Birthright citizenship: an animated explainer

After completing a term of imprisonment, federal criminal defendants often serve terms of supervised release that usually last between one to five years, depending on the offense for which they were convicted. Isabel Rico pleaded guilty to federal drug trafficking offenses and was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment followed by four years of supervised release. Rico violated her terms of supervised release several times, including near the end of her term of supervision. She stopped reporting to her probation officer, stopped living at the address she gave her probation officer, and absconded. After her term of supervision expired and while she was a fugitive, she also committed new crimes.

The president finds the long-settled meaning of the citizenship clause to be an intolerable obstacle to his agenda. The reason? Each year it would make U.S. citizens of tens of thousands of people who do not fit his racial and cultural ideal of what it means to be an “American.” So what does he do? His administration simply re-defines the citizenship clause to exclude those people – without seeking to amend the Constitution or even get the approval of Congress. What will the Supreme Court do about it?

But enough about the McKinley administration.

Yesterday brought the justices another of the term’s cases about the federal statute forcing the enforcement of arbitration agreements. The issue in this one – Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock – is the scope of an exemption in the Federal Arbitration Act for interstate transportation workers. Specifically, the question is whether that exemption reaches “last-mile” drivers who don’t themselves cross state lines, even though the goods they are delivering are on an interstate journey. As far as you could tell from the argument, the justices seem inclined to give those workers the benefit of the exemption – that is, they may choose to go to court instead of being forced to arbitrate with their employers.

The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.

This week, the Supreme Court started thinning the relist herd. The court summarily reversed in eight-time relist Zorn v. Linton, once again reminding lower courts that denying police qualified immunity for excessive force requires closely analogous precedent, not high-level generalities. The court split 6–3, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor (joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketaji Brown Jackson) dissenting, lamenting the court’s “troubling asymmetry” of shielding officers even when they inflict significant pain on passive protesters.

Yesterday’s unanimous decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Entertainment surprised no one who observed the argument, which had suggested a bench deeply skeptical of a billion-plus dollar judgment imposed on Cox Communications, an internet service provider, based on the infringing activities of its subscribers. As expected, the opinion for the court brusquely rejected that judgment.