Tuesday round-up
For The Washington Post, Seung Min Kim reports that recent “revelations about the process” followed in investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing last year have “renewed a bitter debate about how his confirmation was handled, angering Democrats about a process they felt was rushed and animating Republicans who decried what they viewed as attempts to assassinate Kavanaugh’s character.” Commentary comes from Dahlia Lithwick at Slate and from the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.
Briefly:
- For The New York Times, Adam Liptak writes that, although “[t]he debate over the role politics plays in judging is mostly theoretical,” a pending cert petition “makes it concrete[:] It asks the justices to consider whether states may take account of the political affiliations of judges to try to achieve something like ideological balance on their courts.”
- At Bloomberg, Greg Stohr reports that Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, in which the court will decide whether federal whether federal law protects employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, “will tackle a central irony in the fight over gay rights[:] Even though the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, gay people can still be fired from their jobs in much of the country,” because “[l]ower courts are split on whether federal law permits anti-gay discrimination, and fewer than half of the states bar it through their own civil rights statutes.”
- At The Advocate (via How Appealing), Elizabeth Crisp reports that “[t]he battle over a Louisiana law that would require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at local hospitals could soon come to the national forefront as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether the law should be allowed to take effect”; “[t]he court has added the Louisiana case to its Oct. 1 conference agenda.”
- At The World and Everything in It, Mary Reichard presents “the point of view of the employee” 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. [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.]
- Subscript Law has a graphic explainer for New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York, a challenge to New York City’s limits on transporting personal firearms.
- At the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (subscription required), Daniel Cotter looks at Justice Neil Gorsuch’s new book, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It.”
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