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Wednesday round-up

At TribLive, Brian Bowling looks at Monday’s cert grant in Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania, which asks whether the court should reconsider a precedent that requires property owners to exhaust state remedies before bringing takings claims in federal court, concluding that “if you think people should be able to sue governments in federal court for taking their property, root for Knick to win her appeal.” At Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, Ilya Somin weighs in on the case, arguing that the precedent, Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, “creates a double standard under which Takings Clause claims are denied access to federal court in situations where other constitutional rights claims would be allowed.”

At Constitution Daily, Scott Bomboy reviews last week’s argument in Lozman v. City of Riviera Beach, Florida, in which the justices will decide whether the existence of probable cause defeats a retaliatory-arrest claim, predicting that “Fane Lozman’s decade-long fight with Riviera Beach, Florida will likely go down in Supreme Court lore as a matter of persistence.” Jackie Augustine comments on the case in an op-ed at the Finger Lakes Times.

Briefly:

  • Subscript offers a graphic explainer for National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, a First Amendment challenge by crisis-pregnancy centers to a California law requiring disclosures about the availability of publicly funded family-planning services, including contraception and abortion.
  • At the Election Law Blog, Nicholas Stephanopoulos maintains that an amicus brief filed by Wisconsin in Benisek v. Lamone, a partisan-gerrymandering challenge by Republican voters to a congressional district in Maryland, “reflects a number of misconceptions that are worth correcting about thresholds in partisan gerrymandering litigation.”
  • At Capitol Media Services (via the Arizona Capitol Times), Howard Fischer reports that Arizona “Attorney General Mark Brnovich lashed out at the Trump administration for asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Arizona’s bid to deny driver’s licenses to ‘dreamers.’”
  • For the Los Angeles Times, Rosanna Xia reports that Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla “is now appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court over his right to shut out the public” from a path across his property to the beach, and that his challenge to the California Coastal Act, if successful, “would put into question long-established land use procedures and any state’s power to regulate development anywhere.”
  • At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern looks at Monday’s cert grant in Gundy v. United States, in which the justices will decide whether a provision of the federal sex-offender act violates the nondelegation doctrine; he notes that “several conservative justices have expressed an interest in reviving nondelegation principles,” which “could be used to strike down all manner of economic regulations.”

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Recommended Citation: Edith Roberts, Wednesday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Mar. 7, 2018, 6:45 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/03/wednesday-round-up-413/