This morning, the justices will hear oral argument in two cases. First up is Washington State Department of Licensing v. Cougar Den Inc., which asks whether an 1855 treaty created a right for members of an Indian tribe to avoid taxes on off-reservation commercial activities that involve travel on public highways. Bethany Berger previewed the case for this blog. Matt Farnum and Trevor O’Bryan have a preview for Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. At Greenwire (subscription required), Ellen Gilmer reports that this is “one of several cases the high court has accepted this term that wade into complex and contentious questions of American Indian law.” This morning’s second case is Garza v. Idaho, in which the justices will decide whether a criminal lawyer can refuse to file an appeal from a guilty plea because of a plea waiver. Evan Lee had this blog’s preview; Basem Besada and Luis Lozada preview the case for Cornell.
In Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., the justices considered yesterday whether a judge or an arbitrator should decide if a particular dispute should be resolved in arbitration rather than in court. At Law360 (subscription required), Bryan Koenig reports that the court’s “liberal minority dominated oral arguments … as they searched for possible off-ramps to arbitration proceedings like the one nixed by the Fifth Circuit after several dental equipment companies used a contractual clause to force a distributor’s antitrust case to arbitration.” Yesterday’s second case was Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela, which asks whether the Federal Arbitration Act precludes state-law interpretations of arbitration contracts that would allow class-wide arbitration. Adam Liptak reports for The New York Times that the court “seemed prepared … to rule that workers at a California business could not band together in an arbitration proceeding to seek compensation for what they said was their employer’s failure to protect their data.”
Yesterday the justices also issued orders from last Friday’s conference; as expected, they did not agree to review any additional cases, but they did ask for the views of the solicitor general in a patent case and a case involving a lawsuit arising from a cross-border shooting by a Border Patrol agent. Amy Howe covers the order list for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court.
For the ABA Journal, Mark Walsh previews Frank v. Gaos, a challenge to the “use of a particular type of remedy in class actions known as cy pres,” which “emerged in the 1970s as a solution to class actions with large and diffuse memberships for whom individual cash awards might be paltry,” and which “typically involve contributions to charities or nonprofit organizations that advance the goals pursued in the class action.” For USA Today, Richard Wolf reports that if the challengers to the cy pres practice prevail, “[t]he justices aren’t likely to go beyond setting broad standards for lower court judges to follow.”
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