The Year Of The Telephone At SCOTUS — Memorable Moments & A Possible Prediction For The Future
May 17, 2021
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1954, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in which it held that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal, and therefore unconstitutional.
YOU USED TO CALL ME ON THE CELL PHONE
|The Supreme Court has completed the last of its oral arguments in its first term of all-remote hearings. While we wait for the justices to hand down their remaining decisions, Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson and Jordan S. Rubin with Bloomberg Law take a look at some of the most memorable moments from the remote arguments this term. They note that the first of the arguments happened just weeks after JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG died, making way for JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT to join SCOTUS. Additionally, they point out that the phone format was better for some justices than others: “JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO didn’t appear to like the two-minute limit to ask questions that came with the new turn-based format. ‘I have two questions that are important to me,’ Alito said during arguments Nov. 30 in Trump v. New York, a 2020 Census case. ‘I hope I’m going to be able to squeeze them both in in my time.’ He didn’t.”
FLIP FLOP FLIP FLOP
|In The Washington Post, Daniel Hemel argues the Biden administration has sided with the Trump administration in court too many times for his comfort. Hemel writes, “So why hasn’t the Biden administration budged in any of these cases? In most administrations, the solicitor general’s office seeks to minimize flip-flops to maintain credibility with the court, but that is far from a hard-and-fast rule. In 2017, the Trump administration switched sides in four high-stakes cases — involving the appointment of administrative law judges, employer-mandated arbitration, public-sector unions and voting rights — and ultimately prevailed in all four. As former deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben recently noted, there is little evidence that justices penalize an administration for changing its view as long as it is candid about its reasons for doing so.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
SCOTUS Takes Alarming Step Backwards For Criminal Justice Reform
Bloomberg Law“In a series of opinions starting in 2005 and culminating in 2016, the Supreme Court recognized in Graham v. Florida what psychologists have long understood and brain scientists continue to prove: There are fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds, and children’s brains continue to mature through late adolescence. With that series of holdings, the U.S. came closer—though certainly not close enough—to embracing the penal philosophies applied to children in the rest of the world. A sentence of life without the possibility of parole could only be handed out to a child with demonstrable ‘permanent incorrigibility.’ But a majority of the court unraveled this holding.“
A Judicial Blow to Biden’s Tax-Cut Ban
The Wall Street Journal“Pieces of the Biden Administration’s aggressive agenda are starting to make their way before judges, and an early ruling points to trouble for the Democratic takeover of state fiscal policy. The case concerns a provision in the $1.9 trillion spending bill passed in March. It said that states can’t use their share of the funds to ‘directly or indirectly offset a reduction’ in ‘net tax revenue.’ The command, intended to deter legislatures from reducing tax burdens, is so vague it could allow the federal government to second-guess almost any state fiscal policy choice through 2024.”
The War On Trans Kids Is Totally Unconstitutional
The Atlantic“The laws—such as the one Arkansas just passed and those that more than a dozen other states, including Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas, are actively considering—will certainly harm transgender children, denying them medical care that they need and causing them psychological pain. That should be reason enough to oppose these laws. But even those who are skeptical of today’s gender politics should oppose these laws for another reason: They clearly violate the U.S. Constitution.”