Scalia-Less SCOTUS Half-time Review
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Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016 and the current Supreme Court term will end sometime in late June or early July (and which always starts in the first Monday in October).
supremecourt.gov/about/procedures.aspx
Therefore since we are at the half-way mark, I figured I'd make a thread summarizing the major news, decisions, and effects of his vacancy and on the Court in general so far.
SCOTUS ORAL ARGUMENT AUDIO AND TRANSCRIPTS
supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio.aspx
CURRENT TERM CASE BRIEFS
americanbar.org/publications/preview_home/2015_2016_briefs.html
GENERAL CASE DECISIONS NEWS/ANALYSIS
SCOTUSblog
thehill.com/regulation/court-battles
npr.org/tags/125938785/supreme-court
nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court
nytimes.com/topic/organization/us-supreme-court
COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF PREVIOUS SCOTUS TERMS POST-2008 (via uscourts.gov)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4bcxoLSIaXcpsDqJAGRWvEVRQS2NfVr0
LAST TERM (2014-2015 explains the 66 opinions delivered last period)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUDmC8A3HJM (PART 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UWLXR_8jME (PART 2)
I'll post events in chronological order, but feel free to make comments or post other SCOTUS decisions/stories.
Before the first post-mortem votes were cast, Scalia death was already making legal tidal waves.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-26/dow-cites-scalia-s-death-in-settling-urethanes-case-for-835m
>Dow Chemical Co. said it agreed to pay $835 million to settle an antitrust case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death reduced its chances of overturning a jury award.
>Dow, the largest U.S. chemical maker by sales, said Friday the accord will resolve its challenges to a $1.06 billion award to purchasers of compounds for urethanes, chemicals used to make foam upholstery for furniture and plastic walls in refrigerators. The Midland, Michigan-based company disputed a jury’s finding it had conspired with four other chemical makers to fix urethane prices and asked the Supreme Court to take the class-action case on appeal. Scalia, one of the court’s most conservative members, had voted to scale back the reach of such group suits.
>Scalia’s death is likely to make it harder for companies to get the five votes they need to overturn awards or get new restrictions on class actions. He had been a key voice for companies in challenging group suits at the Supreme Court. Scalia wrote the 5-4 ruling in 2011 that said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. couldn’t be sued by potentially a million female workers. Two years later, Scalia was the author of a 5-4 ruling that freed Comcast Corp. from having to defend against an $875 million antitrust lawsuit on behalf of Philadelphia-area customers.
“
>Dow appealed the liability finding and award to a federal appeals court in Denver, which rejected its challenges to the class-action claims in September 2014. The company asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the lower court’s ruling.
>The antitrust case is In re Urethane Antitrust Litigation, 04-md-01616, U.S. District Court, District of Kansas (Kansas City).
Obviously sensing a cold silence on the bench, Justice Clarence Thomas mouthed words for the first time this Term in a decade sitting on the Court.
cnn.com/2016/02/29/politics/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-10-year-streak-question/
>For the first time in a decade, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke during oral arguments.
>Just last week, CNN wrote about the 10 years since Thomas' last question at oral arguments. That anniversary, February 22, came on the same day the Supreme Court first heard oral arguments after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who was Thomas' ideological soul mate and who had defended his lack of questions over the years.
>The comments from Thomas were directed at a government attorney Ilana H. Eisenstein in a case called Voisine v. United States. The case concerns whether a prior domestic assault conviction based on reckless conduct qualifies as a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence that would block the plaintiffs from possessing a firearm.
"Everyone leaned in disbelieving," said Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, who was in the courtroom. "The colloquy went back and forth several times with Thomas pressing the assistant solicitor general," Lithwick said.
>"This is a misdemeanor violation," Thomas said at one point to Eisenstein.
>"It suspends a constitutional right. Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?" he asked.
>Thomas has offered a variety of reasons for his silence from the bench. "We have a lifetime to go back in chambers and to argue with each other," Thomas said in 2013, according to The Associated Press. He noted that the lawyers only have about 30 minutes to present their side of the case. "They should argue. That's a part of the process." Thomas said and added that he doesn't like to "badger people."
