Court-related coverage and commentary are dominated by Friday’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage and the recognition thereof. Andrew Hamm rounded up early coverage of the decision for this blog; other coverage comes from NPR’s Nina Totenberg for All Things Considered, who also had a story with Mara Liasson and a video; from Steven Mazie at The Economist’s Democracy in America Blog; from Chantal Valery and Robert Macpherson for Agence France-Presse (via Yahoo! News); and from Michael Bobelian of Forbes. Still more coverage comes from Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle, who in The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required) report that the decision “was a major leap, but not the final legal step in ending discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.”
In an article for Agence France-Presse (via the South China Morning Post), Chantal Valery reports more broadly on how some of the Court’s recent decisions reflect a move to the left. And in an article for InterAksyon, Valery looks at Justice Anthony Kennedy’s role on the Court, while Lawrence Hurley of Reuters observes that the Court’s major rulings were also victories for big businesses. Writing for the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Tony Mauro discusses the relationship between the Justices in the face of strong dissents like last week’s, while in commentary for the New Republic David Gans explains why this year was a “term to remember” and at Slate’s Breakfast Table Judge Richard Posner suggests that “a chief justice has a greater personal interest in how he votes than the other justices.” And at FiveThirtyEight.com, Oliver Roeder contends that, notwithstanding its victories at the Court last week, the “administration has mostly struggled to win at the court.” In the New Republic, Andrew Koppelmann suggests that, beyond the Chief Justice’s dissent in the same-sex marriage case and his opinion for the Court on the Affordable Care Act, claims of judicial restraint are “hard to take.”
Commentary supporting the Court’s same-sex marriage decision comes from Susannah Pollvogt at Pollvogtarian; from Marci Hamilton at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights; from Jeff Fisher, Michael Wald, and Alex Twinem at the Stanford Lawyer; from Suzanne Goldberg at the Huffington Post; and from Jeremiah Ho at the Human Rights at Home Blog.
Commentary critical of the decision comes from Doug Wardlow at Fox News, Ken Connelly at CNN, Austin Nimocks at the Washington Examiner, Caleb Dalton at CNS News, and Jim Campbell at USA Today.
Still more commentary comes from Kenneth Jost at Jost on Justice; from Adam Winkler at the Huffington Post; at PrawfsBlawg, where posts come from Richard Re, Howard Wasserman (who has four posts on the decision and how it is being implemented), Paul Horwitz, Rick Hills, and Hadar Aviram; from Karl Laird at the Oxford Human Rights Hub; at the Human Rights at Home Blog from Noah Novogrodsky; and from John Culhane for POLITICO. At McSweeney’s, Daniela Lapidous captures Friday’s decision in haiku.
The Court also issued its decision in Johnson v. United States, holding that the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act is unconstitutionally vague. Commentary comes from Richard Re and Hadar Aviram at PrawfsBlawg, and from Noah Feldman at Bloomberg View.
Other coverage and commentary focus on Thursday’s decision in King v. Burwell, in which the Court agreed with the Obama administration that tax subsidies are available under the Affordable Care Act for everyone who purchases health insurance on an exchange, regardless whether the exchange was created by the federal government or a state. Coverage comes from Ari Melber at MSNBC and David Savage for the Los Angeles Times. Commentary comes from Damon Root at Reason.com; from Lisa Heinzerling, who at ACSblog discusses the implications of the decision for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules; from Lisa Soronen at the NCSL Blog, from LeRoy Goldman in the Asheville Citizen-Times, from Ilya Shapiro at CNN and Time, from Jody Freeman at Harvard’s Environmental Law Program, from Simon Lazarus in the New Republic; and from Jonathan Cohn at the Huffington Post.
Commentary on last week’s decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, in which the Court held that the Fair Housing Act allows claims based on disparate impact – that is, an allegation that a law or policy has a discriminatory effect, even if it wasn’t intended to discriminate, comes from Seth Davis at PrawfsBlawg, from Lisa Soronen at the Appellate Practice Blog, and from Michelle Wilde Anderson at the Stanford Lawyer.
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