SCOTUS ALLOWS ABORTION RESTRICTION IN ARKANSAS | Justices Uphold Necessity Of Warrants | Why SCOTUS Is Analog By Design

May 29, 2018

The Supreme Court decided today to allow Arkansas to restrict how abortion pills are administered. Without comment, the justices rejected an appeal from the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Arkansas that had asked the court to review the law which could effectively end medication abortions in the state. The law requires doctors who provide the pills to hold a contract with another physician who has admitting privileges at a hospital and who would agree to handle complications — similar to a provision in a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. Abortion providers say the requirement is burdensome and unnecessary because complications are extremely rare from the two-pill regimen that is used in the first nine weeks of pregnancy, and any that do arise can be handled by a local emergency room or hospital. The Supreme Court order allows the law to take effect in mid-July.

The Supreme Court ruled today that police are not allowed to search the area around a private home without a warrant, even when police think they have seen stolen property on the premises. The justices voted 8-1 in favor of a Virginia man who complained that police walked onto his driveway to pull back a tarp covering a motorcycle he had stolen. The police did this without a warrant, relying on a Supreme Court exception allowing police to search a vehicle without a warrant. But the high court decided today that the exception does not apply when searching vehicles parked adjacent to a home.

We still aren’t seeing major decisions coming from the Supreme Court — in fact, we’re barely getting any decisions at all given how many cases are still outstanding. Stephanie Ebbs with ABC News explains which cases are left for the justices to decide, making special note of the blockbuster cases that promise to answer questions relating to online sales taxes, fees for public unions and political gerrymandering.

While we’re on it, let’s turn our attention to a new report from the Retro Report over at The New York Times, which looks into the surprising history of gerrymandering.

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux writes for FiveThirtyEight about the Supreme Court’s stubborn, “technophobic” approach to its work. But she notes that the institution is analog by design. “There are systemic reasons for the court’s reluctant approach to technology — American law is a backward-looking enterprise even outside the highest court. But regardless of why it’s happening, legal scholars say the consequences are clear: When Supreme Court justices lack an understanding of what technology means for the lives of the people affected by their decisions, they will struggle to respond effectively to technological change.”

Sometimes, you just gotta go back to basics. Richard Wolf with USA Today says that’s not far off from where the conservative justices are coming from this term. He writes, “Conservatives are controlling most of the Supreme Court’s closely divided cases so far this term by sticking to the words written by Congress. The justices have settled challenges involving the rights of workers, immigrants, prisoners and patent owners by painstakingly defining the meaning of ‘for,’ ‘shall,’ ‘any’ and ‘other,’ along with ‘satisfy’ and ‘salesman.'” It seems textualism is winning the day over at One First Street as Wolf notes, “The result has been a series of 5-4 decisions written by JUSTICES NEIL GORSUCH, CLARENCE THOMAS and SAMUEL ALITO that rely on ‘textualism’ — letting the statutes under review speak for themselves. It’s what the late JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA preached, and what PRESIDENT TRUMP promised he would seek in choosing Gorsuch as Scalia’s successor.”

This week, First Mondays takes note of the slo-mo pace of SCOTUS this term and also reviews the two opinions written by JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH. They also recap new grants for OT18 and answer a few “hotline calls.”

POLITICO’s Andrew Glass points out that on this day in 1922, the Supreme Court unanimously carved out an exception for Major League Baseball to the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by holding that the sport was not engaged in interstate commerce. Read about the ruling and why baseball is the sole professional sport in the country to enjoy an antitrust exemption.