Today’s clippings include further commentary on the Court’s decision in the GPS tracking case, United States v. Jones, as well as continuing coverage of the challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
Writing for the Huffington Post, Susan Landau argues that the Jones decision is merely “one small step for privacy,” given that private companies can still collect sensitive information with few restrictions. Editorials in the Vallejo (Cal.) Times Herald and the Beaufort (N.C.) Observer take a similar view. Continue reading »
Posted in Round-up
The petition of the day is:
Signature Pharmacy, Inc. v. Wright
Docket: 11-748
Issue(s): (1) Whether search warrants for a business that shares multi-occupancy buildings with others violate the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment where the warrants fail to identify the offices, floors or areas to be searched or the specific items to be seized, despite the officer’s knowledge of the business’s location within the buildings and the limited portion of the business under investigation; and (2) whether the Eleventh Circuit properly ruled that a lead officer with actual knowledge of a business’s operations and location within multi-occupancy buildings is entitled to qualified immunity where the officer prepared and obtained search warrants authorizing the unfettered search of the entire buildings and seizure of all business records and items, including those unconnected to the investigation.
Certiorari stage documents:
Posted in Signature Pharmacy v. Wright, Cases in the Pipeline
Commentary on the Court’s decision in the GPS tracking case, United States v. Jones, continues for a third day. The editorial boards of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Baltimore Sun all weigh in, while in the blogosphere Orin Kerr (at the Volokh Conspiracy), Jacob Sullum (of Reason), and Paul Larkin (at the Heritage Foundation’s Foundry Blog) also have coverage. Conor covered additional news on the decision yesterday. Discussing the decision at Scientific America, John Villasenor criticizes the Court’s opinion as resting “on technology assumptions that are rapidly becoming irrelevant,” while at Wired’s Threat Level blog, David Kravets discusses whether the government needs a warrant to monitor someone in real time via his mobile phone.
Continue reading »
Posted in Round-up
The petitions of the day are:
Philip Morris USA, Inc. v. Campbell
Docket: 11-741
Issue(s): Whether the Due Process Clause prohibits the
use of issue preclusion to establish elements of a
plaintiff’s claims where it cannot be shown that the
issues being given preclusive effect were actually decided
in a prior proceeding.
Certiorari stage documents:
Continue reading »
Posted in Cases in the Pipeline
If Court-watchers are looking for some clue on the constitutional issues around the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), they’ll have to wait. The Court’s ruling this week on SORNA marks the third time in as many years that the Act has reached the Court. Like the earlier cases, this one, Reynolds v. United States, doesn’t touch the constitutional issues brewing in the lower courts. In truth, Reynolds didn’t present any of the larger constitutional issues, and the Court assiduously avoided the one constitutional issue it might have considered. In the end, Reynolds is, and maybe always was, just a narrow case about statutory construction in a rather obscure corner of the SORNA, coming to the Court merely to resolve a deep circuit split.
Continue reading »
Posted in Reynolds v. U.S., Featured, Merits Cases
In this post on Monday, I summarized my understanding of the issues that the Court decided in the Jones GPS tracking decision and the other issues it left open.
The case involves a mildly complicated area of the law. The alignment of the Justices also left the issues unusually opaque. But the legal rules have very practical implications for ordinary Americans on a significant question of personal privacy. So describing the case correctly is important. In this post I explain how I think that the press got the case wrong.
Continue reading »
Posted in U.S. v. Jones, Featured, Merits Cases
The Georgetown University Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute will host two events relating to the Court in February, both of which are free and open to the public. On February 1 at 3:30 pm, the Institute will host a “Mock Moot Court” of Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida. Walter Dellinger and Steven Bradbury will argue on behalf of the petitioners and respondents, respectively; a complete list of participants and more information (including how to register, which is required) is available here.
On February 10, at 10:00 am, the Institute will host a panel on pro bono litigation and the role of Supreme Court specialists and public interest organizations. A complete list of panelists and more information (including details regarding registration) are available here.
Posted in What's Happening Now
Monday’s decision in United States v. Jones continued to dominate most of yesterday’s Court coverage. NPR’s Nina Totenberg, David Savage of the Los Angeles Times, and CNN (video) all report on the decision. At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick laments that the Court “issu[ed] the narrowest possible decision about the most consequential technological dilemma” – a sentiment echoed by the Los Angeles Times editorial board, which describes the decision “needlessly narrow.” The blog Concurring Opinions provided extended commentary on the case, which included posts from Margot Kaminski, Gerard Magliocca, Derek Bambauer, and Priscilla Smith, Nabiha Syed, and Albert Wong. Additional commentary comes from Jim Harper at Cato@Liberty, Garrett Epps at the Atlantic, Jeffrey Rosen at the New Republic (thanks to Howard Bashman for the link), and Micah W.J. Smith and Babak Siavoshy at ACSblog. Continue reading »
Posted in Round-up
The petition of the day is:
Zurn Pex, Inc. v. Cox
Docket: 11-740
Issue(s): When a party proffers expert testimony in support
of or in opposition to a motion for class certification,
may the district court rely on the testimony in
ruling on the motion without conducting a full and
conclusive examination of its admissibility under
Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and this Court’s decision
in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
?
Certiorari stage documents:
Posted in Zurn Pex v. Cox, Cases in the Pipeline
The Court recently granted cert. in Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., a case which may lead the Court to revisit whether an agency’s interpretation of its own regulations merit deference. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, whose attorneys contribute to this blog, represents the petitioners in this case, but the author of this post is not involved in the case.]
At issue in Christopher is whether pharmaceutical sales representatives fall within the Fair Labor Standards Act’s exemption from overtime pay. In trying to answer that question, the lower courts have split on whether to give deference to the Department of Labor’s view that pharmaceutical sales reprentatives do not qualify for the FLSA exemption, and thus must be paid overtime. According to respondent SmithKline Beecham, the Department’s position, taken in amicus briefs filed in these cases, is an about-face by the agency and merits no deference — a conclusion with which the Ninth Circuit agreed. But the Second Circuit relied on the agency’s amicus brief to guide its decision, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in Auer v. Robbins requiring courts to defer to agency interpretations of their own rules.
Continue reading »
Posted in Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp., Academic Round-up
