SCOTUS Catch-all | 2024-25 Term Ends

[superrific]

Sounds straightforward. Thx for the explanation. Maybe WI should just do away with the exemption and make everyone pay unemployment taxes.

Or they could do it like other states. Now, I don't know how other states do it, but obviously well enough to avoid this kind of embarrassment.

 

[nycfan]

Supreme Court justices get snippy as key decisions loom​

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/13/politics/supreme-court-justices-snippy-analysis

“… When Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered excerpts of a recent decision on environmental regulation from the bench, he segued into a zealous policy-driven admonition about government “delay upon delay” and the consequences for America’s infrastructure.

… Days later, when Justice Clarence Thomas joined a unanimous job-bias ruling, he penned a separate opinion that included an extraneous footnote decrying DEI. “American employers have long been ‘obsessed’ with ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives and affirmative action plans,” he wrote, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, and referring to a brief from America First Legal Foundation, founded by Stephen Miller, now a top policy adviser to President Donald Trump. “Initiatives of this kind have often led to overt discrimination against those perceived to be in the majority.”

And last week, when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s decision giving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to Social Security Administration data, she stepped back and juxtaposed lower court judges’ handling of Trump litigation with that of the conservative high-court majority.

She variously described the lower court judges as “hard at work”; engaged in “thorough evaluations”; and issuing “well-reasoned interim judgments.” The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, on the other hand, “dons its emergency-responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them.”…”

 

[nycfan]

Supreme Court justices get snippy as key decisions loom​

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/13/politics/supreme-court-justices-snippy-analysis

“… When Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered excerpts of a recent decision on environmental regulation from the bench, he segued into a zealous policy-driven admonition about government “delay upon delay” and the consequences for America’s infrastructure.

… Days later, when Justice Clarence Thomas joined a unanimous job-bias ruling, he penned a separate opinion that included an extraneous footnote decrying DEI. “American employers have long been ‘obsessed’ with ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives and affirmative action plans,” he wrote, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, and referring to a brief from America First Legal Foundation, founded by Stephen Miller, now a top policy adviser to President Donald Trump. “Initiatives of this kind have often led to overt discrimination against those perceived to be in the majority.”

And last week, when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s decision giving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to Social Security Administration data, she stepped back and juxtaposed lower court judges’ handling of Trump litigation with that of the conservative high-court majority.

She variously described the lower court judges as “hard at work”; engaged in “thorough evaluations”; and issuing “well-reasoned interim judgments.” The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, on the other hand, “dons its emergency-responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them.”…”

… [in a decision in the NLRB termination case earlier this Spring], Chief Justice Roberts shepherded the court’s action in the case, as the majority issued an order that allowed Trump to remove, at least for the time being, the two board members who’d begun the dispute. The majority then specifically added language to exempt the Federal Reserve.

The exception – superfluous to the legal issue at hand – appeared to respond to the political atmosphere [Trump was publicly criticizing Powell] and possible criticism that the court’s action was endangering the Federal Reserve and US economy.

Justice Kagan called out the majority’s move as a reaction to the politics of the day.

In a dissenting opinion joined by the two other liberals, Kagan condemned the majority for favoring “the President over our precedent” regarding the removal of agency heads. (A 1935 case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, limited the president’s ability to fire such independent officers.)

“If the idea is to reassure the markets,” Kagan wrote, “a simpler – and more judicial – approach would have been to deny the President’s” appeal for immediate relief.

“Because one way of making new law on the emergency docket (the deprecation of Humphrey’s) turns out to require yet another (the creation of a bespoke Federal Reserve exception).””

 

[superrific]

She variously described the lower court judges as “hard at work”; engaged in “thorough evaluations”; and issuing “well-reasoned interim judgments.” The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, on the other hand, “dons its emergency-responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them.”…”

Hard to argue with that.

 

[lawtig02]

Sorry for the long post but I thought this was an interesting write-up from the NYT's email this morning. I'm not at all suggesting I think Barrett will prove to be a Souter or anything like that, but anything that gets under Alito's skin is good by me.

By Jodi Kantor I’m an investigative reporter focused on the Supreme Court.

