Tuesday round-up
on Aug 29, 2017 at 10:56 am
Petitions before the justices for their October Term 2017 docket continue to generate coverage. At Education Week’s School Law Blog, Mark Walsh reports that a Wisconsin school district has asked the court to review a decision that requires officials to allow a transgender student to use the restroom corresponding with his gender identity under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. For National Review’s Bench Memos, Ed Whelan reports that the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty – through an amicus brief filed in Arlene’s Flowers, Inc. v. Washington, in which a floral-design artist is asking the Supreme Court to decide whether the compelled creation and sale of custom floral arrangements violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment – has encouraged the court to hear the case in tandem with Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court has already agreed to decide a similar question involving a cake artist. In an op-ed for National Review, Reed Hopper and Mark Miller argue that, “to preserve a healthy habitat for property rights, the rule of law, and fundamental common sense in environmental policy,” the Supreme Court should decide to hear Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Fish and Wildlife Service, a petition asking the court to review land-use restrictions imposed by the FWS over territory an endangered species of frog does not currently inhabit. And at the Cato Institute’s Cato at Liberty blog, Ilya Shapiro discusses the institute’s amicus brief in Tyler v. United States, in which a defendant is asking the court to consider the dual-sovereignty exception to the double jeopardy clause of the Constitution that allows state and federal governments to prosecute an individual for the same action.
Briefly:
- In a feature for the New York Times Magazine, Emily Bazelon explores the redistricting standards at issue in Gill v. Whitford, a partisan-gerrymandering challenge to Wisconsin’s electoral districts that “is likely to shape American politics for years and perhaps decades to come.”
- In the New York Times, Adam Liptak reports the Trump administration, which has switched positions in two pending Supreme Court cases, “may be headed for trouble in the Supreme Court” because “such legal U-turns can try the justices’ patience.”
