Attorney & Court Information
The Supreme Court will release orders from the June 13 conference on Monday at 9:30 a.m.; John Elwood’s “Relist Watch” compiles the petitions that were relisted for this conference.
There is a possibility of opinions on Monday at 10 a.m.
On Thursday, the justices meet for their June 20 conference.
The post This week at the court appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, the standard for a plaintiff to meet the plausibility requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, when a trial court should grant the press’s motion to access voir dire questionnaires, the proper classification of Voice over Internet Protocol under Brand X, and whether a state violates a biological parent’s rights under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause when it strips the parent of custody in favor of a former partner in certain circumstances.
The petitions of the week are:
Issues: (1) Whether, in the absence of a Federal Communications Commission decision classifying Voice over Internet Protocol service as an information service, FCC policy can conflict with and pre-empt state regulation of VoIP service; and (2) whether VoIP service is a telecommunications service or an information service, under the appropriate functional test for classification determinations from Brand X.
Issue: Whether an employee protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act must always allege wage violations averaged across a specific seven-day workweek, or whether an employee may plead a cause of action with alternative context-specific allegations to meet the plausibility requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 and Ashcroft v. Iqbal.
Issue: Whether an application to a trial court by the press, as a surrogate for the public, in exercising its constitutionally required ability to be heard in opposition to a denial of the presumptive First Amendment right of access to voir dire questionnaires used to select the jury in a controversial murder prosecution may be denied by the failure of state criminal procedural rules to authorize standing for that purpose.
Issue: Whether a state violates a biological parent’s rights under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause when it strips the parent of custody in favor of a former partner who is not the child’s biological or adoptive parent, and without affording a presumption that the parent is acting in the best interests of the child.
The post Petitions of the week appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
The Supreme Court’s 2018-2019 term is almost complete. Although less than two calendar weeks are left, a large portion of the court’s work is still unfinished. At this juncture, we have several intriguing stories, some unexpected results and much left unanswered. So far, the justices have resolved 45 of the term’s 69 argued cases. This leaves at least 24 decisions for the final two weeks, or about 35 percent of the court’s merits docket. Many of these are high-profile cases, including Department of Commerce v. New York, the census-citizenship-question case; American Legion v. American Humanist Association, which implicates the future of the establishment clause; the two cases examining political-gerrymandering practices, Lamone v. Benisek and Rucho v. Common Cause; and Kisor v. Wilkie, which may dictate future jurisprudence surrounding judicial deference to administrative agencies.
It is important to note that the statistics for the term so far are preliminary, and they will change over the next two weeks. With that in mind, at this point in the term the court has presented us with some novel insights in the post-Kennedy era. Although many expected the court’s new conservative majority to overpower the four more liberal justices, such has yet to be the case (although if Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s words from a recent speech ring true, such divisions still might play an important role in the remainder of the court’s decisions for the term).
We have seen seven different majority compositions in 5-4 decisions so far. Out of the 11 5-4 decisions, only four were decided by a majority composed of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. By contrast, Ginsburg and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were in the majority in five of these decisions. The variation in the source of the deciding vote in these five decisions has also been interesting to note. Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have all provided the fifth vote, leaving Alito as the lone more conservative justice not to join such a voting composition.
Several aspects of this term so far accord with patterns we have seen in the past. For example, the court has decided half of its cases by a unanimous majority, which is par for the course for recent terms. In the past, the court has frequently overturned decisions in cases coming from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. This term is no exception. Not only has the court vacated or reversed 11 of the 13 decisions coming from the 9th Circuit so far, with one decision, The Dutra Group v. Batterton, still remaining, but this is the highest reversal rate for any circuit this term (84.62 percent) aside from circuits that have only had a single case decided by the justices. Last term the court reversed in 12 out of 14, or 86 percent, of the cases that came from the 9th Circuit.
Kavanaugh seems to be fitting in comfortably among the justices in his first term on the Supreme Court. Based on his 43 votes, he has the highest frequency in the majority of any of the justices, at 93 percent. Roberts is a close second at 90 percent. In what also might be surprising to those expecting a conservative powerhouse of a court with this new justice composition, the only two justices whose frequencies in the majority so far this term are under 80 percent are Thomas and Gorsuch.
Some of the high rates of inter-justice agreement that we saw in the earlier Interim Stat Pack have dipped a bit now that more cases have been decided. Roberts’ agreement rates with Sotomayor and Kagan are no longer at least in the high 90-percent range for all measures, nor are Kavanaugh’s agreement rates with Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer still at such heights. Surprisingly though, Kavanaugh still has higher agreement rates with Breyer and Kagan than he does with his fellow Trump nominee Gorsuch.
With the 24 cases already granted for next term, we can expect the justices to jump into several highly contentious areas that may put an even greater spotlight on the court. Because these cases involve issues ranging from Title VII discrimination to Second Amendment rights, we will likely see heated debates and much speculation over how the court will rule. This term is still far from over, however, and we may end up talking about the Supreme Court’s October Term 2018 decisions for many years to come.
The post Interim Stat Pack for October Term 2018 appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
On June 28, at 9 a.m. EDT in Washington, D.C., the American Constitution Society will host a panel reviewing the Supreme Court’s October Term 2018. Panelists include Charlotte Garden, Gillian Metzger, Ngozi Ndulue, Daniel Tokaji and Jason Torchinsky; Thomas Goldstein will moderate the panel. More information, including registration instructions, is available here.