Two years ago, while reporting a story about how the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, I discovered something surprising about Justice Amy Coney Barrett. In a secret internal vote about whether to hear the case, she had voted no.
This was unexpected. President Trump appointed Barrett to cinch a 50-year conservative legal revolution. A mother of seven, she is on the record as an abortion opponent. And she voted for the ultimate verdict in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning the federal right to abortion.
But her initial reluctance about the case was a clue that Barrett is a more independent figure than the stalwart that many on the right or the left believed her to be. With much of Trump’s agenda headed to the court eventually, she’s not necessarily the safe vote he wants. She is the Republican appointee who has voted most often against Trump’s position.
I spent this spring interviewing Barrett’s friends and colleagues as well as people from the court; examining her many years of speeches; and, with the help of scholars, analyzing her voting record. Read the full story. Here are some of the things I learned.

Leftward drift​

Barrett is changing, and a new analysis of her record shows how. She has become the Republican-appointed justice most likely to be in the majority in decisions that reach a liberal outcome.

​

Source: Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin, Washington University in St. Louis; and Michael J. Nelson, Penn State | Note: Data includes nonunanimous decisions that were orally argued and signed | By The New York Times​

Or take cases in which liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted together. In Barrett’s first term, she was aligned with them only 39 percent of the time (this was in nonunanimous cases for which the justices heard arguments). This term she was aligned with them 82 percent of the time.
But Justice Barrett is still very conservative. She helped end federal affirmative action and expand gun rights. When she breaks for the liberal side, it’s rarely in a marquee case.

Opposing Trump​

So far, Barrett’s record on Trump-related votes is short but suggestive. Usually, justices show what scholars call “appointment bias,” leaning slightly in favor of the presidents who install them on the bench. Emergency orders are tentative, and not every vote is disclosed. But she has gone in the other direction.
Trump has privately complained about her, according to two people familiar with his thinking. On a podcast this spring, Mike Davis, a close Trump ally who once clerked for Justice Neil Gorsuch, tore into her in such crude terms that Gorsuch later called to reprimand him, according to people aware of the exchange.

Differences with a colleague​

Differences between Barrett and Justice Samuel Alito arose in her earliest days on the court. In the first major argument she heard, he tried to expand the role of religion in public life. She declined to go along. Next, he wanted to overturn the Affordable Care Act; she voted no on procedural grounds. Alito wanted to hear the abortion case, and she didn’t. In a patent case later that term, they wrote dueling dissents both claiming that Justice Scalia would have favored their positions.
For five years, that debate has continued about how far and how fast to go. Alito, 75, is in a hurry to take advantage of the six-seat conservative majority. Barrett, who at 53 is likely to have a long future at the court, is cautious and controlled. He barely disguises his annoyance when the other conservatives don’t go along with him, and he sometimes vents in epically long opinions.
After Barrett’s second term, her agreement on outcomes with Alito slid from 80 percent to 62 percent.

A justice without a team​

On the court, Barrett sits somewhat apart from the others. Her signature move is joining only slices of her colleagues’ opinions, agreeing with some bits but not others. Even when she agrees with the supermajority, she sometimes argues some of the justices took the wrong route. (One person from the court called her the Hermione Granger of the conservatives, telling the men they’re doing it wrong.)
Barrett, a longtime academic, initially wasn’t sure she wanted to be a judge. She still calls herself “a law professor to my bones.” Among the nine members of the court, she is the least experienced judge and the youngest. The one justice not educated at Harvard or Yale, she is a foreigner to the power-player Beltway posts that shaped most of the others.
In speeches, she has told striking, and sometimes personal, stories about family, faith, the law and the enormous transition she has been through.

 

[lawtig02]

SCOTUS opinions are typically released on Mondays and Thursdays. That means we have four more "typical" days this term -- 6/19, 6/23, 6/27, and 6/30. They can add more dates, of course, and they can also go past 6/30. But we should expect to get a lot of important decisions in the next 2-3 weeks, including in these cases, summaries courtesy of oyez.org --

• A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, Independent School District No. 279​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Rehabilitation Act of 1973 require children with disabilities to satisfy a “bad faith or gross misjudgment” standard when seeking relief for discrimination relating to their education.

