Thursday round-up

At Rewire.News, Imani Gandy remarks that in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, in which the justices upheld Ohio’s process for removing infrequent voters from the state’s voter rolls, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, which “draw[s] the connection between historical voter suppression and the pernicious effects of Ohio’s voter purge process,” is the only opinion “that puts into perspective just how much is at stake with the Court’s refusal to safeguard voting rights.” In an op-ed for The New York Times, Dale Ho writes that “it’s important to recognize that the court did not give a green light to states to make sweeping purges of eligible voters without first giving them notice and an opportunity to contest their removal.” Additional commentary comes from Bill Blum at The Progressive and Chiraag Bains in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

At Take Care, Robert Post examines “the status of [the cakeshop’s] freedom of speech claim after the Court’s opinion” in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court held that, because it did not exhibit religious neutrality, the commission violated the free-exercise rights of a baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. At National Review, Howard Slugh suggests that the decision “may have done adherents of minority faiths a great service in reminding governmental entities that they have ‘no role’ in determining the validity of their sincere beliefs.”

Briefly:

• At BuzzFeed News, Zoe Tillman reports that “[t]here is no open seat on the US Supreme Court right now, but the fight over the next vacancy is already underway,” and that “Demand Justice, a liberal nonprofit that opposes President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees, [is rolling] out a digital ad campaign [this week] targeting judges on Trump’s short list of potential Supreme Court nominees.”
• At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman “[m]easur[es] varying levels of complexity” in the Supreme Court’s opinions this term.
• At The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro notes that “[i]t is rare for a cert petition to include discs that will allow the justices to watch the video of a controversial criminal confession to police that is at the crux of the case before them,” as does the petition in Dassey v. Dittmann, filed by one of the subjects of the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in this case.]
• At Bloomberg Law, Jordan Rubin reports that “[a] death row inmate who says anti-gay bias tainted his sentence wants last term’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on racial bias in the jury room to save him”; the justices will consider the cert petition in Rhines v. South Dakota at their private conference today.

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