Friday round-up
on Jan 26, 2018 at 10:14 am
Redistricting challenges continue to come before the Supreme Court. Yesterday Pennsylvania asked the Supreme Court to step in and block temporarily a ruling by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania striking down the state’s federal congressional map. With commentary at the Lock Law Blog, Ryan Lockman argues that “there is a minimal chance that [the state] will convince Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy and the three remaining conservatives to encroach on state sovereignty in such a fashion, particularly when the main authority on which their argument is based is Bush v. Gore.” Also yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts asked challengers to North Carolina’s state legislative maps to respond by February 2 to the request by North Carolina Republicans to stay a decision by a three-judge federal court invalidating those maps. A brief overview of the case comes from Steven Mazie for The Economist’s Espresso blog.
Briefly:
- The editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel expresses its support for Fane Lozman, whose First Amendment retaliatory-arrest claim is the subject of oral argument in Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach next month.
- In the latest episode of the Heritage Foundation’s SCOTUS 101 podcast, Elizabeth Slattery and Tiffany Bates talk with Adam Feldman, the founder of Empirical SCOTUS, and play “Judge or Just Made Up” – “can you spot the fake judges?”
- For National Review’s Bench Memos, Ed Whelan suggests that Monday’s unanimous decision in District of Columbia v. Wesby, in which the court held that police officers sued for false arrest after arresting partygoers in an abandoned house had probable cause for the arrests and were entitled to immunity from the lawsuit, reflects negatively on Judge Nina Pillard, who wrote the panel opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
- Counting to 5 (podcast) posts new four new episodes on the court’s opinions in National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense, District of Columbia v. Wesby and Artis v. District of Columbia, and on the court’s recent grants. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, was among the counsel to the respondents in NAM v. DOD.]