• Department of Education v. Career Colleges and Schools of Texas​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether the Higher Education Act of 1965 permits the assessment of borrower defenses to repayment before default, in administrative proceedings, or on a group basis.

• Environmental Protection Agency v. Calumet Shreveport Refining, LLC​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether challenges by small oil refineries seeking exemptions from the requirements of the Clean Air Act’s Renewable Fuel Standard program should be heard exclusively in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit because the agency’s denial actions are “nationally applicable” or “based on a determination of nationwide scope or effect.”

• Esteras v. United States​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether a court may, in considering whether to revoke an individual’s supervised release and impose a prison sentence, consider factors from the law governing sentencing not mentioned in the supervised release law.

• Food and Drug Administration v. R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co.​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether a manufacturer may file a petition for review in a circuit where it neither resides nor has its principal place of business, if the petition is joined by a seller of the manufacturer’s products that is located within that circuit.

• Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether a Texas law that requires any website that publishes content one-third or more of which is “harmful to minors” to verify the age of each of its users before providing access should be subject to “rational basis” review or “strict scrutiny.”

• Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

• Gutierrez v. Saenz​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether a Texas death-row inmate has standing to sue the state over its refusal to give him access to DNA testing pursuant to a law permitting DNA testing only when the person can prove that he would not have been convicted if the DNA testing produced exculpatory results.

• Louisiana v. Callais​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether Louisiana’s creation of a second majority-Black congressional district constitutes unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, even when drawn in response to a federal court finding that the state’s prior single majority-Black district likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

• Mahmoud v. Taylor​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether public schools burden parents’ religious exercise when they compel elementary school children to participate in instruction on gender and sexuality against their parents’ religious convictions and without notice or opportunity to opt out.

• Martin v. United States​

  A case in which the Court will decide (1) whether the Supremacy Clause prevents individuals from suing the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act when federal employees’ actions, even if negligent or wrongful, are related to carrying out federal policy and can be interpreted as following federal laws; and (2) whether the discretionary-function exception, which usually protects the government from being sued for certain decisions made by its employees, is always inapplicable when dealing with claims related to law enforcement officers’ actions that fall under the intentional torts category?

• Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether the Medicaid Act’s “any qualified provider” provision unambiguously confers a private right upon a Medicaid beneficiary to choose a specific provider.

• Oklahoma v. Environmental Protection Agency​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction to review an Environmental Protection Agency action that affects only one state or region, simply because the EPA published that action alongside actions affecting other states in a single Federal Register notice.

• Parrish v. United States​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether a party who files a notice of appeal during the period between when their original appeal deadline expired and when the court reopens their time to appeal must file a second notice after the reopening is granted.

• Riley v. Bondi​

  A case in which the Court will decide issues relating to the 30-day deadline to seek review of a ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals denying withholding of deportation.

• Rivers v. Guerrero​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2)—which strictly limits the circumstances in which an inmate can file a second petition for federal post-conviction relief—applies to all second habeas petitions (petitions filed after the first one) or only to specific types of second petitions.

• Stanley v. City of Sanford, Florida​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a former employee—who was qualified to perform her job and who earned post-employment benefits while employed—loses her right to sue over discrimination with respect to those benefits solely because she no longer holds her job.

• Trump v. CASA Inc.​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether a district court can issue a nationwide (universal) injunction that blocks enforcement of a federal executive order—in this case, an executive order that purports to eliminate birthright citizenship—beyond the specific parties involved in the lawsuit.

• United States v. Skrmetti​

  A case in which the Court will decide whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
  

  ​

 

[superrific]

Sorry for the long post but I thought this was an interesting write-up from the NYT's email this morning. I'm not at all suggesting I think Barrett will prove to be a Souter or anything like that, but anything that gets under Alito's skin is good by me.

This is a bunch of hype. I've noticed that ACB seems to be singing a different tune than the other reactionaries but it's on the same album. I can't think of a decisive vote she has cast in an important case. Maybe there's one. Her concurrences? Yeah, Kav writes a bunch of concurrences too. Or used to, until people started figuring out that he was full of shit in them.

And I'm not sure Lee Epstein's analysis takes into account the worst thing that's happened in the past six months: the Supreme Court's decision to stay basically any lower court judgment against Trump except the most egregious due process issue. Those stays are more impactful than any opinion.

