Friday round-up

At The Daily Signal, Elizabeth Slattery highlights “five key exchanges” from Wednesday’s argument in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which asks whether Montana’s invalidation of a law that created tax credits to provide scholarships for families who send their children to private schools, including religious schools, was constitutional. In an op-ed for The Washington Post (subscription required), Monica Kristin Blair argues that “[i]n addition to breaking down the separation of church and state and taking much-needed funds away from the public education system, a victory by the mothers would exacerbate school segregation, thanks to the long history of racial segregation within parochial schools, something the justices largely ignored during oral arguments.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]

Lisa Soronen looks at Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca, which ask whether the Constitution forbids states from requiring their presidential electors to follow the state’s popular vote when casting their electoral college ballots, in a post at the NACL Blog. At NBC News (via How Appealing), Adam Edelman reports that Micheal Baca, “[o]ne of the “faithless electors’ at the heart of [the] case[,] says he’s ‘thrilled’ that the high court will take on the issue and has no regrets about how he cast his Electoral College vote for president — even though it went against the wishes of his state’s voters.”

At the Tampa Bay Times (via How Appealing), Emily Mahoney reports that “[i]n a stunning reversal of a previous decision, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a unanimous jury should not be required to sentence someone to death,” stating “that their own court’s prior decision was made in error, because the justices at the time had misinterpreted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling,” Hurst v. Florida, “that found Florida’s death sentencing process unconstitutional.” At Crime & Consequences, Kent Scheidegger notes the implications of the ruling for a capital case this term, McKinney v. Arizona, in which the justices will consider whether current law or the law in effect when a defendant’s conviction originally became final applies to resentencing.

Briefly:

• At IP Law Update, Emmett Collazo discusses “the two things [he] would like to see in a 9-0 opinion in” Romag Fasteners v. Fossil, Inc., which asks whether willful infringement is a requirement for an award of profits in a trademark infringement suit.
• At The National Law Review, Eric Fisher writes that the court’s recent decision in Ritzen Group Inc. v. Jackson Masonry, LLC, holding that a bankruptcy court’s order denying a creditor’s motion to lift the automatic stay of debt-collection efforts is a final order that the creditor can appeal, helps “clarify what constitutes a final order in the bankruptcy context.”
• In an op-ed for The Washington Post (subscription required), Leah Litman observes that “[t]he Supreme Court gave the Trump administration a gift Tuesday — one that could greatly help the president in the 2020 election[:] In an order that received less attention than it deserved, the court declined to speed up its consideration of a challenge to the Affordable Care Act.”
• At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman “examines instances where the justices have discussed aspects of justiciability including mootness, ripeness, standing, political questions, and justiciability generally between the 2017 and current Supreme Court Terms.”

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