ANOTHA GERRYMANDERING CASE ADDED | Internet Sales Might Soon Be Taxable | A Case You Absolutely Need To Follow
January 16, 2018
PILING IT ON
|Hope you had a nice long weekend commemorating MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. and are ready to jump back in to another big week for the Supreme Court. In case you missed it, on Friday the justices decided to take up twelve new cases. Among those added was yet another case focused on gerrymandering, making this the third of its kind on the SCOTUS docket right now. The high court will consider whether congressional and state legislative districts in Texas violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minority voters. The justices also announced that they will consider overruling a decades-old precedent that hobbles states from requiring online retailers to collect sales tax.
GET YOUR PRIME ORDERS IN NOW
|The sales tax case now on the SCOTUS docket will revisit a 26-yer-old ruling that made much of the internet a tax-free zone. The case, known as South Dakota v. Wayfair, sends a clear signal that the time may have come for the justices to reverse themselves and demand that online retailers collect and remit sales taxes — even in states where they have no physical presence.
STATE CASE WATCH
|Sam Levine with HuffPost reports that while gerrymandering plays out at the high court, a storm is brewing in the states. The state supreme court of Pennsylvania could be on the verge of dealing partisan gerrymandering a big blow. Oral argument is scheduled for tomorrow in a case alleging the state’s 2011 congressional map violates protections of freedom of expression and equal protection as provided in the state constitution. A ruling could come down from the court before the end of January, which could order state lawmakers to redraw the congressional map ahead of the 2018 elections.
YOU'VE GOT A FAN IN ME
|Jess Bravin with The Wall Street Journal reports that JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA felt positively about DONALD TRUMP’S run for the White House. The late jurist’s literary collaborator, Bryan Garner, noted that Scalia thought “it was refreshing to have a candidate who was pretty much unfiltered and utterly frank.”
YOU NEED TO FOLLOW THIS CASE
|“If a citizen speaks at a public meeting and says something a politician doesn’t like, can the citizen be arrested, cuffed, and carted off to the hoosegow? Suppose that, during this fraught encounter, the citizen violates some law—even by accident, even one no one has ever heard of, even one dug up after the fact—does that make her arrest constitutional?” These questions are at the center of a case Garrett Epps in The Atlantic says you absolutely need to follow.
PODCAST DU JOUR
|Our friends over at First Mondays have a new episode of their podcast available in which they share some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that SCOTUS has a mouse problem (my actual worst nightmare), and the good news is they have a new, very high-profile fan. Catch their latest pod titled, “Numbing Effect.”
OTHER NEWS
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From Suspended Florida Judge
The Associated Press“The Supreme Court is leaving in place the suspension of a Florida judge for using a 20-year-old newspaper endorsement on a flier during her campaign in 2014. The justices offered no comment Tuesday in rejecting an appeal from Judge Kim Shepard.”
U.S. Top Court Rejects Former New York Lawmaker Silver's Appeal
Reuters“The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected former New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s bid to avoid a retrial on corruption charges after his 2015 conviction was thrown out by a lower court.”
Workplace Lawyers Race Against The Trump Clock
Bloomberg“While employers across America paid a record amount in settlements for workplace violations last year, don’t expect it to be the beginning of a trend. Think of it more as the storm before the calm, as labor lawyers rush to lock in payouts ahead of a shifting legal landscape.”
Gerrymandering Case Sows Doubt In Big Year For House Races
The Associated Press“Lots of people want to run for Congress in Pennsylvania this year, but they may not yet know which district they live in. The prospect that the state Supreme Court could decide a high-profile gerrymandering case by ordering new boundaries for Pennsylvania’s 18 congressional districts, including one that has been described as looking like ‘Goofy kicking Donald Duck,’ is sowing uncertainty barely a month before candidates begin circulating petitions.”