Thursday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Jun 18, 2015 at 7:08 am

With people around the country and the world watching the Court closely, some coverage of the Court focuses on the Justices themselves.  Writing for the BBC News Magazine, Taylor Kate Brown has short profile of each of the nine Justices, while Terence Jeffrey reports for CNS News that “the court’s nine current justices will have an average age of 75 by the time the next presidential term ends on Jan. 20, 2021.”

In The New Yorker, Richard Socarides looks ahead to the Court’s eventual decision in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage and concludes that, “[w]hen the court rules, there will likely be some celebrating, as there should be. But what does it feel like to have changed the world? We will have to wait and see what happens next.”  In USA Today, Richard Wolf profiles Evan Wolfson, “the godfather of the same-sex marriage movement,” and reports that the Court “is likely to put Evan Wolfson out of work in the next two weeks, and he couldn’t be happier.” And at the Keen News Service, Lisa Keen reports that, even if the challengers prevail, lawyers for LGBT groups and activists may be back in court soon, if states attempt to avoid issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times weighs in on Kerry v. Din, in which a majority of the Court vacated the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that a U.S. citizen whose spouse’s application for a visa was denied has a right to judicial review of the denial.  It contends that “the court’s decision was the correct one, but even if such notice isn’t constitutionally required, the department and, if necessary, Congress should require more transparency in the visa process.”  And at Immigration Law Prof Blog, Carrie Rosenbaum continues the online symposium on the decision, which she describes as “troubling.”

Briefly:

• At The Economist’s Democracy in America Blog, Steven Mazie discusses various challenges to state restrictions on abortion and observes that, with its order on Monday letting stand a lower-court ruling that blocked North Carolina’s ultrasound from going into effect, “the Supreme Court has effectively foreclosed ultrasound laws requiring doctor explanations in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. But for now, 21 ultrasound lawsin states under the jurisdiction of one of the other 12 federal circuit courts are safe.”
• Robert Pear of The New York Times talks to David King, the lead plaintiff in the challenge to the availability of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act; King tells Pear that he believes the challengers have “a good chance of winning” but, in any event, “he has access to medical care through the Department of Veterans Affairs” because he is a Vietnam veteran.

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