Monday round-up

AMY HOWE AUG 19, 2013 7:37 AM

With the Court scheduled to hear oral arguments this Term in Town of Greece v. Galloway, in which it will consider the constitutionality of legislative prayer, Kurt Lash focuses at PrawfsBlawg on the interpretation of the Establishment Clause and suggests that that the Court’s 1983 decision in Marsh v. Chambers (upholding the Nebraska legislature’s practice of having each legislative session open with a prayer led by a state-paid chaplain) “got it exactly backwards.  We should not look to the original Founding to determine the content of Reconstruction liberty; we should look to the meaning of Reconstruction liberty to determine the content of the readopted Bill of Rights.”   Also at PrawfsBlawg, Paul Horowitz commends last week’s Slate post on Town of Greece by Christopher Lund; Horowitz adds that “although I think Marsh is wrong as a matter of sound constitutional law, I would be willing to let sleeping dogs lie.” 

Briefly:

• At The Wall Street Journal, Jess Bravin reports on a “new front in the struggle over same-sex marriage”:  an effort by a District of Columbia man to be recognized as the common-law husband of his late partner, who died in February. 
• In the wake of last Term’s decision in Comcast v. Behrend, holding that the Third Circuit had improperly certified a class of cable-television subscribers who sought damages for alleged antitrust violations, the Second Circuit has now agreed to hear a challenge – based on the Comcast decision — to a district court’s denial of class certification to a group of Applebee’s workers seeking unpaid wages.  Public Citizen, which represents the employees, reports on the story.

[Disclosure:  Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel to the respondents in Comcast.  However, the author of this post is no longer affiliated with the firm.]

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