Texas Throws A Hail Mary For Trump | Justices Grapple With Robocall Ban In Facebook Case
December 8, 2020
ANOTHER LONG-SHOT LAWSUIT
|In an effort to keep PRESIDENT TRUMP in office, Texas announced today a lawsuit at the Supreme Court against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin alleging the battleground states unlawfully made changes to their election procedures to account for the pandemic. JOE BIDEN won in all four of the states named in the suit, and the long-shot lawsuit represents the latest effort to reverse his victory. Legal experts were quick to dismiss the case as political theater.
THE GRAVITY OF IT ALL
|Yesterday, justices considered whether American courts have a role to play in deciding whether Hungary and Germany must pay for property said to be stolen from Jews during World War II. Adam Liptak with The New York Times writes that although SCOTUS has historically been “wary” of cases concerning conduct that takes place abroad, “The gravity of the human rights violations described in the two lawsuits persuaded a federal appeals court in Washington to let the two cases move forward.”
GOES BOTH WAYS
|Nina Totenberg with NPR suggests both liberal and conservative justices were concerned with the prospect of litigating the actions of foreign actors in American courts. JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER suggested that if other countries were to do the same to America, the nation could be held accountable for its own past actions like the Japanese internment during World War II.
FINE FOR NOW
|Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal from Oregon parents who want transgender students to use bathrooms based on their sex assigned at birth. The high court’s decision let stand a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the school district’s policy of permitting trans students to use facilities based on their gender identity. The outcome comes as a win for civil rights groups that worry about JUSTICE AMY BARRETT’S approach to LGBTQ equality.
THE WONDERS OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY
|Greg Stohr with Bloomberg reports on the case before the Supreme Court today in which justices considered “whether to allow a lawsuit accusing Facebook Inc. of sending repeated unwanted text messages.” At issue was how to apply a 1991 law that bans robocalls, and justices seemed to think it doesn’t apply to calls or texts that go to a wrong number — as Facebook says may have happened in this case. JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS said during the 80-minute argument, “Don’t you think it’s rather odd that we are applying a statute that’s almost anachronistic if not vestigial to a modern technology like Facebook and instant messaging, et cetera? Don’t you think that at some point, there’s at least a sense of futility?”