Thursday round-up

At Lambda Legal, Gregory Nevins details the litigation strategy that led to three upcoming Supreme Court cases that ask whether federal law protects employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In an op-ed for The Detroit News, John Bursch argues that if the employee prevails in the gender-identity case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the outcome “would punish Harris Funeral Homes and other businesses for relying on the law as it is written[, a]nd the court would create unfair situations for women in the workplace, in athletics, and even in places like women’s shelters that serve abuse victims.”  [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.]

Briefly:

• At Howe on the Court, Amy Howe reports that yesterday evening the “Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution of Robert Sparks, who [was] sentenced to die by lethal injection in Texas for the brutal triple murder of his wife and two stepsons”; there were “no recorded dissents from [the court’s] order.”
• Benjamin Oreskes reports for the Los Angeles Times that “[a]s California and other states in the West continue to wrestle with an explosion of homelessness, a growing number of local governments have set their sights on a court decision that has allowed people to legally bed down on sidewalks overnight”; a pending cert petition in City of Boise, Idaho v. Martin asks the Supreme Court to overturn that decision.
• Jess Bravin reports for The Wall Street Journal that “Chief Justice John Roberts rejected criticism of the Supreme Court as a political body” in recent public remarks, “pointing to disagreements between President Trump’s two appointees as evidence that the justices do not always toe a party line.”
• In an op-ed for The Hill, Oliver Dunford urges the justices to review a challenge to the affordable-housing fees charged by Marin County, California, as a condition for approving a permit to subdivide a residential lot.

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