GORSUCH FLEXES HIS INDEPENDENCE | Net Neutrality Gets Stamp of Approval
May 2, 2017
I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
|Adam Liptak with The New York Times reports, “In an early sign of JUSTICE NEIL M. GORSUCH’S independence and work ethic, he has decided not to join a labor pool at the Supreme Court in which justices share their law clerks in an effort to streamline decisions about which cases to hear.” Clerks in the pool share their collective recommendation about whether a case should be granted Supreme Court review in a common “pool memo” which goes to justices in the pool. Liptak notes, “Justices who do not participate, by contrast, have their law clerks review all of the roughly 7,000 petitions filed each year, looking for the 75 or so worthy of the court’s attention. The pool has been criticized for giving too much power to law clerks and for contributing to the court’s shrinking docket.”
WHAT'S THE NET NET
|Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a court ruling which affirmed the legality of PRESIDENT OBAMA’S net neutrality rules, teeing up a potential challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court. However, it’s possible that the issue will be moot by the time the justices provide a ruling. The new Republican chair of the FCC has announced plans to dismantle the net neutrality rules anyway.
ICYMI
|The Supreme Court yesterday sided with the city of Miami and ruled that cities can sue major banks for discriminatory lending practices that hurt low-income neighborhoods during the Great Recession.
WHAT HASN'T HAPPENED
|Will the Supreme Court defend citizenship? A question Matt Ford with The Atlantic asks in his latest. He notes that although few Americans have heard of Afroyim v. Rusk, all Americans have a reason to be grateful for it. Ford: “Most of the Court’s landmark decisions are famous for their tangible effects, like dismantling racial segregation or legalizing abortion rights. Afroyim’s impact can instead be felt by what hasn’t happened: No natural-born Americans have been involuntarily stripped of their citizenship—and the protections it carries—since the ruling.”
OTHER NEWS
Supreme Court Declines to Hear Challenge to Polar Bear Habitat Protection
ReutersSCOTUS declined to hear an appeal over the federal government’s designation of a vast area in Alaska that is critical habitat for polar bears. The justices turned away a challenge from the state, its native peoples and the oil and gas industry, leaving in place the 9th Circuit ruling which upheld the designation of 187,000 square miles of sea ice, barrier islands and coastal land.
A SCOTUS First-Timer Tees Up Clash Between Congress and the Courts
The National Law Journal“Sometimes at the U.S. Supreme Court, big cases come in small packages. Scott Gant of Boies Schiller Flexner saw a potentially major separation-of-powers issue in an unhappy property owner’s court case, and the justices on Monday agreed to review it.”
U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Bankruptcy Clawback Dispute
The Wall Street Journal“The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to examine whether U.S. bankruptcy law can unwind securities transactions that pass through financial institutions acting as payment conduits. The justices said Monday that they would review whether such prebankruptcy payments are protected from being challenged in chapter 11, a question with significant implications for shareholders who cash out stock in leveraged buyouts.”