Friday round-up

At The Washington Free Beacon, Kevin Daley reports that “[t]he Supreme Court has yet to settle on an alternative for cases delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, as lower federal courts transition to teleconferencing and other remote work technologies.” Tom Goldstein writes for this blog that “[i]f as is likely no vaccine is available this fall, the court will have to consider conducting oral arguments remotely by video.” At Bloomberg Law, Kimberly Robinson reports that the court’s “robust and exacting requirements for hard copy printing,” are still in force, although “the court has modified the way it collects hand-delivered paper filings.”

Briefly:

• At Bloomberg Environment, Ellen Gilmer reports that “[m]ajor oil companies are urging the Supreme Court to reverse a recent ruling that allows Baltimore to pursue climate-related claims against the industry in state court.”
• The Institute for Justice’s Short Circuit podcast includes discussion of the cert grant this week in Brownback v. King, which asks whether a ruling for the government in a Federal Tort Claims Act case bars a lawsuit under Bivens against the employees involved, and a pending cert petition in a civil forfeiture case, Salgado v. United States.
• At National Review, John Bursch argues that the court’s recent decision in Comcast v. National Association of African American-Owned Media, in which the court held that a plaintiff who sues for racial discrimination in contracting under federal law has to prove that race was a but-for cause of his injury, supports the employers’ position in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which asks whether federal employment discrimination law bars discrimination against transgender people. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is counsel on an amicus brief in support of respondent Stephens in this case.]
• In an op-ed for The New York Times, Bill Aseltyne and others weigh in on Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, a challenge to the government’s decision to terminate the DACA program, which allowed immigrants brought to this country illegally as children to apply for protection from deportation, warning that “[i]f the Supreme Court allows the termination of DACA during this pandemic, the work of our hospitals will suffer a critical blow at exactly the moment when we can least afford it.”

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