WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Wednesday, April 17

The court expects to issue one or more opinions this morning in argued cases from the current term. Following the opinion announcements, the court will hear oral arguments in Thornell v. Jones. Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Wednesday morning read:

• Supreme Court gives skeptical eye to key statute used to prosecute Jan. 6 rioters (Nina Totenberg, NPR)
• Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s arguments over obstruction charge used against January 6 rioters (John Fritze, Marshall Cohen, Tierney Sneed, & Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN)
• Justice Clarence Thomas misses Supreme Court arguments (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News)
• Supreme Court, in an emergency order, lets Idaho enforce ban on transgender care (Maureen Groppe, USA Today)
• Supreme Court Poised to Cut Back Scope of Anti-Corruption Law (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Tuesday, April 16

The court expects to issue one or more opinions this morning in argued cases from the current term. Following the opinion announcements, the court will hear oral arguments in Fischer v. U.S. Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Tuesday morning read:

• Supreme Court declines to hear appeal from Black Lives Matter organizer facing damages suit (John Fritze, CNN)
• Supreme Court weighs Jan. 6 rioter’s obstruction challenge, which could affect Trump’s case (Lawrence Hurley & Ryan J. Reilly, NBC News)
• Supreme Court takes its deepest plunge into Jan. 6, with possible implications for Trump (Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein, Politico)
• Supreme Court’s Review of Jan. 6 Charge Has Already Freed Some Rioters (Alan Feuer, The New York Times)
• Can homeless people be fined for sleeping outside? A rural Oregon city asks the US Supreme Court (Claire Rush, The Associated Press)

Coming up: On Wednesday, April 17, the court expects to issue one or more opinions from the current term. We’ll be live at 9:45 a.m. EDT. 

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Monday, April 15

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• Corruption or Just Politics? Supreme Court Weighs New Bribery Case as More Clashes Are Brewing (Jan Wolfe & C. Ryan Barber, The Wall Street Journal)
• Jan. 6 Obstruction Case at Supreme Court Could Help Trump and Many Others (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)
• Fallout from Trump’s bid to overturn election loss heads to Supreme Court (John Kruzel, Reuters)
• The Civil War raged and fortune-seekers hunted for gold. This era produced Arizona’s abortion ban (Christine Fernando, The Associated Press)
• A Taxonomy for Court Reform (Steve Vladeck, One First)

Coming up: On Tuesday, April 16 and Wednesday, April 17, the court expects to issue one or more opinions from the current term. We’ll be live at 9:45 a.m. EDT each day. 

OPINION ANALYSIS

Justices exempt bakery-truck drivers from arbitration requirement

The justices on Friday ruled in favor of a group of truck drivers who transport goods for Wonder Bread in their arbitration dispute. Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St. is another of the court’s numerous cases interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act’s command that courts enforce mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements. Bissonnette involves an exception from the FAA for any “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce,” and the question in Bissonnette  is whether that exception turns on the nature of the work the employees do or instead on the nature of their employer’s business. The workers here drive delivery trucks, carrying (among other things), Wonder Bread. They argue that they are transportation workers, because they drive trucks for a living; the employers argue that they are not, because they work in the bakery industry.

Friday’s decision in favor of the workers came in a short unanimous opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts started by pointing out that the court always has limited the exemption to “transportation workers,” reflecting the court’s view that the “general phrase ‘class of workers engaged in … commerce’ is controlled and defined by reference to the specific categories ‘seamen’ and ‘railroad employees’ that precede it.”

OPINION ANALYSIS

Court rules for property owner in building fee dispute

California homeowner George Sheetz won a victory at the Supreme Court on Friday in his challenge to the constitutionality of a fee that he was required to pay the county to receive a permit to build his home. In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the justices agreed with Sheetz that conditions on building permits should be subject to heightened scrutiny even if they were authorized by legislation, rather than imposed on an individual basis by administrators.

The decision was a relatively narrow one that did not come as much of a surprise after the oral argument in January, at which Justice Neil Gorsuch had observed that both Sheetz and the county were in “radical agreement” on the question that the court had agreed to decide. The justices on Friday answered only that question – in Sheetz’s favor – and sent the case back to the state courts for another look in light of the Supreme Court’s decision.