You can hear Justice Thomas's voice (the SCOTUS equivalent of a Shiny Pokemon) @ 41:25 here
supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2015/14-10154
Sometimes the Court has impacts on what cases it chooses NOT to act on.
thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/271614-chief-justice-rejects-plea-to-block-air-pollution-rule
>Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rejected a plea Thursday to block a contentious air pollution rule for power plants in a big victory for the Obama administration.
>Roberts’s order came despite his court’s 5-4 decision last year ruling that the EPA regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, is illegal.The mercury pollution standards, are a separate regulation from the more controversial and costly carbon dioxide limits for power plants that are also being litigated in court.
>Michigan led a group of 20 states last month in asking the court to live up to its ruling last year and block the regulation’s enforcement.
>The EPA responded that no judicial stay is necessary since it’s working to fix the problem the court identified by next month, and the states would not suffer irreparable harm in that time. “The requested stay would harm the public interest by undermining reliance interests and the public health and environmental benefits associated with the rule,” the government said. “The application lacks merit and should be denied.”
>Roberts acted swiftly, waiting less than a day after the EPA’s response brief to side with the Obama administration. He acted unilaterally, electing to reject the request himself rather than take it to the full court, which may have led to a 4-4 split following Justice Scalia’s death.
>The court ruled last June that the EPA should have conducted a cost-benefit analysis on the regulation before it even decided to start writing it. The agency did so as part of the regulatory process, but the justices said that was not sufficient. The Supreme Court did not overturn the rule at the time, DC Circuit said in December that the EPA could keep enforcing it.
Those States are still trying to block it
eenews.net/stories/1060034289
In the first case, Apple lost for E-Book Price Fixing
bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-07/apple-rejected-by-u-s-high-court-in-450-million-e-book-case
>Apple Inc. must pay $450 million to end an antitrust suit after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to question a finding that the company orchestrated a scheme to raise the prices for electronic books.
>The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal by Apple, leaving intact a federal appeals court ruling favoring the U.S. Justice Department and more than 30 states that sued. The rebuff means Apple must comply with a settlement it reached with the states in 2014. The accord calls for Apple to pay $400 million to e-book consumers, $20 million to the states, and $30 million in legal fees.
>Consumers who overpaid will get credits they can apply to future e-book purchases, the Justice Department said in a statement. “Apple’s liability for knowingly conspiring with book publishers to raise the prices of e-books is settled once and for all,” said Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, who runs the department’s antitrust division.
>Government lawyers accused Apple of leading a price-fixing effort as part of the 2010 introduction of its iPad tablet and iBookstore feature. Apple was seeking to gain a foothold in a market dominated by Amazon.com Inc., which at the time treated best-selling books as loss leaders, selling them for $9.99.
>A federal judge in Manhattan found that Apple persuaded five of the biggest publishers to shift to a system under which they, and not the retailers, would set book prices. The shift led to a 40 percent increase in the price of e-book best-sellers, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said.
>Cote pointed to statements by Apple’s late founder, Steve Jobs. At the Apple event to introduce the iPad, Jobs was asked why someone would buy a book through iBookstore for $14.99 when the same item was available on Amazon for $9.99.
The case is Apple v. United States, 15-565
Next, they voided an AL decision to strip a gay person of adoption rights.
cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-voids-alabama-ruling-against-lesbian-adoption/
>WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Alabama's top court went too far when it tried to upend a lesbian mother's adoption of her partner's children.
>The justices threw out a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court in a dispute between two women whose long-term relationship ended bitterly. Before their breakup, one partner bore three children; the other formally adopted them in Georgia. The Alabama residents went to Georgia because they had been told Atlanta-area courts would be more receptive than judges in Alabama.
>Alabama courts got involved when the birth mother tried to prevent her former partner from regular visits with the children. The Alabama Supreme Court sided with the birth mother in refusing to recognize the other woman as a parent and declaring the adoption invalid under Georgia law.
