The Seven Most Anticipated Decisions Of The Term | After Livestream Success, There’s No Excuse For Justices To Avoid Live Audio Moving Forward
June 8, 2020
WHERE'S THE JUSTICE IN THAT
|“As calls grow nationwide for reforms in law enforcement following the death of GEORGE FLOYD, the Supreme Court will soon announce if it will jump into the debate by considering whether it should be easier to sue police for serious misconduct.” Pete Williams with NBC News explains that because law enforcement officers are rarely prosecuted for bad behavior, lawsuits brought forward by victims or their families are usually the only path to accountability. But the Supreme Court has made it very difficult for victims to ever win those cases.
BREATHING ROOM FOR POLICE
|Nina Totenberg with NPR also looks at the Supreme Court’s legal doctrine known as “qualified immunity” which shields police and other government officials from lawsuits over their conduct. She writes, “The doctrine, as applied to police, initially asked two questions: First, 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 that are made in tense and dangerous situations. But in practice, because of a 2009 Supreme Court decision, lower courts have most often dismissed police brutality lawsuits on grounds that there is no prior court decision with nearly identical facts.”
HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS
|John Kruzel and Harper Neidig with The Hill take a look at the seven most anticipated decisions from SCOTUS before the end of the term, including its final word on cases involving abortion access, the power of the Electoral College, LGBTQ rights in the workplace, and the future of DACA. Of course, the high court also has to weigh in on PRESIDENT TRUMP’S financial records as Congress and New York state seek to obtain years of Trump’s financial information.
ONE AND DONE
|The forthcoming decision on the Supreme Court’s major abortion case involves a Louisiana law that requires doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. Chloe Atkins with NBC News reviews the case for us and notes that if the state law is upheld, Louisiana would have only one abortion clinic left to serve the nearly 10,000 women a year who need the procedure.
DREAM ON, DREAM ON
|“The fate of Dreamers is about to be dropped into a combustible election year — again. Activists, lawmakers and White House officials are bracing for the Supreme Court in the coming weeks to allow the Trump administration to end the program that protects immigrants who came to the country illegally as children, known as Dreamers. But no side expects PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP will immediately end the program if the ruling goes in his favor. Instead, Trump is expected to slowly wind down the program and use that as leverage to try and strike a broader immigration deal with Democrats this summer, according to six people familiar with the situation.” That’s Anita Kumar with POLITICO explaining the Trump administration’s plan for handling DACA in light of what is largely expected to be a ruling in favor of his agenda from the Supreme Court.
TOP-ED
|“The Supreme Court made the indisputably right call last week when it refused to block California from limiting attendance at religious services in an effort to control the spread of Covid-19…So why did the court’s order, issued as midnight approached on Friday night, fill me with dread rather than relief? It was because in a ruling that should have been unanimous, the vote was 5 to 4. And it was because of who the four dissenters were: the four most conservative justices, two of them appointed by the president who a couple of months ago was demanding that churches be allowed to open by Easter and who, even before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, was openly encouraging protests in the capitals of states not reopening as quickly as he would like.” Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times reacts to the four Supreme Court justices — THOMAS, ALITO, GORSUCH, and KAVANAUGH — using the high court’s power “to undermine fact-based public policy in the name of a misbegotten claim of religious discrimination.”
ALL TOO WELL
|Jordan S. Rubin and Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson with Bloomberg Law suggest that it’s possible justices are worried their historic livestreaming of oral arguments went a little too well because now there’s little excuse not to continue the practice. “Seventy percent of Americans surveyed support continuing it after the pandemic is over, according to a poll conducted on behalf of Supreme Court transparency watchdog Fix the Court. Citing the survey, Senate Judiciary Committee members CHARLES GRASSLEY (R-Iowa) and PATRICK LEAHY (D-Vt.) renewed their pressure for change. They recently urged the court in a letter to CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS to make permanent its recent pandemic-inspired transparency efforts by livestreaming all arguments starting next term in October.”