Monday round-up

At this Fridays Conference, the Justices will consider petitions involving challenges to the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, which amended the California constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. The weekend’s coverage of the Court focuses on the upcoming Conference, as well as discussion of how the results of the election could affect the outcome of Shelby County v. Holder, the challenge to the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Lisa Leff of theAssociated Press, Andrea Stone of The Washington Post, Michael Kirkland ofUPI, David Savage of theLos Angeles Times, and Karen McVeigh of TheGuardianall preview the Court’s consideration of the DOMA and Prop. 8 petitions, while atBusiness Insider,Erin Fuchs reports on the debate among gay rights advocates on whether the Court should grant cert. now in the Prop. 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry.

Other coverage focuses onShelby County v. Holder.AtCNN, Jeffrey Toobin observes that “the president’s electionand re-electionmay be among the best arguments against the law.” Writing for theDaily Beast, Ben Jacobs points out that “becausethe major concerns about voter discrimination were in Ohio and Pennsylvania, not the former Confederacy, its unlikely that Roberts and the other conservatives on the court will continue to find exceptional conditions in the South that require this special scrutiny.” Finally, Robert Barnes of TheWashington Postdiscusses how the legal battles of the election will serve as a backdrop for the Court’s deliberations in bothShelby CountyandArizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., in which the Court will consider whether an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship for voter registration is preempted by federal voter registration laws.

Briefly:

• Terry Baynes ofReuterspreviews Mondays oral arguments inVance v. Ball State University, in which the Court will consider how to define “supervisor” for the purposes of a federal civil rights law that prohibits racial, religious, or sexual harassment in the workplace.
• The editorial board of theNew Jersey Star-Ledger weighs in onMaryland v. King, in which the Court recently granted cert. It urges the Court to permit states to collect DNA from people who are arrested and charged with serious crimes, arguing that “DNA is an investigative tool [that] has helped both to put criminals behind bars and exonerate the innocent.”
• The editorial board of TheNew York Timesargues that the Court’s decision last Term inMiller v. Alabama, prohibiting mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders, “set new expectations about American criminal justice,” and it criticizes states whose “governors and legislatures still operate within the tough-on-crime framework that led to the rise in the wrongheaded imposition of life without parole on so many juveniles in the first place, based on the bogus notion that they were ‘superpredators.'”