Thursday round-up

By Kiran Bhat
on Sep 29, 2011 at 10:46 am

Yesterday’s health-care-related filings were the big news at the Court.  The federal government filed a petition for certiorari seeking review of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision holding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate unconstitutional, as well as a response to the petition for certiorari seeking review of the Sixth Circuit’s decision rejecting a facial challenge to the individual mandate. Meanwhile, a group of twenty-six states filed a separate petition for certiorari seeking review of the portion of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision declining to invalidate provisions of the Affordable Care Act beyond the individual mandate; a separate group of plaintiffs (including the National Federation of Independent Business) also filed a similar petition.

Greg Stohr of Bloomberg has coverage of yesterday’s filings, as do Joan Biskupic of USA Today, James Vicini of Reuters, Mark Sherman of the Associated Press, Robert Barnes of the Washington Post, Ashby Jones of the WSJ Law Blog, Adam Liptak of the New York Times, David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times, James Oliphant of the Chicago Tribune, and Bill Mears of CNN. Lyle Denniston of this blog (also here) and Steven D. Schwinn of the Constitutional Law Prof Blog describe the petitions in detail, while Time Magazine’s Swampland blog and NPR’s It’s All Politics blog explore the political ramifications of a health care decision by the Court in the midst of the 2012 presidential elections.

Previews of upcoming cases continue to roll in. Writing at ACSblog, Rochelle Bobroff previews Monday’s arguments in Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, which she characterizes as presenting the question “whether people with limited income and resources can sue states that enact laws which conflict with federal Medicaid requirements, the same way businesses sue states to challenge state consumer protection laws.” Lyle also previews Douglas for SCOTUSblog.

Writing for The CQ Researcher Blog, Kenneth Jost previews several of this Term’s high-profile cases and petitions. Debra Cassens Weiss of the ABA Journal reports on Holder v. Gutierrez and Holder v. Sawyers, the immigration cases in which the Court granted cert. on Monday; Weiss also covers another one of Monday’s grants, Filarsky v. Delia, a case about immunity from lawsuits for private lawyers.

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens continues to make news. George Stephanopoulos of ABC News reports on his interview with the Justice, who told Stephanopoulos that he regrets his vote to reinstate the death penalty in the 1976 case Jurek v. Texas. Jim Harger of the Grand Rapids Press reports on comments made by the daughter of the late President Gerald Ford, who says that Ford nominated Stevens “because of his character and integrity, not his politics.”

Briefly:

• Justice Breyer spoke with WNYC yesterday about his book Making Our Democracy Work. (Hat tip to Howard Bashman of How Appealing for the link.)
• In the second installment of a three-part preview of the upcoming Term, Andrew Cohen of the Atlantic looks back at the Justices’ summer vacations.
• Bruce Alpert of the New Orleans Times-Picayune explains how the “controversial 2006 raid on former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson’s congressional office may get a belated review” by the Court.
• Writing at Forbes, Jane Levere reports on remarks by (among others) Justice Sonia Sotomayor at a “commemorative tribute co-produced by the New York Chamber Music Festival and Symphony Space.”
• Yesterday, the Heritage Foundation hosted a preview of the upcoming Term with Paul Clement and Kannon Shanmugam.