>In December, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily set aside the Alabama decision as the justices decided whether to hear the woman's appeal. The issue was whether the actions of one state's courts must be respected by another's. On Monday, the justices said in an unsigned opinion that "the Alabama Supreme Court erred in refusing to grant that judgment full faith and credit."
The case is V.L. v. E.L., 15-648
On March 16, 2015 U.S. Federal Appeals D.C. Circuit Court Chief Justice Merrick Garland was nominated to fill the SCOTUS seat vacated by Antonin Scalia.
npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/16/470643431/-i-ve-made-my-decision-on-supreme-court-nominee-president-obama-says
thehill.com/homenews/administration/273227-who-is-merrick-garland
I still think his name sounds like one of those characters in cheesy romance novel paperbacks or daytime soaps. Probably will never make it onto the court if I was placing bets.
The Court remanded a case from MA back to the State Court for more argument, suggesting they may expand 2nd Amendment gun rights to stun guns.
charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article67296077.html
>WASHINGTON The Supreme Court came together Monday on the unlikely issue of guns, ordering Massachusetts' top court to look again at the state's ban on stun guns.
>The justices, with no apparent dissent, issued an unsigned opinion in favor of Jaime Caetano, who was convicted of violating the state's anti-stun gun law. Caetano said she kept a stun gun in her purse for self-defense against an abusive former boyfriend.
>Massachusetts is among a handful of states that prohibit possession of stun guns. The state Supreme Judicial Court upheld the ban and said the Second Amendment's right to bear arms does not extend to stun guns.
>But the nation's high court said "the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this court's precedent." The justices were referring to the court's 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that struck down Washington, D.C.,'s handgun ban and said the Constitution guarantees the right to a gun, at least for self-defense at home.
The case is Caetano v. Massachusetts
Remember that Dow Anti-trust suit they decided to settle right after Scalia up and died in >>69847482
? This next BIGGIE class-action case is what they were afraid of.
nytimes.com/2016/03/23/business/supreme-court-upholds-worker-class-action-suit-against-tyson.html
>WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with thousands of workers at an Iowa pork processing plant who had sought to band together in a single lawsuit to recover overtime pay from Tyson Foods.
>Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 6-to-2 decision, said the plaintiffs were entitled to rely on statistics to prove their case. The ruling limited the sweep of the court’s 2011 decision in Walmart Stores v. Dukes, which threw out an enormous employment discrimination class-action suit and made it harder for workers, investors and consumers to join together to pursue their claims.
>The Tyson workers performed tasks that were “grueling and dangerous” at a plant in Storm Lake, Iowa, Justice Kennedy wrote, slaughtering hogs, trimming the meat and preparing it for shipment. They sought to be paid for the time they had spent putting on and taking off protective gear to prevent knife cuts. Tyson did not keep records, and the workers tried to prove their damages based on an expert witness’s statistical inferences from hundreds of videotaped observations of how long it took the workers to get ready.
>The company objected, saying there was wide variation in how long the extra work took and that some workers were not entitled to overtime at all. But Justice Kennedy said statistical proof was sufficient.
>>69848660 Continued
>“A representative or statistical sample, like all evidence, is a means to establish or defend against liability,” he wrote. “Its permissibility turns not on the form a proceeding takes — be it a class or individual action — but on the degree to which the evidence is reliable in proving or disproving the elements of the relevant cause of action.”
>The workers should not suffer because Tyson failed to keep records, Justice Kennedy added, citing a 1946 precedent, Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery. “Where the employer’s records are inaccurate or inadequate and the employee cannot offer convincing substitutes,” the court said in 1946, it is enough for workers to rely on “sufficient evidence to show the amount and extent of that work as a matter of just and reasonable inference.”
Dow had filed an amicus brief in this case last year on Tyson Food's behalf.
http://blogs.reuters.com/alison-frankel/2015/10/02/dow-wields-scotus-amicus-brief-to-erase-1-1-billion-antitrust-judgment/
The case is Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo
On March 22, 2016 the SCOTUS issued their first 4-4 deadlocked decision.
thehill.com/policy/finance/273895-supreme-court-issues-first-4-4-tie-since-scalias-death
>The court tied 4-4 in a case involving whether a pair of wives should be held financially responsible for the failure of their husbands’ real estate endeavor.
