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Monday round-up

Supreme Court steps with the Library of Congress in the background

Amy Howe reports for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court, that on Friday “the administration asked the justices to allow it to enforce the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the ‘remain in Mexico’ policy, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to return immigrants to Mexico while they wait for deportation proceedings.” John Kruzel reports at The Hill that “[t]he request comes after a lower court deemed the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy illegal and ordered a suspension that was scheduled to take effect March 12” in California and Arizona.

Briefly:

  • Today’s episode of The New York Times’ The Daily podcast focuses on June Medical Services v. Russo, “the first big test of abortion rights since President Trump created a conservative majority among the justices.”
  • At Second Thoughts, Jake Charles notes “the parallels … in the debates over reproductive rights and firearm rights,” suggesting that “[i]n the Second Amendment context, the battle over burdens and benefits and what they mean for constitutional scrutiny is likely to continue,” “[b]ut the Court’s decision in June Medical might shed some light on how courts should assess laws that impose restrictions on a constitutional right and offer few (if any) benefits.”
  • Criticism of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s comments about two Trump Supreme Court appointees at a rally during last week’s argument in June Medical comes from Garrett Epps at The Atlantic, George Conway in an op-ed for The Washington Post (subscription required), and Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist, who also criticizes the media’s coverage of the incident.
  • At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost observes that the Supreme Court’s decision in Hernandez v. Mesa, which held that the family of a Mexican teenager who was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting cannot sue the officer for damages under the Constitution, “eliminated the only legal tool available in practical terms to encourage trigger-happy Border Patrol agents … to exercise more care before resorting to lethal force against unarmed and innocent Mexicans on their side of the border.”
  • David Frum writes at The Atlantic (via How Appealing) that “[by]all rights,” three cases involving President Donald Trump’s efforts to shield his financial records from subpoenas issued to his accountant and lenders “should end in the kind of defeat for Trump nicely described by a favorite joke of Chief Justice John Roberts[:] When asked how a certain case could have been decided against a petitioner 9–0, Roberts is said to have replied: ‘You must remember, there are only nine justices on the Supreme Court.’”
  • At the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Pulse blog, Glenn Lammi urges the court to review Actavis Holdco, Inc. v. Connecticut and “remind lower courts of their authority to limit, not expand, the scope of discovery” in civil litigation.
  • At Slate, Daniel Summers hopes that in Fulton v. Philadelphia, a challenge to Philadelphia’s exclusion of Catholic Social Services from the city’s foster care system because the group will not place children with same-sex couples, “the Supreme Court [will see] that Philadelphia is not engaging in religious discrimination—it’s ensuring that children are not denied a loving home because their foster parents happen to be gay.”

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Recommended Citation: Edith Roberts, Monday round-up, SCOTUSblog (Mar. 9, 2020, 7:03 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/03/monday-round-up-476/