SCOTUS GETS A MOVE ON IT | New Decisions On Civil Rights, Whistle-Blowers, And More | What Clarence Thomas Gets Wrong On Second Amendment
February 22, 2018
WORTH THE WAIT
|Yesterday the Supreme Court finally churned out some opinions, satiating our appetite for movement from the court after a long period of silence this term. In just one day, the justices issued as many decisions as they had in the last five months. The cases touch topics ranging from international terrorism to prisoners’ civil rights. Notably, the high court ruled that a North Carolina man who pleaded guilty to illegal firearm possession may still appeal his conviction on constitutional grounds. The decision comes at a time when the national debate over gun reform has reached new heights thanks to the gravitas of a handful of Florida students in the wake of last week’s mast shooting in a Parkland high school. The North Carolina ruling disrupted the court’s ideological alliances, as JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH joined CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS and their four liberal colleagues in the majority.
NOT GIVING IN
|Pennsylvania Republicans are having a hard time letting go, and it’s easy to see why. The state supreme court handed down a new, nonpartisan congressional map that levels the playing field and offers new hope for Democrats to have a fair shot in the 2018 elections. So Pennsylvania Republicans filed yet another emergency appeal to the Supreme Court yesterday. The first appeal to SCOTUS went to JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO who turned it down without input from the rest of the court. This new appeal asks SCOTUS to put the newest map on hold because the state court didn’t give the legislature a meaningful opportunity to draw a new map. The Republican lawmakers say the case does raise a federal constitutional issue because the state court is dictating rules for elections to federal office instead of allowing the legislature to do so, as called for under the federal Constitution.
LIKE A DREAM
|“Few people expected that the Pennsylvania congressional map, which the state Supreme Court ordered redrawn to undo Republican gerrymandering, would prove to be as favorable to Democrats as the one adopted by the court on Monday. Perhaps the easiest way to convey the cause for surprise: The new map is better for Democrats — by nearly every measure — than the maps that Democrats themselves proposed.” That’s Nate Cohn in The New York Times explaining how it happened that Democrats in Pennsylvania got a better map than they could have ever dreamed up.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of the Los Angeles Times thinks it’s “time to slay the monster of partisan gerrymandering” and looks to the Supreme Court to deal the final blow when it decides its two gerrymandering cases this term. “The court already aided the cause of reform with a 2015 ruling upholding the right of states to entrust the drawing of congressional district lines to independent commissions, as California does. But the cases before the court this term provide an opportunity for the justices to go dramatically further and rule that some gerrymanders are so extreme that they violate the U.S. Constitution.”
ON THE ROAD
|On March 1, JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER will be at the University of Virginia School of Law to discuss his most recent book, “The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities.” The school will livestream the event on its Facebook page (yay technology!!) and seating is first come, first served.
SCOTUS VIEWS
A Supreme Court Shaped By Trump Could Decide Gun Control
The Washington Post“A change in the Supreme Court’s hands-off approach may require a change in Supreme Court personnel. The current lineup can’t last forever. Kennedy is 81 and just completed his 30th year on the court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a dissenter in Heller, is 84 . If either leaves before 2021, President Trump — ‘The right to keep and bear arms protects all our other rights,’ he said in 2016 — would nominate the replacement.”
What Clarence Thomas Gets Wrong About The Second Amendment
The Atlantic“In Tuesday’s dissent, Thomas complained that ‘[t]he right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan.’ But in a world where consequences matter, the choice of the ‘orphan’ metaphor is a particularly regrettable one: Guns in America have created real orphans in every city and state. No other right I can think of has done the same.”
Compelled Riders: Why It's Time To Set Workers Free
Forbes“With the 40 years of evidence we have acquired since Abood, we now know this violation of worker’s rights is not justified. The free rider argument is unfounded and thousands of workers have needlessly been made compelled riders on the union’s agenda. With Janus before the Court, it is finally time to set those workers free.”