 

[nycfan]

Supreme Court adds two new cases for next term​

Supreme Court adds two new cases for next term

The Supreme Court on Monday added two new cases to its docket for the 2025-26 term, both involving efforts to litigate disputes in federal rather than state courts. In a […]

www.scotusblog.com

“The Supreme Court on Monday added two new cases to its docket for the 2025-26 term, both involving efforts to litigate disputes in federal rather than state courts. In a list of orders released from the justices’ private conference last week, the court announced that it will hear arguments next term in cases arising from New Jersey’s attempt to investigate a group of crisis pregnancy centers and from efforts to hold oil companies responsible for production of crude oil in Louisiana more than 80 years ago.

In First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Platkin, the court agreed to decide whether a group of crisis pregnancy centers – faith-based nonprofits that hold themselves out as healthcare clinics and often provide material support to pregnant women, but try to persuade them not to have an abortion – can go to federal court to challenge the constitutionality of a subpoena from a state attorney general, or whether they must instead pursue those claims in state court.

…
And in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, La., the Supreme Court agreed to hear a long-running lawsuit brought by Louisiana and two of its parishes, attempting to hold oil companies liable for their production of crude oil in the state during World War II. The question that the court agreed to decide arises from the oil companies’ latest efforts to transfer the cases from state court, where they were filed, to federal court.

The oil companies relied on a federal law that gives federal courts the power to hear civil actions against “any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States” “for or relating to any act under” the authority of that office. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that although the oil companies may have been “acting under” an officer of the United States when they fulfilled contracts to supply the federal government with gasoline for aviation, their production of crude oil did not “relat[e] to” their contracts to refine the oil into gasoline because the contracts did not specifically address oil production. …”

 

[nycfan]

 

[nycfan]

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf

 

[nycfan]

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf

 

[nycfan]

——



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——

 

[hedge]

Aware of the threat Hill and Terry posed, the U. S. Attorney General ordered Deputy Marshal David Neagle, a former chief of police in Tombstone, Arizona, to accompany Justice Field when he next rode circuit in California. That decision proved prescient, for Terry soon cornered the Justice on a train and attacked him. Intervening to protect the Justice, Neagle shot and killed Terry.

Looks like Neagle was Terry's huckleberry. And this time, it's legal...

 

[nycfan]

 

[nycfan]

 

[lawtig02]

1. This is a big blow to LGBTQ rights nationwide.

2. From a purely political perspective, this is not a terrible thing for Dems.

3. People will suffer and likely die as a result of this ruling, and I hope we can find ways to highlight that compassionately and appropriately.

4. I can't tell you how much I hate this but trans rights is just not a winning issue right now. It won't be an issue in 20 years, but it's a loser in this moment. And I say that with a heart broken for the many trans people who will suffer as a result of our national bigotry.

 

[hedge]

When Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered excerpts of a recent decision on environmental regulation from the bench, he segued into a zealous policy-driven admonition about government “delay upon delay” and the consequences for America’s infrastructure.

Speaking of delay upon delay, from a recent WSJ article, Five Best: Books on Courtroom Dramas:

“Bleak House” is both a courtroom drama and Charles Dickens’s sprawling indictment of the British legal system. The fulcrum of the plot is a seemingly endless case, called Jarndyce and Jarndyce, over a disputed will. This convoluted “scarecrow of a suit” outlives nearly all the interested parties and outlasts even the memory of the issues in dispute. Yet the case, with its “accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions,” continues until legal costs consume the entire fortune at stake in the litigation. Jarndyce and Jarndyce concludes with a scene familiar to anyone who has experienced the anticipation and release of a judicial decision. When the case is dismissed, tension drains from the courtroom. “The people came streaming out looking flushed and hot. . . . Still they were all exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce or a juggler than from a court of justice.” Law clerks burst out laughing at the folly of it all, as the epic litigation simply “lapses and melts away.” One claimant weakly coughs up a bit of blood in despair. The lawyers defend their work—and fee bonanza—by insisting “that this has been a great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause”—and move on to other clients.

