For SCOTUS, A Little Transparency Goes A Long Way | The Consequences Of Supreme Court’s Wisconsin Election Decision
April 14, 2020
ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN
|“The decision to make their teleconference arguments public brings some immediate transparency to an insular institution that has long prided itself on resisting technology and live broadcasts of any kind.” That’s Joan Biskupic with CNN reacting to the Supreme Court’s announcement yesterday that it would hear oral arguments virtually in May. She notes that although it is a “historic breakthrough in public access to America’s highest court,” it is also a fairly limited move.
NOBODY SAID IT WAS EASY
|NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports on the three cases justices will hear next month involving PRESIDENT TRUMP’S financial records. She also notes, “The justices have been under increasing pressure to resume oral arguments after a two-month corona hiatus, especially as other courts across the country have begun to conduct their proceedings remotely — not that anyone expects the telephone arguments will be easy. With the justices unable to see each other and the lawyers also unable to see the justices, oral argument may be more stilted than usual, with fewer follow-up questions and answers.”
GOOD GOING
|Hours before election day in Wisconsin last week, the Supreme Court ruled to not allow the deadline for mail-in ballots to be extended — pandemic be damned. But Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti with The New York Times report that the result of the justices’ decision was pretty clear: the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters and an exacerbation of the unfolding public health crisis. While the several thousand or more who did vote in-person may have endangered their own lives, they also burdened the already strained state health officials with a grim new task of tracking the extent to which in-person voting contributed to the virus’s spread in a state that has been deemed a federal disaster area.
NOT NOW PLEASE
|Three states and New York City asked the Supreme Court today to block Trump administration regulations that penalize immigrants for seeking public health benefits. Together, New York, Connecticut, Vermont and New York City argue that noncitizens shouldn’t be deterred from seeking health care during the pandemic. New York’s attorney general, LETITIA JAMES said, “Every person who doesn’t get the health coverage they need today risks infecting another person with the coronavirus tomorrow.”
HOW LOW CAN YOU GO
|Scott Rosenberg with Axios reports SCOTUS has left a long-running dispute between Google and Oracle in limbo, having not added it to its list of cases to be heard via teleconference next month. It’s likely the case will get punted to the next term, thereby postponing a case that could potentially have a “wide impact on the intellectual property landscape of the tech industry and the future of software interoperability.”