Monday round-up
Coverage of last week’s grants in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, the challenges to the contraceptive mandate imposed under the Affordable Care Act, continues, with a report from Michael Kirkland of UPI; at Dorf on Law, Mike Dorf looks at whether the ACA partially repealed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and concludes that the answer is “no. Congress could have partially repealed RFRA in the ACA. Congress also could have delegated to HHS (or some other agency) the power to partially repeal RFRA. But it appears to have done neither, and so the Supreme Court will need to construe RFRA in Hobby Lobby.”
Briefly:
- In The Washington Post, Robert Barnes discusses this Term’s merits docket and the possible reasons why that docket has “the potential of a historic low.”
- Tal Kopan of Politico reports on several cases involving the intersection of privacy and technology that are slated for consideration at the Justices’ upcoming Conferences, as well as the broader issue of courts in the digital era.
- At the travel and aviation blog View from the Wing, Eric Fraser previews Tuesday’s oral argument in Northwest, Inc. v. Ginsberg, in which the Justices will consider whether the federal Airline Deregulation Act preempts a lawsuit by a frequent flier whom the airline kicked out of the program.
- At Jost on Justice, Ken Jost discusses the Court’s recent denial of certiorari (and Justice Sotomayor’s dissent from that denial) in Woodward v. Alabama, a challenge to the state’s practice of allowing judges to override a jury’s decision not to impose the death penalty. He suggests that Sotomayor’s dissent “laid out a strong case that Alabama’s lightning-strike death penalty system deserves ‘a fresh look.’”
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