>At question in the case is what legal protections are available to Valerie Hawkins and Janice Patterson, who were required by the bank to sign on as guarantors on a loan application submitted by their husbands. When the men's business failed to make loan payments, the bank declared the loans in default and demanded payment from all four.
>Hawkins and Patterson argued that such a demand constituted discrimination because of marital status, which is prohibited under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which bars lending discrimination across a host of factors. But the bank contended that the two were not considered loan “applicants” under that law since they simply had to sign on as spouses to the loan seekers, leaving the courts to settle the dispute.
>The outcome of Hawkins v. Community Bank of Raymore leaves in place a lower court ruling that affirmed that the bank did not discriminate against the women.
>But it also means the Supreme Court did not resolve pair of conflicting lower court rulings on the matter. A decision from the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled directly on this case, conflicted with a prior ruling from the 6th Circuit on a similar issue.
Read up on Sturgeon v. Frost if you like Alaska, moose hunting, and/or hovercrafts (yes really).
washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/high-court-rules-in-favor-of-alaskan-moose-hunter-hands-case-back-to-lower-court/2016/03/22/1ccba774-f04c-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html
I can't be bothered.
Here's the next BIGGIE 4-4 decision which is a (temporal) win for labor unions.
usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/29/supreme-court-public-employee-unions-mandatory-fees-scalia/81123772/
>WASHINGTON — Conservatives bent on crippling the power of public employee unions lost their best opportunity in years Tuesday when the Supreme Court deadlocked over a challenge to the fees those unions collect from non-members.
>Rather than seeking to reschedule the case for their next term, the justices simply announced they were tied 4-4 — a verdict which leaves intact the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upholding the fee collections.
>That was a major victory for the unions and the court's four liberal justices following Justice Antonin Scalia's death last month. During oral argument in January, it had appeared almost certain that the court would strike down the requirement in 23 states that teachers and government workers contribute to the cost of collective bargaining, even if they disagree with their unions' demands.
>The result would have been the demise of a nearly 40-year-old Supreme Court precedent that allows unions to impose such requirements on non-members. It would have made it harder for unions representing teachers, police and firefighters, and other government workers to maintain their power by affecting their pocketbooks.
>The judicial deadlock allows the California Teachers Association to keep collecting the fees, but it does not have nationwide impact. The 9th Circuit standard applies only to states within its jurisdiction, including Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington as well as California.
The case is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association et al.
Here's the last decision rendered until now (which I consider a sleeper earthquake)
nytimes.com/2016/03/31/us/politics/supreme-court-rules-against-freezing-assets-not-tied-to-crimes.html
>WASHINGTON — The government may not freeze assets needed to pay criminal defense lawyers if the assets are not linked to a crime, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a 5-to-3 decision that scrambled the usual alliances.
>The case arose from the prosecution of Sila Luis, a Florida woman, on charges of Medicare fraud that, according to the government, involved $45 million in charges for unneeded or nonexistent services. Almost all of Ms. Luis’s profits from the fraud, prosecutors said, had been spent by the time charges were filed.
>Prosecutors instead asked a judge to freeze $2 million of Ms. Luis’s funds that were not connected to the suspected fraud, saying the money would be used to pay fines and provide restitution should she be convicted. Ms. Luis said she needed the money to pay her lawyers.
>The judge issued an order freezing her assets. That order, the Supreme Court ruled, violated her Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in a plurality opinion also signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said the case was simple.
>The government can seize, Justice Breyer wrote, “a robber’s loot, a drug seller’s cocaine, a burglar’s tools, or other property associated with the planning, implementing, or concealing of a crime.” But it cannot, he said, freeze money or other assets unconnected to the crime.
>“The distinction that we have discussed is thus an important one, not a technicality,” he wrote. “It is the difference between what is yours and what is mine.”
The case is Luis v. United States, No. 14-419
