Wednesday round-up
on May 1, 2019 at 6:44 am
Ellen Gilmer reports at E&E News that “[t]he biggest environmental case on the Supreme Court’s docket in years,” County of Maui, Hawaii v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, which asks whether the Clean Water Act covers pollution that moves through groundwater before reaching a federal waterway, ”might not happen after all,” because the environmental groups have offered to settle the case. At Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, Jonathan Adler writes that “[t]he existence of other cases addressing this question means that, in all likelihood, it would only be a matter of time before the groundwater-conduit question returns to the Court.”
Briefly:
- At Forbes, Tommy Tobin reports that during last week’s oral argument in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, “the Court wrestled with the disclosure of retailer data in the nation’s food stamp program,” and that “[t]he decision … may change the legal standards governing disclosure of confidential commercial information” under the Freedom of Information Act.
- In the latest episode of the Heritage Foundation’s SCOTUS 101 podcast, “Elizabeth Slattery briefly hits this week’s SCOTUS headlines.”
- At EnergyWire (subscription required), Pamela King reports on Monday’s decision in Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority, in which the Supreme Court “ordered a lower court to take a second look at its finding that a government-owned utility cannot be sued for injuries caused by power line maintenance.”
- At The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Steven Mazie looks at three new cases that ask whether federal law protects employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender identity, noting that although “[t]he main strike against the plaintiffs in these three cases is obvious: none of the lawmakers in Congress in 1964 believed they were barring LGBT discrimination when they included ‘sex’ among the prohibited bases of differential treatment in the workplace,” “that is not the end of the story, even—perhaps especially—for conservative justices who purport to be textualists.”
- Mazie also visits The Economist’s The Intelligence podcast to discuss Iancu v. Brunetti, in which the “Supreme Court is deciding whether to ensure trademark protection for businesses with some pretty racy names.”
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