WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Monday, June 5

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Monday morning read:

• Supreme Court will hear attempt to trademark ‘Trump Too Small’ (Robert Barnes, The Washington Post)
• Supreme Court’s conservative majority to decide direction of law on race, elections and religious freedom this month (Ariane de Vogue, CNN) 
• As Supreme Court considers affirmative action, colleges see few other ways to diversity goals (Collin Binkley, The Associated Press)
• Waiting and Planning for a Supreme Court Defeat (Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Education)
• The Supreme Court Is Wrong About Andy Warhol (Richard Meyer, The New York Times)

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Friday, June 2

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Friday morning read:

• Supreme Court Backs Employer in Suit Over Strike Losses (Noam Scheiber, The New York Times) 
• U.S. Supreme Court gives boost to whistleblowers in drug pricing case (John Kruzel, Reuters)
• Jackson defends “the right to strike” in her first big dissent (Chris Geidner, Law Dork)
• There’s Unsettling New Evidence About William Rehnquist’s Views on Segregation (Richard L. Hasen & Dahlia Lithwick, Slate)
• Descendants asking US Supreme Court to rename Brown v. Board of Education for SC case (Jessica Holdman, The Post and Courier)

RELIST WATCH

Prohibiting trademarks using other people’s names — and hypothetical jurisdiction

The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.

This week the court will be considering 150 certiorari petitions and applications at its conference Thursday. It will be considering only two cases for the second time.

Vidal v. Elster is vying for another spot on the court’s growing docket of cases related to our 45th president. Section 2(c) of the Lanham Act prohibits federal registration of any trademark that “[c]onsists of or comprises a name … identifying a particular living individual except by his written consent,” or the name “of a deceased President of the United States during the life of his widow,” “except by the written consent of the widow.” Steve Elster sought to register the mark “Trump too small” for use on T-shirts to convey a political message about the then-President Donald Trump. The United States Patent & Trademark Office refused registration under Section 2(c), and the Trademark and Trial Appeal Board upheld that decision because the mark identified the by-then-former president without his consent. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed. Holding that Elster’s trademark goes to “the heart of the First Amendment,” the court held that the government has no plausible “interest in restricting speech critical of government officials or public figures in the trademark context.” It thus declared Section 2(c) unconstitutional as applied to Elster’s trademark.

WHAT WE'RE READING

The morning read for Thursday, June 1

Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. Here’s the Thursday morning read:

• Majority of Americans favor affirmative action in colleges as Supreme Court seems poised to end it, poll says (Char Adams, NBC News) 
• Texas man urges Supreme Court to stay out of major Second Amendment case (Ariane de Vogue, CNN)
• Could Hunter Biden be the next poster child for Second Amendment rights? (Betsy Woodruff Swan, Politico)
• The Supreme Court Sleeper Case That Poses an Existential Threat to Artistic Freedom (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
• The Problem With Wealth-Based Affirmative Action (Richard Rothstein, The Atlantic)

OPINION ANALYSIS

Court rules for Maryland prison official on procedural issue

The Supreme Court on Thursday gave a Maryland prison official another chance to defend himself against a federal civil rights claim. Last week’s unanimous ruling in Dupree v. Younger rested on procedural issues, but it was an important one for the litigants involved – and, as Justice Amy Coney Barrett observed in announcing it, for law professors.

The case arose from a 2013 attack on Kevin Younger, who was being held before trial at a state prison in Baltimore, by three prison guards. The guards beat Younger severely and slammed his head against a toilet, leaving him unconscious and bleeding. Younger was left with permanent injuries to his face, wrist, ribs, hand, and leg.

The three prison guards who were directly responsible for the attack were convicted of assault. But Younger also filed a federal civil rights claim against Neil Dupree, a lieutenant in the prison, alleging that he had ordered the attack.