Tuesday round-up

EDITH ROBERTS JAN 28, 2020 6:58 AM

Yesterday the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, allowed the federal government to begin enforcing a new rule affecting legal immigrants applying for green cards who are considered likely to become a “public charge.” Amy Howe covers the order for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. Pete Williams reports for NBC News that “[t]he government has long had authority to block immigrants who were likely to become public charges, but the term has never been formally defined”; the Department of Homeland Security “proposed to fill that void, adding noncash benefits and such factors as age, financial resources, employment history, education and health.” For the New York Times, Adam Liptak reports that “[i]n the past, only substantial and sustained monetary help or long-term institutionalization counted, and fewer than 1 percent of applicants were disqualified on public-charge grounds.” At Fox News, Shannon Bream and Bill Mears report that “Justice Neil Gorsuch — supported by Justice Clarence Thomas — wrote a separate concurrence, criticizing the increased reliance on nationwide injunctions to block government policies.” Additional coverage comes from Kevin Daley at the Daily Caller and from Mark Walsh at Education Week. Commentary comes from Scott Cozenza at Liberty Nation, Kent Scheidegger at Crime & Consequences and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

The court also issued additional orders yesterday from Friday’s conference, adding no new cases to its docket and asking for the views of the solicitor general in one case. This blog’s coverage comes from Amy Howe, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (via How Appealing), Tamar Hallerman reports that the “[j]ustices appeared Monday to lay the groundwork for what would be a second round of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Florida’s long-running water rights case against Georgia.”

Briefly:

• At CNN, Ariane de Vogue reports that “President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers told the Supreme Court Monday that the House of Representatives and a Manhattan prosecutor should not be able to subpoena the President’s longtime accounting firm and banks for his financial records, in a monumental dispute concerning separation of powers and claims of absolute immunity that will be heard by the justices later this term.”
• For The New York Times, Adam Liptak looks at a new article that “proposes the creation of a new office to counterbalance that of the solicitor general, the Justice Department official who represents the federal government in the Supreme Court,” that would “represent the interests of criminal defendants generally, even when they diverged from the interests of the particular defendant in the case.”
• At Vox, Ian Millhiser writes that “Matthew Albence, acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said on Thursday that ICE will deport immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program if the Supreme Court strikes it down later this year,” a statement that “seems to contradict Chief Justice John Roberts’s understanding that such deportations will not happen.”
• At the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (subscription required), Daniel Cotter remarks on the court’s refusal last week to expedite consideration of “the Affordable Care Act challenge in Texas v. United States.”
• In an op-ed for The Washington Post (subscription required), Steven Mazie worries that “[i]f the tenor of the oral argument [in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue] is an indication, the ruling this spring may hinge on the dangerous fallacy that separation of church and state is hostility toward religion akin to overt racial discrimination.” [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.]
• At The World and Everything in It (podcast), Mary Reichard discusses the oral argument in Babb v. Wilkie, which asks whether federal employees suing under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act must prove that age discrimination was a but-for cause of an adverse employment action.

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