Friday round-up
On Wednesday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down a key provision of Texas’s voter ID law and sent the case back to the lower court, reducing the likelihood that the dispute will come to the U.S. Supreme Court soon. Coverage comes from Lyle Denniston at his eponymous blog. Rick Hasen has a “first take” at his Election Law Blog and more analysis at Slate, where he suggests that the ruling also contains “a road map for returning Texas’ voting rules to the supervision of the federal government.” And in another post, Hasen compares the Texas decision to a challenge to North Carolina’s voter ID law, arguing that, “if plaintiffs lose on the voter ID issue in NC it will look just like the win in Texas: a strict law in place, with a workaround that may or may not work well on the ground.”
Briefly:
- In Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Jamie Schuman reports that a start-up which connects private pilots with prospective passengers has asked the Court to review a decision by a federal appeals court upholding efforts by the federal government to regulate the company.
- In another post at Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Tony Mauro reports on recent comments by a former Supreme Court law clerk who was involved in the Court’s 1971 decision in favor of the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
- In a post at The National Law Journal (subscription or registration may be required), Mauro reports that the American Civil Liberties Union “announced Thursday that Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole will be the organization’s next national legal director.”
- In a second post for The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Mauro reports that, despite “the growing dominance of Washington-based lawyers at the Supreme Court lectern,” “a small handful of private-firm advocates still make the journey to Washington for Supreme Court arguments from offices outside the beltway.”
- At Balkinization, Marty Lederman has an update on recent developments in the lower courts in the wake of the Court’s decision remanding the challenges by religious non-profits and schools to the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control mandate.
- In the ABA Journal, Debra Cassens Weiss reports that an Alabama death-row inmate has asked the Justices “to decide whether federal courts may defer to an 89-page judicial opinion that was entirely ghostwritten by prosecutors.”
- In his column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Steve Sebelius argues that to “simply ignore” the nomination of Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court “and refuse to hold a vote is an utter failure to live up to the oath of office for senators, yet the Republican-controlled Senate has done just that.”
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.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY