Landmark Ruling for LGBTQ Workplace Rights | Qualified Immunity Doesn’t Get A Fresh Look | Justices Reject Several Challenges To Gun Restrictions
June 15, 2020
FREE TO BE YOU AND ME
|In a stunning decision this morning, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination. CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS and JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH joined their liberal colleagues in the majority, with Gorsuch writing the court’s opinion on the case. Gorsuch: “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids. Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands.”
QUALIFIED IMMUNITY DOESN'T QUALIFY
|As protests continue throughout the country over police brutality, SCOTUS today said it won’t be taking another look at qualified immunity — the much-criticized legal doctrine that shields police from accountability for poor conduct. Only JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS dissented writing that “qualified immunity doctrine appears to stray from the statutory text.” Nina Totenberg with NPR reports, “Developed in recent decades by the high court, the qualified immunity doctrine, as applied to police, initially asks two questions: Did police use excessive force, and if they did, should they have known that their conduct was illegal because it violated a ‘clearly established’ prior court ruling that barred such conduct? The idea behind the doctrine was to protect police from frivolous lawsuits and allow some ‘breathing room’ for police mistakes that involve split-second judgments in tense and dangerous situations. But in practice, because of recent Supreme Court decisions, lower courts have most often dismissed police misconduct lawsuits on grounds that there is no prior court decision with nearly identical facts.”
SAVING SANCTUARIES
|SCOTUS today declined to hear an appeal from the Trump administration challenging California’s sanctuary law which prohibits state officials from telling federal officials when undocumented immigrants are to be released from state custody. The law also shields immigrants from being transferred from state custody to federal immigration authorities. The high court gave no reason for its decision in the matter — as is custom — but JUSTICES ALITO and THOMAS said they would have granted the administration’s petition.
UNDER AND OVER
|The Supreme Court ruled against environmentalists today when it said the federal government has the authority to allow a $7.5 billion natural gas pipeline to cross under the Appalachian Trail in rural Virginia. Justices voted 7-2, with JUSTICES SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN in the dissent.
SHOT DOWN
|In a massive blow to gun rights activists, the Supreme Court today declined to take up 10 different cases that could have expanded gun rights in America. JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS and BRETT KAVANAUGH said they would have heard one of the cases regarding New Jersey’s concealed carry permits. Thomas wrote, “In several jurisdictions throughout the country, law-abiding citizens have been barred from exercising the fundamental right to bear arms because they cannot show that they have a ‘justifiable need’ or ‘good reason’ for doing so. One would think that such an onerous burden on a fundamental right would warrant this court’s review.” Other cases that were rejected dealt with bans on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and handgun sales.
MORE ALIGNED THAN YOU THINK
|Adam Liptak and Alicia Parlapiano with The New York Times review a new survey from Harvard, Stanford and the University of Texas which suggests public opinion generally supports the politically liberal position across the high court’s most contentious cases of the term. From abortion access, to gay rights, to PRESIDENT TRUMP’S financial records, to the fate of DACA — the public largely aligns with the liberal perspective on those issues, though on some of the major cases this term Democrats and Republicans sharply disagree.
OTHER NEWS
Supreme Court Could Force Congress Into Battle Over Dreamers
POLITICO“The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks on the fate of an Obama-era program to shield undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, delivering a jolt to Washington amid a global pandemic and historic unrest over the killing of African Americans at the hands of police. A Supreme Court decision necessitating Congress to act would add another monstrous task to its to-do list this year, while also thrusting lawmakers into one of the thorniest political debates just months before they, and President Donald Trump, are on the ballot.”
The Rising Trump Lawyer Battling To Reshape The Electorate
The New York Times“A leading legal champion of this effort has been Mr. Consovoy, 45, a Trump lawyer who mixes Jersey guy affability with an affinity for some of the most divisive culture-wars legal disputes. He and his firm have argued against affirmative action at Harvard and for virtually outlawing abortion in Georgia. His work for Mr. Trump has centered on the president’s efforts, now before the Supreme Court, to keep his tax returns private — in the course of which Mr. Consovoy famously claimed that the president could not be prosecuted while in office, even for shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. But it is his work on voting cases across the country that is drawing increasing attention in this presidential election year roiled by pandemic and protest.”