Tuesday round-up
on Dec 13, 2011 at 9:26 am
Yesterday the Court (with Justice Kagan recused) granted cert. in Arizona v. United States, in which the state has asked it to overturn the lower courts’ decisions blocking enforcement of four provisions of its controversial immigration law, S.B. 1070. Lyle Denniston of this blog has coverage of the grant, as do Greg Stohr of Bloomberg, Joan Biskupic of USA Today, David Savage of the Los Angeles Times, James Vicini of Reuters, Mike Sacks of the Huffington Post, Alia Beard Rau of the Arizona Republic, Ariane de Vogue of ABC News, and the Associated Press (video). The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room focuses on Justice Kagan’s recusal from the case, while several journalists – including Adam Liptak of the New York Times, Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor, Robert Barnes of the Washington Post, and Nina Totenberg of NPR — focused on the case’s potential effect on the upcoming presidential election, particularly when combined with the Court’s expected rulings on the health care and Texas redistricting cases.
The Court also granted three other petitions. Two of those, Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band v. Patchak and Salazar v. Patchak, were consolidated for one hour of oral argument; at issue in the cases is whether private citizens or groups may sue to enjoin the federal government from purchasing lands for use by Native American tribes. The Associated Press, Courthouse News Service, and the Grand Rapids Press all have coverage of the grants. In the third case, RadLAX Gateway Hotel v. Amalgamated Bank, the Justices will review the practice of credit-bidding, in which lenders bid to reclaim collateral when a bankruptcy court puts up a loan for sale. Courthouse News Service has more details on the case.
The Court also invited the Solicitor General to file briefs expressing the views of the United States in three cases, two of which present similar issues. In Corboy v. Louie, the Court has asked the federal government to weigh in on the constitutionality of Hawaiian laws providing tax exemptions for those classified as “native peoples,” while the issue in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center and Georgia-Pacific West v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center is whether timber companies must acquire federal permits before channeling runoff from logging roads into nearby rivers. Lawrence Hurley of Greenwire has coverage of the latter two cases, from which Justice Breyer is recused.
To round out an eventful day, the Court also released its second opinion of the Term in an argued case. In Judulang v. Holder, the Court (in an opinion by Justice Kagan) unanimously held that the policy used by the Board of Immigration Appeals to determine whether a resident alien may seek relief from deportation under a repealed immigration law is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act. Courthouse News Service, JURIST, and UPI all have coverage of the decision. The Court also issued a per curiam opinion in Hardy v. Cross, finding that a lower court’s ruling overturning an Illinois state court was inconsistent with the deference to state courts required by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
Briefly:
