Tuesday round-up
on Jan 13, 2015 at 5:54 am
Yesterday morning the Court heard oral arguments in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, in which it is considering whether a town’s assertion that its sign regulations lack a discriminatory motive can justify its disparate treatment of a church’s religious signs. Lyle Denniston covered the oral argument for this blog, concluding that the ordinance’s prospects are “quite poor”; other coverage comes from Nina Totenberg of NPR, Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal, Tony Mauro of the Supreme Court Brief (registration or subscription required), and Adam Liptak of The New York Times. Commentary on yesterday’s oral arguments comes from Ruthann Robson at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog.
At Greenwire, Jeremy P. Jacobs covers the second argument yesterday: Oneok, Inc. v. Learjet, in which the Court is considering “whether the Natural Gas Act pre-empts local antitrust lawsuits filed against natural gas producers for price manipulation.” And at ISCOTUSnow, Edward Lee predicts the winners in both of yesterday’s oral arguments based on the number of questions for each side.
Before yesterday’s oral arguments, the Court released additional orders from last Friday’s Conference. The most notable aspect of yesterday’s order list was that the Court denied a petition for certiorari asking it to review a district court’s ruling upholding Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriage before the court of appeals weighs in, but it did not act on the group of petitions asking it to review the Sixth Circuit’s ruling upholding state bans on same-sex marriage in Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky. Lyle Denniston covered yesterday’s orders for this blog, while Rick Hasen discusses the Court’s denial of review in the campaign finance case Vermont Right to Life Committee v. Sorrell at his Election Law Blog.
Commentary on King v. Burwell, the challenge to the availability of tax subsidies for individuals who purchase their health insurance on exchanges established by the federal government, continues. At The Huffington Post, Doug Kendall weighs in on recent comments by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker about the Affordable Care Act, while at the blog of the Harvard Journal on Legislation Isaac Freilich Jones outlines a strategy that the Obama administration could use to “save” the ACA if the Court rules in favor of the challengers in King.
Other coverage and commentary focus on next week’s argument in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, in which the Court will consider the constitutionality of a rule that bans candidates for judgeships from personally soliciting campaign funds. Noreen Marcus previews the case in the Daily Business Review, while in an op-ed for Florida Today Martin Dyckman contends that the case has “enormous national implications.”
Briefly:
- In The National Law Journal (registration or subscription required), Tony Mauro reports that “Randall Rader’s sudden resignation from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last June is playing a cameo role in a petition now before the U.S. Supreme Court on the duty of mediators to disclose conflicts of interest.”
- Elsewhere in the Supreme Court Brief, Mauro reports that the “much-anticipated comic opera about U.S. Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia will make its debut July 11 at the Castleton Festival in Virginia.”
- At PrawfsBlawg, Richard Re looks at last week’s reargument order in the Armed Career Criminal Act case Johnson v. United States and concludes that “[t]he smart money is that the Court will take Justice Scalia’s suggestion and simply strike the residual clause, thereby leaving only the listed offenses.”
- Also at PrawfsBlawg, Howard Wasserman considers whether Congress could or should change how the Chief Justice is selected.
- At the Center for Law and Religion Forum, Claudia Haupt analyzes the license plate speech case Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
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