TRUMP LOOKING AT DELAYING CENSUS | Roberts Is The New Swing Vote, But Are There Others?
July 2, 2019
ALL FOR ONE, AND ONE FOR ALL
|Today, more than 200 companies are asking the Supreme Court to apply the nation’s job discrimination laws to sexual orientation and gender identity. When the justices return to the bench next term, they’ll have before them three major civil rights cases from New York, Michigan and Georgia that all involve workers who claim they were fired because they were gay or transgender. Companies including Amazon, Apply, Facebook, Google, Uber and the San Francisco Giants argue, “Laws forbidding sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination are not unreasonably costly or burdensome for business. Only a uniform federal rule can enable businesses to recruit and retain, and employees to perform, at their highest levels.” Richard Wolf with USA Today reports.
THE SLOW-WALK
|The president said yesterday that his administration is “looking at” delaying the 2020 census after SCOTUS blocked a question about citizenship status from being added to the decennial survey. PRESIDENT TRUMP said from the White House yesterday, “I think it’s very important to find out if somebody is a citizen as opposed to an illegal. I think there’s a big difference, to me, between being a citizen of the United States and being an illegal.” The printing of the census is now on hold following last week’s Supreme Court ruling, though the government had previously told the courts that the deadline to tell the printing company which version of the questionnaire to use was July 1 — yesterday.
BLOWING THROUGH DEADLINES
|“The Trump administration appears to have missed its own deadline Monday to start the printing of paper forms and other mailings that will play a key role in next year’s constitutionally mandated head count of every person living in the U.S.” Hansi Lo Wang with NPR reports that as of yesterday evening “the 2020 census materials did not appear to have been officially approved by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for printing.” Additionally, he writes, “Justice Department attorneys told a federal judge in Maryland on Monday that the administration has not reached a final decision on whether it will try to make another case in court for adding a hotly contested citizenship question to census forms.”
IT'S OVER, IT'S OVER, I'M LEAVING, I'M GONE
|Nina Totenberg with NPR offers us six important takeaways from the Supreme Court term that ended last week. Number one on her list: CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS is now the high court’s swing vote. She also points out that while JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG continues to be a workhorse, powering through another ordeal with cancer earlier this term, she may be ready to pass the liberal torch to another one of her colleagues.
SWING SWING FROM THE TANGLES OF MY HEART
|Is it possible though that CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS isn’t alone? That there isn’t one but three swing votes now on the high court? Amelia Thomson-Deveaux with FiveThirtyEight also looks to JUSTICES GORSUCH and KAVANAUGH to see how their record stacks up, and she wonders if the days of there being a single swing vote are over.
TOP-ED
|“When the 2018 Supreme Court term began in October, all eyes were on the confirmation of the newest justice, BRETT KAVANAUGH. By the time the term wrapped up in June, the center of attention was CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS.” That’s Noah Feldman for Bloomberg noting “the balance of power in the Supreme Court is now in the hands of a true believer in judicial restraint.” Roberts is a new kind of swing vote, Feldman asserts, as the chief justice takes on the important role of the centrist among the rest of his colleagues.
OTHER NEWS
Here’s How To Fix Partisan Gerrymandering, Now That The Supreme Court Kicked It Back To The States.
The Washington Post“Independent districting works, but politicians will resist it. Although our analysis is only preliminary, our findings suggest that independent redistricting is likely to succeed in neutralizing partisan influence. But in many of the states where reformers have won key victories, lawmakers have resisted implementing those reforms.”
Bridgegate Plotter To Be Released From Prison After Supreme Court Takes Case
POLITICO“A former ally of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, serving an 18-month prison sentence for his role in the Bridgegate scandal, will be released from federal prison after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Bill Baroni, a former Republican state lawmaker who served as Christie’s deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, asked U.S. District Court Judge Susan Wigenton on Monday to set bail and allow him to leave the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pa. Federal prosecutors did not oppose the request.”