 

[4thgenheel]

you guys being so obsessed with other people's genitals is BEYOND creepy. psychos.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

Speaking of delay upon delay, from a recent WSJ article, Five Best: Books on Courtroom Dramas:

“Bleak House” is both a courtroom drama and Charles Dickens’s sprawling indictment of the British legal system. The fulcrum of the plot is a seemingly endless case, called Jarndyce and Jarndyce, over a disputed will. This convoluted “scarecrow of a suit” outlives nearly all the interested parties and outlasts even the memory of the issues in dispute. Yet the case, with its “accumulation of charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions,” continues until legal costs consume the entire fortune at stake in the litigation. Jarndyce and Jarndyce concludes with a scene familiar to anyone who has experienced the anticipation and release of a judicial decision. When the case is dismissed, tension drains from the courtroom. “The people came streaming out looking flushed and hot. . . . Still they were all exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce or a juggler than from a court of justice.” Law clerks burst out laughing at the folly of it all, as the epic litigation simply “lapses and melts away.” One claimant weakly coughs up a bit of blood in despair. The lawyers defend their work—and fee bonanza—by insisting “that this has been a great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has been a complex cause”—and move on to other clients.

That's really interesting. I watched the PBS Masterpiece adaptation and really loved it. But I didn't even think about the indictment of the court system aspect, which now that you mention it, it clearly was.

 

[superrific]

The trans decision was the least surprising thing ever.

1. On this issue, liberals hung their hat on an argument that I have always seen as weak and unpersuasive: that discrimination on the basis of sexuality or identity is really just discrimination based on sex. That surprisingly carried the day in Bostock but I think it's a crap argument and the plaintiffs are pushing it way too far. Trans discrimination is not sex discrimination, period.

I'm not criticizing anyone for pushing that argument. It's the only one available. It's not a terrible argument, I suppose, but I just don't think it was ever going to work long-term. Trans discrimination is not actually about sex discrimination. If we didn't know that before, we sure as hell know it after this past campaign and then Trump's war on trans.

2. I'm old enough to remember when ACB was supposedly veering left. Guess not. Her opinion is a disgrace. Every single thing about this paragraph, for instance, is completely wrong:

The Sixth Circuit held that transgender individuals do not constitute a suspect class, and it was right to do so. To begin, transgender status is not marked by the same sort of “‘obvious, immutable, or distinguishing characteristics’” as race or sex. In particular, it is not defined by a trait that is “‘definitively ascertainable at the moment of birth.’” The plaintiffs here, for instance, began to experience gender dysphoria at varying ages—some from a young age, others not until the onset of puberty. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs acknowledge that some transgender individuals “detransition” later in life—in other words, they begin to identify again with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex. Accordingly, transgender status does not turn on an “immutable . . . characteristi[c].”

This stupid, ignorant woman is not going to save us. It might surprise her to learn that skin color is not definitively ascertainable at birth. Sexuality is definitely not ascertainable at birth (and yes, I know that sexuality isn't a fully protected class but that's sort of the problem.
And that last line ranks among the most braindead statements even from this court. By this logic a classification as a woman isn't immutable. In fact, millions more people choose to become not-women than choose to be no-longer-trans. But of course, being a conservative means that you never have to think about the world beyond you. ACB is a woman. She likes being a woman. So of course she's a woman forever and untimely but those trans people over there are not because some small fraction of them detransition.

Michael Jackson was living proof that skin color is not immutable. There are various skin whitening procedures available, right? So dark skin isn't definitively ascertainable at the moment of birth, and it's not immutable. Guess it shouldn't be a protected class. . . .

3. Oh, there's more bullshit:

For purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, the relevant question is whether the group has been subject to a longstanding pattern of discrimination in the law. In other words, we ask whether the group has suffered a history of de jure discrimination.

She just made that up. That is not a requirement of the 14th Amendment. It makes no sense as a requirement of the 14th Amendment. There have not been, until recently, a lot of laws regulating transsexuality because public opinion forced transsexuals into shadows. There was no need to formally oppress them so long as most people only encountered them as drug-addicted prostitutes lurking in sketchy areas of town. According to ACB, oppression only counts if it's insufficiently vitriolic to make people scared even to reveal their true identities.

The idea that trans people have not been discriminated against is so bonkers that it shouldn't require comment.