Tuesday round-up
on Mar 4, 2014 at 7:39 am
Yesterday, when most of the federal government was shut down, the Justices braved the snow and ice to get to One First Street, N.E., where the morning began with orders from their February 28 Conference. In the wake of last week’s release of unauthorized videos taken while the Court was in session, members of the gallery (including reporters) found themselves subject to heightened screening measures before entering the Courtroom; Mark Walsh reports on those changes for this blog.
On the order list, the Court granted certiorari in five cases and called for the views of the Solicitor General in one more. Lyle Denniston covered Monday’s orders for this blog. Coverage of, and commentary on, yesterday’s grant in Holt v. Hobbs, in which an inmate is challenging a prison’s ban on beards, comes from Ruthann Robson at the Constitutional Law Prof Blog, while Kent Scheidegger also discusses the grant at Crime and Consequences. Writing for Education Week’s School Law blog, Mark Walsh covered the Court’s denial of certiorari in three cases: one involves a German family that is seeking asylum here because it says it will be persecuted in Germany for home-schooling; at issue in the other cases is whether school districts in California must provide transcription services to students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
The Court also heard oral arguments in Hall v. Florida, the challenge to Florida’s scheme for determining whether an inmate is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. Lyle Denniston covered the oral argument for this blog; other coverage comes from Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal. At Education Week’s School Law blog, Mark Walsh focuses on the discussion of IQ testing yesterday, while Kent Scheidegger takes a similar tack at Crime and Consequences.
Briefly:
- At Concurring Opinions, this blog’s Ronald K.L. Collins discusses the First Amendment and the Court with Laurence Tribe.
- At Fortune, Roger Parloff previews tomorrow’s oral argument in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, which he describes as the “biggest business case of the term.”
- At Constitutional Law Prof Blog, Ruthann Robson notes that judges in several lower courts have relied on Justice Scalia’s dissent in United States v. Windsor, in which the majority struck down a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, to strike down state bans on same-sex marriage. (Robson discusses the issue in more detail in a post here.)
- Richard Wolf of USA Today previews April’s argument in CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, in which the Court will consider whether North Carolina’s ten-year statute of repose precludes lawsuits by property owners who bought contaminated land; the outcome, he observes, will affect lawsuits against the federal government by veterans who were injured by contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.
[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondent in Halliburton.]
