No new grants today

The Supreme Court released orders this morning from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices once again did not act on several high-profile petitions for review that they considered at last week’s conference, including a case involving whether the state of Washington violated a florist’s constitutional rights by requiring her to provide flowers for same-sex weddings despite her religious objections and a challenge to a 2018 rule that expanded the definition of “machinegun” under federal law to include “bump-stocks” – attachments that help a semiautomatic rifle to fire faster.

The justices called for the views of the federal government in CACI Premier Technology v. al Shimari, a case brought against CACI, a government contractor that provided civilian interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, by Iraqi citizens who allege that they were abused by CACI employees while detained there. The issue on which the U.S. solicitor general will weigh in is whether an order denying CACI’s claim for derivative sovereign immunity can be appealed immediately.

The justices also ordered oral argument in a dispute between New Mexico and Texas over the use of the waters of the Pecos River, which originates in north-central New Mexico and flows into Texas, where it empties into the Rio Grande River.

The justices are now in their winter recess. Their next conference is scheduled for Friday, February 21; orders from that conference will likely be released at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, February 24.

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.