Monday round-up
on Jan 27, 2014 at 8:49 am
On Friday afternoon, the Court issued its much-anticipated order in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius, giving the nuns at least a temporary victory in their efforts to avoid filing a government form to be exempt from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that they provide their female employees with health insurance that includes access to birth control. Lyle Denniston reported on the latest developments for this blog; other coverage and commentary come from Rick Hasen, who suggests at his Election Law Blog that “what looks like a victory against having to do a symbolic act may really be a defeat in having to do the nearly identical symbolic act”; from Michael Dorf at Dorf on Law, who contends that “it is hard not to read the order as reflecting at least some view on the merits”; and from Leland E. Beck at Federal Regulations Advisor, who similarly observes that the Court’s order “effectively cautions the lower courts that the issue presented by the regulations is problematic; even though SCOTUS warns that the procedural order should not be read as an indication of the Court’s view on the substantive issues.”
Briefly:
- Reporting on last week’s oral arguments in Paroline v. United States, in which the Court is considering the issue of restitution for victims of child pornography, Jeremy P. Jacobs of Greenwire focuses on a possible solution proposed by the federal government – allocating restitution using a “framework . . . similar to how the costs of hazardous waste cleanups may be broken up among responsible parties who either contributed to the contamination or owned the site at different times.”
- UPI’s Michael Kirkland breaks down Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, in which the Court will be considering issues relating to the constitutionality of the warrantless search of the contents of an arrestee’s cellphone.
[Disclosure: Kevin Russell of Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel to the petitioner in Riley, but the firm will not be involved in the proceedings on the merits.]
Bring out your links! Over the summer, we changed our system and now depend on our readers to submit links for possible inclusion in the daily round-up. If you have (or have read) a story or blog post about the Court, published in the last few days, that you would like us to consider, please send a link to roundup@scotusblog.com. Thank you!
