Tuesday round-up

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued additional orders from the justices’ private conference last Friday, adding no new cases to their merits docket. Amy Howe covers the order list for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. Todd Ruger reports at Roll Call (via How Appealing) that the court “officially wiped out a lower court ruling from April that had struck down Michigan’s congressional map as giving an unconstitutional boost to Republicans,” a move that “was expected, since the justices decided in June that federal courts can’t rein in politicians who draw political maps to entrench a partisan advantage.” At US News & World Report, Lisa Hagen reports that “[e]arlier this month, the Supreme Court tossed a similar challenge in Ohio, where a lower court struck down the state’s congressional districts drawn by the Republican-led legislature.”

For USA Today, Craig Gilbert and Richard Wolf report that “a new and wide-ranging national survey about the court by the Marquette University Law School … offers a sweeping snapshot of public perceptions of the court, its individual justices, its role, major rulings it has handed down and issues it could soon decide.” At Bloomberg Law, Kimberly Robinson reports that “57% of adults surveyed said the judiciary was the most trusted branch,” but “Republicans had a higher confidence level in the Supreme Court overall.”

In the latest episode of Strict Scrutiny (podcast), the hosts and guest Jay Austin “recap the Title VII arguments (which means a lot of bathroom talk).” Tonja Jacobi and Matthew Sag analyze the arguments at SCOTUS OA.

Briefly:

• Marcia Coyle reports at The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required) that “Justice Brett Kavanaugh, following in the footsteps of his conservative colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, including Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr. and Neil Gorsuch, is expected to headline the Federalist Society’s annual dinner next month in Washington.”
• At The Economist’s Democracy in America blog (subscription or registration required), Steven Mazie looks at Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, in which the court will consider “whether migrants who qualify for ‘expedited removal’ from America have a constitutional right to plead their cases in court before being thrown out of the country.”
• Trialdex predicts that if the inmate wins in Ramos v. Louisiana, in which the justices will decide whether the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a unanimous jury applies to the states, “the class of persons who will get a retroactive benefit of the rule is limited to defendants in Louisiana and Oregon on direct appeal who can establish that they have not waived or forfeited the issue.”
• At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman examines the frequency and timing of the justices’ first questions during oral arguments.
• At his eponymous blog, Michael Dorf urges the court to “abolish the consent requirement for amicus briefs.”
• At the Harvard Law Review Blog (via How Appealing), Aaron Tang suggests that in 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, “[t]he liberal Justices in the minority have a last-ditch strategy that would sacrifice the specific gun restriction at issue in this case, yet save a number of far more critical gun control measures around the county.”
• In an op-ed for The Hill, Oliver Dunford weighs in on Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a constitutional challenge to the structure of the CFPB, urging the court to “put an end to the arbitrary power wielded by the CFPB ­and other ‘fourth branch’ agencies.”  

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