Thursday round-up

Richard Wolf reports for USA Today that “[a] federal judge in New York refused Wednesday to let a late challenge to the Trump administration’s planned 2020 census question on citizenship interfere with the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision.” At Take Care, Leah Litman writes that “[t]he recent revelation that a long-time Republican redistricting specialist played a hand in the Trump administration’s addition of the citizenship question … has clear implications for Department of Commerce v. New York, the Supreme Court case challenging the addition of the citizenship question,” as well as “for another, equally important Supreme Court case—Rucho v. Common Cause, which will determine whether federal courts can hear partisan gerrymandering claims.” Also at Take Care, Joel Dodge points to “worrying signs that the current Court is ready to swallow bad-faith justifications” for facially neutral government actions like the addition of the citizenship question. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse wonders “[w]hy [it] is … assumed on the right that Chief Justice Roberts is the only conservative on the court who has its welfare in view and who worries about the loss of public confidence if the justices come to be seen as mere politicians in robes.”

Briefly:

• At SCOTUS OA, Maveric Searle analyzes the court’s early rulings from this term to determine which justice is the “new median,” after the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy last summer, suggesting that Chief Justice John Roberts is likely to occupy that role.
• Bloomberg Law’s Cases and Controversies podcast recaps the “four new opinions in argued cases [issued on] June 3, including yet another 5-4 decision with a nontraditional lineup.”
• At Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle highlight a new law review article that offers a “thought-provoking exploration of how the digital age has created new ways to influence the Supreme Court in its decision-making.”
• At the Brennan Center for Justice, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy notes that “[a] few weeks ago, the Supreme Court delivered a surprising rebuke to those who think corporations just don’t have enough influence on U.S. elections[:] In declining to hear the case of 1A Auto, Inc. vs. Sullivan,the court essentially guaranteed that corporations will be sidelined for at least the next election cycle.”
• In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Jason Riley looks at Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence last week in Indiana abortion case Box v. Planned Parenthood, in which the court “declined to consider the constitutionality of laws that prohibit what [Thomas] termed ‘eugenic’ abortions”; Riley notes that “[t]his isn’t the first time Justice Thomas has used a concurrence or a dissent to lay out the relevant racial history of a case[, a]nd whenever he does so it’s a public service.”

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