Thursday round-up
on Dec 11, 2014 at 9:00 am
Coverage of and commentary on the Court continue to focus on Tuesday’s two opinions in argued cases. In Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, the Court held that workers at a warehouse are not entitled to compensation for time spent in anti-theft screenings. At In These Times, Moshe Marvit criticizes the Court’s efforts to distinguish “other cases where workers’ preliminary time was compensable,” arguing that, “if theft is as big of a concern as the retailer has alleged . . . it would seriously impair Amazon’s efficiency at least as much as dull knives would slow down meatpacking productions”; Danny Hensel also discusses the case at his Article 8 blog. And in Warger v. Shauers, the Court held that an accident victim who asked for a new trial could not rely on a juror’s affidavit of what another juror said in deliberations to demonstrate that juror’s dishonesty during voir dire. Roger Park covered the decision for this blog; at Re’s Judicata, Richard Re argues that the decision is “noteworthy in part because it comes at a time when grand jury decisions are coming under special scrutiny, particularly in cases involving concerns of racial bias.”
Yesterday the Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Wong and United States v. June, a pair of cases involving equitable tolling and the Federal Tort Claims Act. Marcia Coyle covers both cases for The National Law Journal’s Supreme Court Brief, while at ISCOTUSnow Edward Lee predicts the winners based on the number of questions at oral arguments.
Briefly:
- In her column for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse discusses Young v. United Parcel Service, the pregnancy discrimination case in which the Court heard oral arguments last week; she observes that “[p]regnancy still seems to knock the legal system off its stride, evoking in judges and employers alike a kind of tunnel vision that makes pregnancy the exception to any rule.”
- In his column for The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Steven Mazie analyzes Monday’s oral argument in Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads. If Amtrak loses the case, he suggests, not only will other industries that set standards “find themselves thwarted in their missions,” but the “justices travelling the Northeast corridor may find their Amtrak routes running late more often if the company is forced to give freight competitors a fair shake.”
- Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services (via the Arizona Capitol Times) reports that Arizona intends to ask the Supreme Court to step in and block a ruling by the Ninth Circuit striking down the state’s policy of denying driver’s licenses to “dreamers” – undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
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