SCOTUS Rules Against Immigrants Seeking Green Cards & Declines To Take Up Challenge To Male-Only Military Draft
June 7, 2021
RED LIGHT FOR GREEN CARDS
|The Supreme Court this morning unanimously held that the government can block non-citizens, who are in the US under a program that temporarily protects them from deportation in certain situations, from applying for a green card if they entered the country unlawfully.
NOT NOW
|Also this morning, SCOTUS said it won’t take up a lawsuit challenging the nation’s male-only draft registration. The ACLU and a group called the National Coalition for Men have said the requirement that men, not women, register with the Selective Service System at 18 is unconstitutional and “one of the last sex-based classifications in federal law.”
THIS IS THE END, HOLD YOUR BREATH AND COUNT TO TEN
|“Supreme Court begins its sprint to finish — and a decision by one justice might be the most important” — that’s the headline of a recent piece from Robert Barnes with The Washington Post. He notes that today justices will begin their final stretch of the term, handing down a number of high-profile, potentially controversial decisions impacting voting rights, LGBTQ rights, and free speech for students. “But perhaps the most consequential decision,” he writes, “has no deadline and will be made by a court of one: 82-year-old JUSTICE STEPHEN G. BREYER.” Barnes notes, “He certainly has given no indication he is tired of the job he has held for 27 years; because of JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG’S long tenure, Breyer has been the leader of the court’s diminished liberal bloc for less than a year. And he’s been the court’s most loquacious member during the coronavirus pandemic, speaking to the American Bar Association, law schools and a Zoom audience of high school and middle school students. Some thought they heard a valedictory note in his speech at Harvard Law School in April…But the long speech in some ways was a compilation of what Breyer has said in the past.”
THE BIG ONES
|Ed Kilgore writes for Intelligencer about the biggest Supreme Court decisions that will come down this month, highlighting four big ones that are worth watching out for: one that is yet another challenge to the Affordable Care Act, one involving election law and the Voting Rights Act, one that pits religious liberty against LGBTQ rights, and one on the First Amendment and social media.
SPEAKING OF ELECTION LAW
|“This year’s wave of new voting restrictions across the South may seem a response to the 2020 election, but its origins stem in no small part from the Supreme Court, which over the last decade has reshaped election law to elevate the power of state lawmakers over the rights of their voters.” That’s David Savage with the Los Angeles Times reporting that under CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS the court’s decisions have given the GOP a “significant edge.”
SHOT DOWN
|Matthew S. Schwartz with NPR covers a decision from a federal judge in California that came down on Friday and said the state’s ban on certain types of semiautomatic rifles violates the Second Amendment. The ban has been in place for more than three decades, but JUDGE ROGER BENITEZ wrote for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Columbia: “The Second Amendment is about America’s freedom: the freedom to protect oneself, family, home, and homeland. California’s assault weapon ban disrespects that freedom.”
THE OLD GRAND OLD PARTY
|“In 1989, a gunman’s three-minute rampage killed five children at a Stockton, Calif., elementary school and wounded some 30 students and teachers. The resulting shock and outrage gave rise to the nation’s first state ban on assault weapons, signed by a Republican governor.” Shawn Hubler and Adam Liptak with The New York Times note that advocates on both sides of the gun debate are bracing for the possibility of SCOTUS choosing to “overhaul the legal underpinnings of gun control laws nationwide” in a case that will be argued this fall.