Special-edition round-up: today’s opinions

By Anna Christensen
on Jun 17, 2010 at 9:09 pm

With five cases decided this morning, this afternoon has already seen extensive coverage of today’s rulings.  The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes, the WSJ Law Blog’s Nathan Koppel, ACSBlog, and the NRO Bench Memos column all recap the opinions handed down this morning in City of Ontario v. Quon, Dillon v. United States, Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Schwab v. Reilly, and New Process Steel v. National Labor Relations Board.

The Court’s opinion in Stop the Beach seems to have received particularly extensive coverage.  At NPR, Nina Totenberg has a detailed discussion of the opinion, in which the Court held that Florida’s beach restoration program did not violate the rights of property owners; the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin, the Associated Press, JURIST, Josh Blackman’s Blog, CNN, Ariane de Vogue of ABC News, the Christian Science Monitor, and Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr all cover the case as well.  At Cato@Liberty, Ilya Shapiro criticizes the ruling but concedes that “the part of the decision that was unanimously unfortunate turned on a narrow and probably mistaken interpretation of state property law.”  Meanwhile, at Property Prof Blog, Ben Barros assesses the “fragmented opinions” that characterized the Court’s decision, and at the University of Chicago Law School’s Faculty Blog, Lior Strahilevitz also has commentary, while the Volokh Conspiracy also has three posts on the ruling.

Today in City of Ontario v. Quon, the Court held that a police department’s review of text messages on a pager issued by the department to one of its officer did not violate the officer’s constitutional rights.  Joan Biskupic of USA Today, David Savage of the Los Angeles Times, Adam Liptak of the New York Times, Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor, Ariane de Vogue of ABC News, MSNBC’s Pete Williams, CNN’s Bill Mears, Reuters, JURIST, the Associated Press (via the San Francisco Chronicle), Greg Stohr of Bloomberg, Courthouse News Service, and Josh Blackman all have coverage of the decision, while Sentencing Law and Policy has an analysis of the case’s possible implications for sex offender restrictions.  Lyle analyzes the opinion as well for SCOTUSblog.

The Associated Press, Courthouse News Service, JURIST, and Reuters all have coverage of New Process Steel v. National Labor Relations Board, in which the Court held that, under the National Labor Relations Act, the NLRB must maintain a membership of at least three to exercise authority delegated to it by the full board.  At The Hill, Kevin Bogardus reports that the AFL-CIO has indicated that it is “extremely disappointed” by the ruling.  Kevin Russell posted early coverage of the decision today on SCOTUSblog, and Kimberly Harding recapped the case this evening.  And at the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh remarks on the breakdown and language of the opinion.

The Court also handed down its opinion this morning in Dillon v. United States, limiting the scope of its 2005 ruling in United States v. Booker.  The ruling is covered by CrimProf Blog, Courthouse News Service and Sentencing Law and Policy.  A fifth ruling, Schwab v. Reilly – which concerns estate trustees’ objections to exemptions in bankruptcy – was not covered as extensively, but will be recapped in the coming days on SCOTUSblog.