SCOTUS Goes Retro With Its Teleconference Plans | Wisconsin Voters Sick With COVID-19, Linked With In-Person Voting
April 22, 2020
BROUGHT THAT OLD THING BACK
|“It took a worldwide pandemic for the court to agree to hear arguments over the telephone, with audio available live for the first time. C-SPAN plans to carry the arguments.” Clare Cushman, the director of publications at the Supreme Court Historical Society, told the Associated Press that even though the high court’s decision to hold live oral arguments remotely next month is a huge leap forward for the institution, the decision is also “sort of retro.”
OOPS, MY BAD
|Marcia Coyle with The National Law Journal reports on a rare confession of error from the Solicitor General’s office to the U.S. Supreme Court. Coyle reports, “The prisoner, Jamaican-born Andrew Brown, filed a petition for review in the Supreme Court claiming that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit incorrectly dismissed his appeal as untimely. He argued that the federal Board of Immigration Appeals had mailed its final decision on his removal to the wrong prison address and that prevented him from meeting the appeal deadline. In the Supreme Court, U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL NOEL FRANCISCO told the justices that the Board of Immigration Appeals and the government agreed now that the board mailed its original decision to the wrong address. Although confessions of error at the Supreme Court are uncommon, Brown’s case was remarkable for another reason: Many records in his case are sealed or not otherwise easily accessible. The government’s brief confessing error was not publicly accessible on the Supreme Court’s online docket.”
FROM BAD TO WORSE
|Yesterday, the White House blocked tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants and DACA recipients from getting billions in aid earmarked for college students affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Chris Quintana with USA Today reports that the decision leaves the affected students with an even “steeper challenge in attending and finishing college.” Later this year SCOTUS is expected to decide the fate of the DACA program altogether — a program that allows nearly 700,000 people to work in the country and avoid deportation.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal reviews the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday when it said juries must render unanimous verdicts to make convictions relating to serious crimes. The Ed Board argues that the conservatives’ dueling opinions on the matter is evidence that Democrats are wrong to suggest conservative justices are simply “glorified partisans.”
AS EXPECTED
|The Associated Press reports that at least seven people seem to have contracted the coronavirus from voting in-person during Wisconsin’s elections earlier this month. “The day before the election, Democratic GOV. TONY EVERS ordered that it be delayed and shifted to all-mail voting, only to be overturned when Republican legislative leaders won an appeal in the state’s conservative-controlled Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court’s five Republican appointees also blocked a judge’s order that would have given voters an extra week to submit their ballots by mail.” And with that, the elections were on and now folks seem to be getting sick because of it. To vote in the age of the coronavirus!