Monday round-up

AMY HOWE JUN 27, 2016 5:56 AM

Today the Justices are expected to convene to release rulings in the three cases remaining on their merits docket for the Term.  Lydia Wheeler of The Hill reports on the looming end of the Term, suggesting that a “short-handed Supreme Court is limping to the finish line.”  Robert Barnes does the same for The Washington Post, observing that today “will end a strange and ill-fated term, dominated by the February death of Justice Antonin Scalia.”  William Mears of Fox News looks ahead to the decision, expected today, in the challenge to Texas’s abortion regulations; he notes that the ruling “could ripple across other states and in Washington.”

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Court’s decision striking down state bans on same-sex marriage.  At USA Today, Richard Wolf reports on the effect that the decision has had on other liberal causes, including the immigration and abortion battles at the Court this Term.  Justice Watch considers what might have happened if the case had been set for this Term instead, arguing that “gay and lesbian Americans could have been subject to the same fate that many others have faced this term: indecision and delay.”

Coverage of last week’s decision in Birchfield v. North Dakota, in which the Court held that the Constitution allows warrantless breath tests – but not warrantless blood tests – of suspected drunk drivers, comes from Stephen Montemayor for the StarTribune; commentary comes from Kenneth Jost, who at Jost on Justice interprets the ruling and last week’s decision in Utah v. Strieff as “two significant wins for police from the Supreme Court last week and two setbacks for the Fourth Amendment and individual privacy”; Kym Stapleton, who at Crime and Consequences describes the decision as “a win for both law enforcement and law abiding citizens”; and Lisa Soronen at Appellate Practice Blog.

Briefly:

• NPR’s Nina Totenberg interviews outgoing Solicitor General Don Verrilli about his time as the government’s top lawyer at the Court.
• In her column for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse weighs in on the four-four tie in United States v. Texas, the challenge to the Obama administration’s deferred-action policy for certain undocumented immigrants, arguing that the unsigned order affirming the lower courts is “devastating for the Roberts court.”
• NPR’s Nina Totenberg also reports on last Thursday’s decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, holding that the race-conscious admissions policy in use when Abigail Fisher applied (unsuccessfully) to the university does not violate the Constitution.

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