The post Event Announcement: ACS Term Review Panel in Washington appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts released the justices’ annual financial disclosures for 2018 today. The forms do not provide a complete picture of the justices’ finances: They do not, for example, include the value of the justices’ homes, and the values of their stocks, investments and bank accounts are reported only in a range. But at the same time, the forms do offer a glimpse into how the justices spend their time off the bench – as well as potential conflicts of interest.
Most, but not all, of the nine justices have side gigs, often teaching law school. Justice Clarence Thomas taught at three different law schools – Kansas, George Washington University and Georgia – in 2018, earning $ 28,000. The court’s newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, earned nearly that much teaching at Harvard Law School, while Justice Samuel Alito earned just over $ 20,000 teaching at Duke University’s law school and Justice Elena Kagan earned $ 17,500 teaching a class at Harvard in the fall of 2018.
Justice Stephen Breyer continued to hold the most glamorous outside job, serving as a juror for the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Justice Neil Gorsuch served as a member of the board of trustees for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, while Kavanaugh held three positions even closer to home: coaching girls’ basketball teams.
The justices also earned income from book royalties. Gorsuch led the way with $ 225,000 from Penguin Random House – presumably for his upcoming book, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” – and $ 782.55 from Princeton University Press for his book on euthanasia, which was published in 2009. Justice Sonia Sotomayor earned $ 33,000 in advances against book royalties for her memoir “My Beloved World,” which was published in 2014, and “Turning Pages,” a children’s picture book published this year. Royalties were a family affair in the Breyer household this year: Breyer earned $ 4,415.69 in royalties himself, while Joanna Breyer – who has a PhD in psychology – also earned an undisclosed amount of royalties for her own book, a guide for parents of sick children.
Sotomayor also reported receiving (but then donating to charity) $ 2,000 from the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation as part of the Lifetime Leadership DVF Award. Sotomayor was honored at a ceremony in April 2018 along with (among others) ballerina Misty Copeland and Jaha Dukureh of Gambia, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work to stop female genital mutilation and child marriages.
The justices racked up the frequent-flyer miles again in 2018. Octogenarian Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went everywhere from Park City, Utah, to Rome, Israel and Jordan, while Breyer hit (among others) Ireland, Spain, Paris, Aspen, Nevis and Sun Valley. Chief Justice John Roberts flew domestic, traveling to speak at law schools in St. Louis and Minnesota.
Some justices had robust stock portfolios. Roberts reported holdings that include Texas Instruments, Sirius XM, AT&T and one-eighth of a cottage in Ireland, while Alito’s stocks include Molson-Coors, Boeing, Caterpillar and Johnson & Johnson. Breyer also owns stocks, including – through his wife – the sports-entertainment brand Topgolf International. Other justices, like Kavanaugh, had simpler finances: He listed only a Bank of America account and a Texas state retirement account.
This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.
The post Justices release financial disclosures appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
With less than three weeks to go before the Supreme Court’s summer recess, the challengers in the dispute over the decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census yesterday asked the justices to postpone their ruling in the wake of new evidence in the case.
In January, a federal district judge in New York barred the federal government from using the citizenship question on the 2020 census, ruling that the government’s conduct violated the federal laws governing administrative agencies. The federal government asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling, and the justices heard oral argument in the case in late April.
In late May, the challengers notified the justices about new evidence that, they said, indicated that Thomas Hofeller, a Republican redistricting strategist, played a key role in the decision to add the citizenship question to the census. They had filed a motion in the district court suggesting that the government be sanctioned because the new evidence contradicted testimony and representations by government officials in the district court proceedings. The government pushed back, calling the accusations “meritless” and an “eleventh-hour effort” to “derail the Supreme Court’s resolution” of the dispute.
In a hearing last week, the challengers explained in their filing yesterday, the district court agreed that the new allegations were “serious,” but concluded that it could not “address their relevance to the merits without instructions from the Supreme Court.” But these new revelations, the challengers continued, “cut to the heart of this case”: Not only do they make clear that the government hid its actual rationale for adding the citizenship to the 2020 census, but the “new evidence strongly suggests that” the government’s real rationale for adding the question – providing an advantage to whites and Republicans in future elections – “was the diametric opposite of its stated reason” for adding the question, which was to obtain data to allow the Department of Justice to better enforce federal voting rights laws.
Therefore, the challengers pleaded, if the Supreme Court does not uphold the district court’s decision barring the government from using the citizenship question, it should send the case back to the lower court for it to look at whether Hofeller’s “partisan and racially discriminatory motives for adding a citizenship question were shared by, or should otherwise be imputed to, relevant Commerce officials,” including Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. The district court could then determine whether supplemental fact-finding and changes to its judgment are needed, the challengers reasoned, allowing the Supreme Court “to take up the matter promptly, upon a complete record.”
The challengers acknowledged that the government has asked the justices to issue their ruling by the end of June, to give it enough time to finalize the census questionnaire. However, the challengers noted, there is more room to maneuver than that timetable suggests: A government witness testified that the questionnaire can be finalized as late as October 31, 2019. “Given the massive and lasting consequences of the once-in-a-decade census,” the challengers emphasized, “it is imperative that this case be decided on the basis of a complete and accurate record.”
This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.
The post Challengers ask justices to put off census decision appeared first on SCOTUSblog.
