TRUMP THREATENS A SCOTUS FIGHT, AGAIN | Breyer’s Hotline Bling | Gorsuch & The Case Of The Burping Boy
April 26, 2017
STRAIGHT TO THE TOP
|Yesterday, PRESIDENT TRUMP vowed to challenge California jurisdictions all the way to the Supreme Court after a federal judge there stopped him from withholding funds to penalize them for shielding illegal immigrants. The judge who issued the latest ruling hails from California, the same state as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which heard the previous cases on Trump’s immigration policy. Trump tweeted: “First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous things. See you in the Supreme Court!”
YOU USED TO CALL ME ON MY CELLPHONE
|There’s really nothing like the embarrassment of hearing your cellphone’s ring-a-ding-ding when you weren’t supposed to have the thing in the first place. Poor JUSTICE BREYER lived every high school student’s nightmare yesterday, except instead of his phone going off in history class, it went off during arguments at the United States Supreme Court. Cellphones and other electronic devices are not allowed in SCOTUS and a spokeswoman for the court said Breyer’s phone faux-pas was nothing more than an oversight.
ALL THE BEST ARE FROM THE WEST
|“NEIL GORSUCH proved his usefulness Tuesday as the only ‘non-coastal’ U.S. Supreme court justice. The Coloradan knew that I-90 runs across Montana.” Tony Mauro with The National Law Journal reports on the utility of geographic diversity at the Supreme Court and how Gorsuch is already scoring brownie points amongst his colleagues.
TOP-ED
|“It was bad enough when candidate DONALD TRUMP questioned the impartiality of the federal judge hearing the Trump University lawsuit. (Trump said that the judge’s ethnic heritage would make him biased.) It was even worse when President Trump accused the federal judges temporarily halting his travel bans of purely political motivations and limited intelligence.” That’s Glenn C. Smith in the Los Angeles Times noting that it’s not ok for anyone — even the president — to delegitimize judges.
THE BURPING BOY
|Marcia Coyle with The National Law Journal writes, “JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH may face his first recusal when the justices in May take up a petition that involves—and features prominently—one of his most famous dissents: the case of the burping 13-year-old student.”
DYING DEATH PENALTY
|Jessica Brand opines for CNN that Arkansas is the latest illustration of how the death penalty in America is dying, if not already dead. “If the justices of the Supreme Court were previously unaware of the state of the American death penalty, they can no longer claim ignorance. In Oklahoma, after a yearlong review of the state’s death penalty system, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission recognized that the state failed to execute only ‘the worst of the worst’ and on Tuesday recommended a continued moratorium in the state.”
OTHER NEWS
Trump's Eagerness for a Win Hurts Him in Court
Bloomberg“What’s noteworthy is how desperate the Trump Department of Justice was to avoid a defeat — so desperate, in fact, that its lawyers told the judge that the executive order actually had no legal effect at all.”
Justice Sotomayor calls out her Supreme Court colleagues for going too easy on the police
Vox“Yet the courts, now backed by a majority of the Supreme Court, seemed to be quick in granting summary judgment in this case. To Sotomayor, this seems to be evidence that the system is tilted in favor of police officers: If a small technicality — like someone not explicitly disputing one fact — is available, the legal system will side with the police. That, Sotomayor argued, is a problem. ‘We take one step back today,’ she wrote. ‘I respectfully dissent.’”
Sex and Hate in the Mountain State
Slate“‘“That is a violation of civil rights because of sex.’ I find that argument compelling. The West Virginia Supreme Court likely will not. A majority of justices were outwardly skeptical of Plymale’s argument, expressing their hesitance to ‘legislate from the bench.’ For the near future, at least, LGBTQ people will probably remain unprotected by the state’s hate crime law.”