Friday round-up

By Kiera Flynn
on Sep 9, 2011 at 3:42 pm

Yesterday the Fourth Circuit issued two decisions rejecting challenges to the Affordable Care Act.  Lyle Denniston of this blog analyzed the decisions, which generated a new round of speculation and discussion about when the Court might review a health care challenge and what issues the Court might address.  David Savage, of the Los Angeles Times, Bill Mears of CNN, Anita Kumar and N.C. Aizenman of the Washington Post, Paige Winfield Cunningham of the Washington Times,  Daniel Fisher at Forbes, Fox News, Jason Kane of PBS News Hour’s The Rundown blog, Sam Baker of The Hill, Neil Munro of the Daily Caller, Carrie Severino at the National Review Online’s Bench Memos page, Jim Nolan at the Richmond Times Dispatch, and Julian Walker at the Virginian-Pilot all have coverage.

Others reading the tea leaves of the decisions include Lisa Lambert of Reuters, who examines the effects that the decisions could have on (among other things) the prospect that the Court will deem the individual mandate unconstitutional.  At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin downplays the significance of the Virginia case – noting that “there are lots of other anti-mandate plaintiffs . . . who clearly do have standing” – and predicts that “[i]f the pro-mandate side wins, it probably won’t be on the tax argument.”  At Cato @ Liberty, Ilya Shapiro similarly concludes that the decisions “in no way affect any other case and should only speed up the Supreme Court’s ultimate consideration of the issues raised in all these challenges.”  However, Greg Stohr of Bloomberg suggests that the decisions could “add[] a new legal wrinkle, raising a procedural issue that might delay the ultimate outcome.”  Finally, at her “Right Turn” blog for the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin predicts that the Court will “get the case and likely rule before the end of 2012.”

SCOTUSblog’s class action symposium continues.  Yesterday, we added a post from Charles Silver of the University of Texas Law School and Maria Glover of Harvard Law School that analyzed the effects of the Court’s recent holdings in Wal-Mart v. Dukes and AT&T v. Concepcion.

Briefly:

• At the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr notes that Justice Thomas will co-teach a seminar on constitutional law this fall at the George Washington University School of Law.