Friday round-up

At The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, Steven Mazie writes that Wednesday’s ruling allowing the government to enforce a restrictive asylum policy pending appeal gave President Donald Trump “fodder for a triumphant tweet …  and a fresh reminder that the Supreme Court appears to increasingly be his reliable ally.” For The Washington Post, Robert Barnes notes that “Wednesday marked the second time since the court adjourned in late June that it approved an emergency request from the Trump administration to overrule a lower court on a border security issue.” The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal calls the ruling “a victory for a functioning judiciary and the rule of law, no matter who is President.” At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern argues that “[w]hat may be most surprising about Wednesday’s decision … is the court’s apparent rush to issue it.”

Briefly:

• At CNBC, Tucker Higgins reports that “Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday she is eager to get back to business, appearing vibrant at a Washington event weeks after completing treatment for cancer.”
• At CNN, Joan Biskupic reports that “Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote against President Donald Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, but only after changing his position behind the scenes.”
• In an op-ed for The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse explores some of the religion cases in the “queue of new appeals seeking the justices’ attention” and spotlights “an unusual dialogue emerging between the court’s most conservative justices and the religious right that has good reason to suppose that its moment is finally at hand.”
• At SSRN, Jonathan Harkavy summarizes and comments on October Term 2018’s labor- and employment-law decisions.
• At his eponymous blog, Ernie Haffner unpacks the Department of Justice’s argument in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in which the court will decide whether federal employment discrimination law bars discrimination against transgender people, that “if Title VII requires employers’ actions to be sex-blind, then sex-based dress codes and single-sex bathrooms are both unlawful.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of respondent Stephens in this case.]
• At Take Care, Kate Huddleston worries that Justices Samuel Alito’s and Neil Gorsuch’s opinions last term in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association, in which the court held that a large cross honoring World War I veterans on public land in Maryland does not the violate Constitution’s bar on establishing religion, “shift the Supreme Court’s decisions permitting prayer before state legislative sessions and town council meetings from the periphery of Establishment Clause jurisprudence to the core—seemingly allowing the exception for longstanding historical practice to swallow the rule by claiming that the exception has always been the rule.”

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