SCOTUS Court Case Reports
Some court cases at the SCOTUS level which have had decisions made or are still progressing. I believe you have heard of all of them at one time or another.
Not terribly long reads (a couple of paragraphs . . . if that much). “SCOTUStoday for Thursday, February 5, SCOTUSblog.” Brief reads (partials) as taken from Morning Reads and also one from Quick Hits.
Just partial reporting on some topics you may have heard or read about. If you wish a total report? Please click on the SCOTUSblog Morning Reads. These commentaries are partials.
- On Thursday, the Supreme Court denied a request from a group of California Republicans to block the state from using its new map in this year’s elections. There were no public dissents from the court’s ruling. For more on the case, see the “On Site” section below in SCOTUSblog.
- First Circuit conflicted about deportations to ‘third-party’ countries (Thomas F. Harrison, Courthouse News Service) — A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit “telegraphed Tuesday that it’s inclined to give four immigrants additional safeguards against ‘third-country’ deportations,” but signaled that it’s unlikely to extend those protections to all similarly situated immigrants, according to Courthouse News Service.
- Judge seems skeptical of legal justification for Pentagon’s punishment of Sen. Mark Kelly (Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press) — U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said on Tuesday “that he knows of no U.S. Supreme Court precedent to justify the Pentagon’s censuring of a sitting U.S. senator who joined a videotaped plea for troops to resist unlawful orders from the Trump administration,” according to the Associated Press. Leon is considering Sen. Mark Kelly’s claim “that Pentagon officials violated his First Amendment free speech rights.”
- Trump’s new ammo to toss hush money case conviction (Zach Schonfeld and Ella Lee, The Hill) — U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein heard argument on Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s effort to move a case on hush money allegations made against him from New York state court to federal court. In state court, a “jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records when he repaid his then-fixer, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 hush money payment he made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep her quiet about a years-old alleged affair with Trump. Trump denies any affair,” according to The Hill.
- A Legal Tool for Holding ICE Agents to Account, Hiding in Plain Sight (Adam Liptak, The New York Times)(Paywall) — The nationwide debate over the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis and other cities has put a spotlight on “a 1987 law review article by a young law professor named Akhil Reed Amar,” according to The New York Times. In the article, Amar, now a leading constitutional scholar and SCOTUSblog contributor, contended “that state legislatures can authorize lawsuits against federal officials for violating the Constitution.”
- Can AI Argue a Supreme Court Case Better Than a Human Lawyer? (Paul Detrick, Bloomberg Law). In a new video project, Bloomberg Law explored how lawyers are using generative artificial intelligence and how such AI tools “could shape the future of legal advocacy.” The video features Adam Unikowsky, a partner at Jenner & Block who has experimented with using AI to test his own oral argument skills.
Taylor v. Singleton The Issue:
Hal Taylor, secretary of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, contended in his petition for review that the 11th Circuit’s decision is out-of-step with history and tradition.
“Begging was not constitutionally protected at the founding; rather, it was widely criminalized,” he wrote. For that reason, Taylor continued, it’s fair to conclude that begging is among the categories of speech that are “fully outside the protection of the First Amendment,” such as “child pornography.”
The Supreme Court has never before directly addressed whether begging is protected by the First Amendment. According to Taylor, now is the right time to do so, however, because (among other reasons) absent Supreme Court intervention, cities will lose a tool they have come to rely on to promote public safety while working to reduce homelessness.
Jonathan Singleton, who brought the class-action lawsuit against Alabama’s statutes and who is described in court filings as a homeless resident of Montgomery, Alabama, -who “holds signs in public soliciting help,” initially waived his right to respond to the petition. But in November, the court called for a response.
In his brief, Singleton contended that there is not disagreement between the federal courts of appeals or state supreme courts over this issue, a factor that the Supreme Court often looks for when deciding whether to take up a case. “The Eleventh Circuit’s rejection of Petitioner’s argument is consistent with established precedent in every circuit and state supreme court that has considered the issue,” he wrote.
And the Supreme Court itself, Singleton continued, has held that “charitable appeals for funds” are a protected form a speech in a decision striking down certain restrictions on door-to-door or on-the-street requests for donations.
“That is precisely the speech that the challenged statutes prohibit,” he wrote. This petition for review is to be before the justices for the first time at their private conference on Friday, Feb. 20.