration from implementing the president’s March 6 executive order.
The petitions of the day are: Coachella Valley Water District v. Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians 17-40 Issue: Whether, when, and to what extent the federal reserved right doctrine recognized in Winters v. United States, pre-empts state-law regulation of groundwater.
At CNN, Ariane de Vogue reports that “[t]he 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed the scope of President Donald Trump’s travel ban Thursday, ruling that extended family members such as grandparents are exempt from the ban, as well as a certain class of refugees, while the legality of the ban is