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Monday round-up

This morning at 10 a.m. the Court will hear oral arguments in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association (consolidated with Nickols v. Mortgage Bankers Association), in which it will consider whether an agency must engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking before it significantly changes an interpretive rule that articulates an interpretation of an agency regulation.  Brian Wolfman and Bradley Girard previewed the case for this blog.  Commentary on the case comes from Richard Samp at The WLF Legal Pulse, who focuses on the “unusually sharp” disagreements on administrative law between law professors and practicing attorneys reflected in the case.

In the second case this morning, Elonis v. United States, the Court will consider whether to uphold a Pennsylvania man’s criminal conviction for threatening statements made on Facebook.  Lyle Denniston previewed the case for this blog, while I did the same in Plain English.  Other coverage comes from Nina Totenberg of NPR and Richard Wolf of USA Today (via the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle), while Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal looks at not only Elonis but also the December sitting more generally. And in his column for The Atlantic, Garrett Epps tries to “clear up some confusion . . .  about what threats are and why they can be punished.”

Briefly:

  • In another article for The National Law Journal, Tony Mauro discusses the renewed interest in a 1958 decision in which the Court “ruled, on First Amendment grounds, that a Los Angeles-based magazine for gays was not obscene and should be delivered to subscribers by the U.S. Post Office like any other publication.”
  • With the Court once again scheduled to review a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, Sahil Kapur of Talking Points Memo suggests that Chief Justice John Roberts “again finds himself caught between the wishes of a movement that made him America’s most powerful judge, and the reputation of his institution which is being asked to cripple a sitting president’s signature law for the first time in nearly 80 years.”
  • In her column for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse discusses the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upholding state bans on same-sex marriage, and in particular the role of Judge Jeffrey Sutton – who in early October, she contends, “became the one person in the country with the power to make the question of same-sex marriage eligible, in the minds of the justices, for timely Supreme Court review.”
  • In USA Today, Richard Wolf previews Wednesday’s oral argument in Young v. UPS, in which the Court will consider whether the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires the company to provide its pregnant employees with the same kinds of accommodations it provides to other employees.

A friendly reminder:  We rely on our readers to send us links for the round-up.  If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, or op-ed relating to the Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion in the round-up, please send it to roundup [at] scotusblog.com.

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Monday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Dec. 1, 2014, 6:07 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2014/12/monday-round-up-236/