SCOTUS Watch …
The Supreme Court will be releasing opinions on Wednesday and Thursday morning at 10am Eastern and then next week on Monday, June 30th to finish the term. SCOTUSblog will liveblog here today starting at 9:45 Eastern.
SCOTUSblog: October 2013 Term, major cases pending
McCullen v. Coakley, No. 12-1168 [Arg: 1.15.2014]Issue(s): (1) Whether the First Circuit erred in upholding Massachusetts’ selective exclusion law – which makes it a crime for speakers other than clinic “employees or agents . . . acting within the scope of their employment” to “enter or remain on a public way or sidewalk” within thirty-five feet of an entrance, exit, or driveway of “a reproductive health care facility” – under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, on its face and as applied to petitioners; (2) whether, if Hill v. Colorado permits enforcement of this law, Hill should be limited or overruled.
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National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, No. 12-1281 [Arg: 1.13.2014]
Issue(s): (1) Whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised during a recess that occurs within a session of the Senate, or is instead limited to recesses that occur between enumerated sessions of the Senate; (2) whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised to fill vacancies that exist during a recess, or is instead limited to vacancies that first arose during that recess; and (3) whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised when the Senate is convening every three days in pro forma sessions.
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Harris v. Quinn, No. 11-681 [Arg: 1.21.2014]
Issue(s): (1) Whether a state may, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs; and (2) whether the lower court erred in holding that the claims of providers in the Home Based Support Services Program are not ripe for judicial review.
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Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, No. 13-356 [Arg: 3.25.2014]
Issue(s): Whether the religious owners of a family business, or their closely held, for-profit corporation, have free exercise rights that are violated by the application of the contraceptive-coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, No. 13-354 [Arg: 3.25.2014]
Issue(s): Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. ยงยง 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.
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DECISION: Cell phones cannot be searched without a specific warrant. Unanimous. Opinion PDF
Riley v. California, No. 13-132 [Arg: 4.29.2014]
Issue(s): Whether evidence admitted at petitioner’s trial was obtained in a search of petitioner’s cell phone that violated petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights.
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DECISION: Aereo may not retransmit broadcasts of copyrighted material. 6 to 3. Opinion PDF
American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo, No. 13-461 [Arg: 4.22.2014]
Issue(s): Whether a company “publicly performs” a copyrighted television program when it retransmits a broadcast of that program to thousands of paid subscribers over the Internet.
SCOTUSblog news below …
SCOTUSblog denied credentials, again
The popular Supreme Court news site SCOTUSblog has once again been denied credentials to the Supreme Court, publisher Tom Goldstein reported Monday. […]
SCOTUSblog launched in 2002 and, since the Supreme Court’s landmark health care ruling in 2012, has been seen as an invaluable source for news on the Supreme Court. Nearly 10,000 people were on the site on Monday morning in anticipation of the Supreme Court order, according to co-founder Amy Howe.
The site’s reporter, Lyle Denniston, has been denied credentials by the Supreme Court and the Senate. The Standing Committee of Correspondents has argued that SCOTUSblog does not meet credential requirements because Goldstein failed to establish a firewall between the blog and his law practice, which argues before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court does not issue credentials but relies on credentialing from Congress. SCOTUSblog has been trying to get credentials from the Senate Daily Press Gallery. Josh Marshall:
At the end of the day, all of it comes down to this. SCOTUSBlog is the preeminent source of real-time and journalistic reporting on the Supreme Court in the country. I say this with full knowledge that there are many extremely talented Supreme Court and legal affairs reporters working for various newspapers and news outlets. And it’s no disrespect at all to them. (I have no idea who the best individual Supreme Court reporter is.) The simple fact is that whenever a big case comes down, basically everyone goes to SCOTUSBlog to get the first read on what happened. This is quite simply a fact.
So you have this perverse situation in which what is arguably and close to objectively the top source of reporting and commentary on the Supreme Court being basically the only ones who aren’t credentialed to cover it. That’s the problem with this decision. From what I can see, the rules don’t at all prevent the committee from issuing SCOTUSBLog a credential. If the rules do, then the rules are outmoded and should change.
Because, really, don’t we all want to see more of this?
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