SCOTUS Puts Obamacare Dispute On The Fast Track | How Are Supreme Court Lawyers Liking The New Two-Minute Rule
January 7, 2020
THE NEED FOR SPEED
|Yesterday, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration and states challenging a portion of the Affordable Care Act to respond by this Friday to an appeal filed by defenders of the law. This comes after a group of Democratic state officials asked SCOTUS last week to expedite a briefing schedule and consider adding the case to its docket swiftly. Monday’s action from the high court means justices could indeed take up the case this term.
MORE THAN A TECHNICALITY
|Axios reports that in a Supreme Court filing yesterday, “Google argued that the future of software innovation and interoperability hangs on the court’s decision in the tech giant’s long copyright battle with Oracle.” The big picture, as Axios puts it, is that billions of dollars in damages are at stake in the case, which centers on whether Google illegally used parts of Oracle’s Java code for its Android software.
SAY SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING
|Jordan S. Rubin and Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson with Bloomberg Law interviewed a dozen lawyers who have argued under the Supreme Court’s new two-minute rule to see what they think of getting a little more room to breathe, and of course, advocate. The new rule gives lawyers two minutes of uninterrupted time to speak before justices are allowed to jump in and start inundating them with questions. Rubin and Robinson write in their report, “As with many of the cloistered institution’s behind-the-scenes moves, the court didn’t explain what prompted the change, which justices wanted it, or really anything else about it. The Supreme Court declined to comment about how the rule was going for this story. On the whole, the new rule seems to have been well-received by advocates.”
NO PUBLIC ACCESS
|California officials are suing a billionaire fighting to keep all to himself a beach that runs through his property. The problem for this guy is that California’s state Constitution guarantees public access to all beaches below the high tide line. Daisy Nguyen with The Washington Post reports.
WATER YOU TALKING ABOUT
|“For three decades, Georgia and Florida have been battling over how to share a precious resource: water. Georgia has it, and Florida, which is downstream, says it’s not getting its fair share.” Debbie Elliot and Greg Allen with NPR write that this water dispute is headed to the Supreme Court again, with Florida wanting the justices to cap Georgia’s water use.
JUST GETTING STARTED
|Yelena Dzhanova with CNBC covers the battle over abortion rights, looking at the changes that impacted access to the procedure in 2019 and what’s expected to happen next. “Reproductive rights experts anticipate the abortion landscape to change even more dramatically in the year ahead, thanks to an onslaught of expected court rulings and new laws. Many of the battles in the coming year stem from policies implemented and struck down in prior years.”