Wednesday round-up

Briefly:

• At The Hill, Nathaniel Weixel reports that this week Texas and 17 other conservative states, responding to a pair of petitions pending before the Supreme Court over a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, urged the justices not “to take up the case without first waiting for a decision from a district court judge in Texas.”
• At the Daily Caller, Kevin Daley reports that Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, attended last night’s State of the Union Address, noting that Roberts’ decision to attend “even as he presides over the ongoing impeachment trial of President Donald Trump” is a “break with his predecessor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who did not attend the 1999 State of the Union” while presiding over President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
• At the National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Marcia Coyle reports that two cases pending at the Supreme Court ask “the justices to extend the reach of their landmark 2018 First Amendment ruling” in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, holding that public-sector employees who are represented by a union to which they do not belong cannot be required to pay a fee to cover collective-bargaining costs, by striking down mandatory attorney bar dues. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among counsel to the respondent in one of the cases, Fleck v. Wetch.]
• At Law360 (registration required), Daniel Dalton argues that, should the justices decide Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in favor of parents wishing to use scholarships from a state-tax credit to send their children to religious schools, the outcome will have “significant religious liberty concerns that fall within the realm of land use and zoning, specifically, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., is among counsel on an amicus brief in support of the respondents in this case.]

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