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Thursday round-up

Yesterday the Court heard oral arguments in the challenge by former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell to his fraud convictions.  Molly Runkle rounded up early coverage for this blog, which included Lyle Denniston’s report for us.  I covered the oral argument for my own blog, with other coverage coming from NPR’s Nina Totenberg.

On Tuesday, the Court issued its decision in Heffernan v. City of Paterson, holding that, when an employer demotes an employee out of a desire to prevent the employee from engaging in protected political activity, the employee can challenge that demotion even if the employer’s actions are based on a factual mistake about the employee’s behavior.  Coverage comes from NorthJersey.com, with commentary from Lisa Soronen at Appellate Practice Blog.

Briefly:

  • At Hamilton and Griffin on Rights, Jeffrey Stempel analyzes the Court’s recent ruling in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt; he notes that the case “presents yet another area of law where the manner of filling the Scalia vacancy will obviously have an impact absent other personnel changes at the Court.”
  • At Medium, David Leopold considers what a four-four tie in United States v. Texas, the challenge to the Obama administration’s deferred-action policy for some undocumented immigrants, might mean for the injunction blocking the implementation of the policy nationwide.
  • In the Tallahassee Democrat, Brandon Larrabee reports that Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Florida) “appealed to the nation’s highest court in an effort to unwind a plan to rotate her district from a north-south orientation that includes her power bases of Jacksonville and Orlando to an east-west seat that stretches from Jacksonville to Gadsden County, carving up Tallahassee along the way.”
  • In Daily Business Review (subscription or registration required), Noreen Marcus reports that Fane Lozman, who prevailed at the Supreme Court in his dispute with a Florida marina three years ago, “is seeking reimbursement for his home and a new trial in a false arrest case.”
  • At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman looks at the citation of law review articles by the Court in its recent Terms.

Remember, we rely exclusively on our readers to send us links for our 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.

 [Disclosure:  Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel for the respondents in Heffernan.  However, I am not affiliated with the firm.]

Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Thursday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Apr. 28, 2016, 6:37 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/thursday-round-up-321/