The House Committee on the Judiciary on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to remove its dispute with the Department of Justice over secret materials from the Mueller investigation from the court’s December argument calendar. The committee told the justices that once a new Congress and President-elect Joe Biden take office in January, it “will have to determine whether it wishes to continue” its efforts to gain access to the materials at the center of the case now before the court, Department of Justice v. House Committee on the Judiciary.

The dispute arose last year, after Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report on possible Russian interference in the 2016 election to Attorney General William Barr. Barr released a redacted version of the report in April 2019, but a few months later the committee went to court in Washington, D.C., where it asked a federal judge for an order that would require the Department of Justice to disclose the redacted portions of the Mueller report, along with secret grand jury transcripts and materials, for use in the committee’s impeachment investigation. Continue reading »

This week is already shaping up to be a busy one on the Supreme Court’s unofficial coronavirus docket. The justices on Monday rejected an emergency request from incarcerated individuals at a Texas geriatric prison who had asked the court to reinstate stricter safety precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the prison. Also on Monday, a group of Jewish organizations came to the court to challenge New York’s limits on attendance at religious services — just four days after the Catholic diocese of Brooklyn challenged those same limits. The state’s response to the Catholic diocese’s challenge is due Wednesday, and its response to the Jewish organizations’ challenge is due Friday. Continue reading »

For the past several months, Election Law at Ohio State and SCOTUSblog have teamed up to track significant election-related lawsuits with the potential to reach the Supreme Court and affect the presidential election. Now, two weeks after Election Day, litigation over the outcome of the election is rapidly diminishing, but it hasn’t yet completely disappeared. Still scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 17, is a hearing in the Trump campaign’s federal-court lawsuit seeking to delay certification of the popular vote in Pennsylvania. The remaining litigation almost certainly will not have a practical effect on the election’s outcome for a variety of reasons (it would be necessary for President Donald Trump to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s apparent victory in three states, not enough ballots are at stake even assuming the merits of the legal theories raised, factual evidence is lacking on many of the claims made, and so forth). But as others have observed, there are still some legal principles at stake before this ends up just a matter for the history books. Continue reading »

Four days after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn asked the justices to block enforcement of a New York executive order restricting attendance at houses of worship, two Orthodox Jewish synagogues came to the Supreme Court to make a similar request. Arguing that their neighborhoods and religious institutions had been “targeted,” the challengers – which also included two rabbis and an Orthodox Jewish organization – told the justices that the “guilt-by-religious-association restrictions” imposed by the order “have made it impossible for” them to “exercise their religious faith.” Continue reading »

The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon rejected a request from two inmates at high risk for complications from COVID-19 to reinstate an order by a federal district court that would require Texas prison officials to take basic safety precautions to combat the virus. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from that ruling, penning an 11-page opinion – joined by Justice Elena Kagan – in which she worried that Monday’s order “will lead to further, needless suffering” at a prison where 20 inmates have already died as a result of the virus.

The request was filed by Laddy Valentine and Richard King, inmates at the Wallace Pack Unit, a geriatric prison in southeast Texas. Valentine is 69, King is 73, and both suffer from chronic health conditions – such as diabetes and high blood pressure – that put them at a higher risk for serious illness and death from the coronavirus. They went to federal court earlier this year, where they argued that the failure to protect them from the coronavirus violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Continue reading »

SCOTUSblog and Goldstein & Russell, P.C. are seeking to hire a full-time employee to serve as firm manager for Goldstein & Russell, P.C., and deputy manager of SCOTUSblog. The position is based in Bethesda, Maryland, and requires occasional in-person work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading »

The Supreme Court issued an uneventful order list on Monday morning, the second released from the justices’ private conference on Friday, Nov. 13. On Friday, the justices added one case to their merits docket for the 2020-21 term: Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a challenge to a California regulation that gives union organizers access to the property of agricultural growers. The justices did not add any new cases to their merits docket on Monday, nor did they ask for the views of the federal government in any new cases.

The justices will meet again on Friday, Nov. 20. We expect orders from that conference on Monday, Nov. 23, although – like last week – grants from the conference could come as early as Friday afternoon.

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

After a November argument sitting that featured two of the most significant cases of the term, the Supreme Court begins a two-week break from oral arguments. That break will end immediately after Thanksgiving weekend, when the justices will return to the virtual bench on Nov. 30 to hear yet another high-profile case: the latest dispute involving the U.S. census. Continue reading »

On Monday, the court released additional orders from the November 13 conference. The justices did not add any new cases to their merits docket.

On Friday, the justices will hold their Nov. 20 conference.

This week we highlight cert petitions that ask the Supreme Court to review, among other things, resentencing under the First Step Act, amateurism in college sports under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement allowing police to detain bystanders.

In Bates v. United States, the justices are presented with the First Step Act, passed in 2018. Section 404 of the First Step Act permits district courts to resentence drug offenders in light of the Fair Sentencing Act. That 2010 law raised the thresholds of crack cocaine needed to trigger mandatory minimum sentences and thereby reduced sentencing disparities between offenses involving crack cocaine and those involving powder cocaine. In 2019, after the First Step Act went into effect, Drew Bates filed for a sentence reduction under the newly retroactive Fair Sentencing Act. Bates also asked that the district court consider a revision to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for mitigating roles, an amendment that was not in force at the time of his original sentencing. The district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled that the First Step Act only allowed courts to consider sentencing changes under the Fair Sentencing Act; courts could not also consider changes to the Sentencing Guidelines. Arguing that the First Step Act gives district courts discretion to consider the guidelines and that the circuit courts are split on the matter, Bates asks the justices to review the 10th Circuit’s decision.

Continue reading »