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Tuesday round-up

Yesterday the Justices issued one opinion in an argued case, vacating and remanding the decision of the Sixth Circuit in M&G Polymers v. Tackett, a dispute between an employer and its retired employees over the vesting of health-care benefits.  Ronald Mann covered the decision for this blog; other coverage comes from Jess Bravin in The Wall Street Journal, David Savage in the Los Angeles Times, and Hera Arsen at the Ogletree Deakins blog.

Other coverage of the Court focuses on the fall-out from the Court’s announcement last week that it would review a challenge by a group of Oklahoma death-row inmates to the state’s lethal-injection protocol — specifically, the state’s announcement yesterday that it would seek to delay the executions of three prisoners but at the same time keep open the possibility of resuming executions if it can establish a new lethal-injection protocol.  Lyle Denniston reported on those developments for this blog, with other coverage coming from Jess Bravin and Nathan Koppel of The Wall Street Journal and Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News.

Briefly:

  • In The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle report that, although the “[h]istory-making arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on same-sex marriage are still more than three months away, . . . the strategizing among lawyers” about who will argue the case “has already begun.”
  • In the Supreme Court Brief, Mauro looks at the thinking among the Justices on whether and why to attend the president’s State of the Union speech each year.
  • At ACSblog, Adam Winkler cites comments by Justice Antonin Scalia in last week’s Fair Housing Act case that in his view should resolve King v. Burwell, in which the Court will consider whether tax subsidies are available for individuals who purchase their health insurance on an exchange established by the federal government.
  • At the National Review Online’s Bench Memos, Carrie Severino dissects last week’s oral arguments in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar and argues that “[f]undraising in judicial elections is just as important for political speech as it is in typical campaigns.”

A friendly reminder:  We rely on our readers to send us links for the round-up.  If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, or op-ed relating to the Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com.

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Tuesday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Jan. 27, 2015, 7:25 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2015/01/tuesday-round-up-257/