Friday round-up

Yesterday, the challengers in Department of Commerce v. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a dispute over discovery in a challenge to the government’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census, asked the justices to dismiss the case, arguing that a district court decision earlier this week that barred the government from adding the question has rendered the Supreme Court case moot. Amy Howe has this blog’s coverage, which first appeared at Howe on the Court. Additional coverage comes from Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung at Reuters.

This blog’s analysis of Wednesday’s reargument 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 federal takings claims under the Constitution, comes from Miriam Siefter. Ilya Somin unpacks the argument at Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, concluding that “a wide range of outcomes are still possible, and it is by no means clear which side [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh will ultimately come down on.”

Briefly:

• At E&E News, Pamela King reports that “[l]egal fights over the expansion of natural gas pipelines across the East Coast are starting to make their way to the Supreme Court”; she highlights “three petitions that have reached the country’s most powerful bench” and notes that “[m]ore are expected.”
• Tony Mauro reports at The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required) that “[t]wo decisions on arbitration by the two newest U.S. Supreme Court justices handed down within a week of each other recently have given legal writing expert Ross Guberman a fresh chance to compare the writing skills of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. His verdict: ‘a wash.’”
• At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman analyzes recent instances in which a liberal Supreme Court justice has been replaced by a much more conservative successor.
• In the latest episode of the Heritage Foundation’s SCOTUS 101 podcast, “Jason Snead joins Elizabeth Slattery to talk about the snurlough (snow day + furlough), the return of #GorsuchStyle, and creative ideas for funding SCOTUS during the government shutdown.”

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