Tuesday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Jan 7, 2014 at 9:52 am

Yesterday’s coverage of the Court focused heavily on the Court’s order granting Utah’s request to stay a federal trial judge’s decision striking down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage.  Lyle Denniston covered the order for this blog; other coverage comes from Adam Liptak of The New York Times, Rebecca Shabad of The Hill, and Robert Barnes of The Washington Post.  In a post at Dorf on Law, Michael Dorf discusses an important question left open by the Court’s order – whether the nine-hundred-plus same-sex marriages that took place in Utah in late December and early January are valid – while at his Election Law Blog Rick Hasen predicts that “we should expect within the next year or two for the Supreme Court to issue a ruling on the merits of constitutionality of a ban on same sex marriage.  Not decades, but probably a year or two.”  And at the First Casualty blog, Victoria Kwan charts the process by which a request for a stay moves through the federal courts to the Supreme Court. 

Briefly:

• In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Floyd Abrams previews this month’s oral arguments in McCullen v. Coakley, a challenge to a Massachusetts law that creates a buffer zone outside abortion clinics, and argues that the case is “simply one of many . . . in which the First Amendment should be read to protect speech with which we happen to disagree.”
• In his column for The Atlantic, Garrett Epps looks ahead at the rest of the October Term 2014 and predicts that we could see “flames aplenty” this month.
• At Education Week’s School Law blog, Mark Walsh reports on the cert. amicus briefs filed recently by four major education groups, who are urging the Court to grant review of, and ultimately overrule, a decision by the Third Circuit upholding the right of students to wear breast-cancer awareness bracelets – bearing the phrase “I [heart] Boobies” – to school.
• At the Mirror of Justice blog, Kevin Walsh discusses the form at the heart of the legal proceedings pitting the federal government against the Little Sisters of the Poor, who object to having to sign a form that authorizes a third party to provide access to birth control to the group’s employees.  (Lyle summarized the state of play in those proceedings for this blog.)
• At ACSblog, Deborah Roy discusses the legacy of Justice William Brennan – also the topic of her new book.