Wednesday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Feb 11, 2015 at 7:53 am

Coverage of and commentary related to the Court continue to focus on King v. Burwell, the challenge to the availability of tax subsidies for individuals who purchase health insurance on an exchange created by the federal government.  At Talking Points Memo, Sahil Kapur reports that, “[o]f the many pro-Obamacare arguments that government lawyers are making to save the law from the Supreme Court, one stands out as particularly tailored to winning the crucial vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy”:  federalism.  At the Constitutional Accountability Center’s Text and History Blog, Joey Meyer and Brianne Gorod argue that, “as oral argument rapidly approaches, the case made by the ACA’s opponents is unraveling around them,” while a post at RedState discusses the possible remedies in the case.

Other commentary focuses on the immigration case Kerry v. Din, scheduled for oral argument later this month, in which the Court will consider whether a U.S. citizen can sue a consular officer over the denial of a visa to a spouse.  At Immigration Law Prof Blog, Timothy Dugdale urges the Court to treat the case “not as an individual case of a US citizen securing a visa for her alien spouse but rather as a historic reassessment of judicial review of consular decisions.”  And at the AILA Leadership Blog, William Stock looks at the practical side of the case, observing that currently “both the volume of visa applications and the difficulties of getting records of decisions from far-flung consular posts make meaningful judicial review impracticable.”

Briefly:

• At the International Municipal Lawyers Association’s Appellate Practice Blog, Lisa Soronen discusses the amicus brief that the State and Local Legal Center filed in EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch, arguing that a job applicant should be the one to ask the employer about the need for a religious accommodation.
• At the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog, Wen Fa looks back at Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project and argues that the “Fair Housing Act, even with the words ‘or otherwise make unavailable,’ unambiguously prohibits disparate treatment. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
• In the New Jersey Law Journal (subscription required), Steven Sanders considers how the Court should resolve the questions presented by Toca v. Louisiana, the recently dismissed case in which the Court had agreed to decide whether its ruling in Miller v. Alabama, prohibiting life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of murder, applies retroactively.

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