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Dividing up the birth control argument, and others

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon released the list of lawyers who will be arguing the eleven hearings in the two-week sitting that begins next Monday.  All but two of the hearings will be for the customary one hour each.  The Justices will hold a ninety-minute hearing on Wednesday on the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate, and a seventy-minute hearing on Monday on a Virginia congressional redistricting dispute.

The Wednesday hearing on the ACA focuses on seven separate cases, consolidated for the longer hearing.  Paul D. Clement, with the Washington, D.C., office of Bancroft PLLC, will open with twenty-five minutes of time, speaking for four religious non-profit institutions challenging the mandate: East Texas Baptist University, the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged, Southern Nazarene University, and Geneva College.

Next, with twenty-minutes, will be Noel Francisco of the Washington office of Jones Day.  He will be representing the Most Rev. David A. Zubik and others, Priests for Life, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., the government’s top advocate before the Court, will have forty-five minutes of time to defend the mandate against the challenge under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

In the Monday argument, in Wittman v. Personhuballah, the present and former members of the U.S. House of Representatives defending a redistricting map for Virginia’s District 3 will be represented by Michael A. Carvin of the Washington office of Jones Day, with thirty-five minutes of time.

On the other side, representing the challengers to the District 3 map as drawn by the state legislature, will be Stuart A. Raphael, Virginia’s solicitor general, with ten minutes of time to speak for the state board of elections; Marc E. Elias of the Washington firm of Perkins Coie LLP,  with fifteen minutes to represent the two Virginia voters who filed the case originally, and Ian H. Gershengorn, the deputy U.S. Solicitor General, with ten minutes to speak for the federal government in support of the two voters and the state elections board.

In the other cases during the next sitting in which the U.S. Solicitor General’s office is taking part, the lawyers from that office will each have ten minutes of time to support the side the government has chosen.

Recommended Citation: Lyle Denniston, Dividing up the birth control argument, and others, SCOTUSblog (Mar. 18, 2016, 3:49 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/dividing-up-the-birth-control-argument-and-others/