SCOTUS SIDES WITH MEXICAN IMMIGRANT, POLICE & BIG CORPORATIONS
May 30, 2017
TODAY AT SCOTUS
|This morning, the justices ruled unanimously in favor of a Mexican immigrant who was going to be deported under immigration laws for having consensual sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 20 years old. The justices found that although Juan Esquivel-Quintana committed a crime under California law, he did not violate federal immigration law. The justices said that in the context of statutory rape offenses that criminalize sexual intercourse based solely on the ages of the participants, the generic federal definition of “sexual abuse of a minor” requires the age of the victim to be less than 16.
THE PURGE
|The Supreme Court today agreed to consider reinstating a voter purging technique used by the state before being barred by a federal appeals court. The procedure gives the state the power to remove residents from being allowed to vote if they don’t do so during a certain period of time. Similar to other states’ procedures, Ohio uses change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service and compares it with the state registration list to identify voters who have moved but not updated their addresses. Local election boards mail confirmation notices, and if a voter does not respond or vote during the following four years, the registration is canceled.
WINDFALL
|The justices today tightened the rules on where injury lawsuits can be filed, giving a major victory to big corporations. They ruled 8-1 throwing out a lower court decision out of Montana that allowed out-of-state residents to sue over injuries that occurred anywhere in a company’s nationwide network. JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR was the lone dissenter, calling the ruling a “jurisdictional windfall” for large multistate or multinational corporations.
THANKS FOR PLAYING, COME AGAIN SOON
|The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today in favor of police, throwing out a lower court ruling that upheld $4 million in damages awarded to a homeless couple who sued after being shot 15 times in a backyard shack by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies who were searching for another man. The high court’s ruling means that the 9th Circuit must review the case for a second time to determine whether the couple can recover damages because of the officers’ failure to obtain a search warrant.
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|“With a partisan gerrymandering case likely to hit the court’s docket next term, the justices should finally set clear limits on the practice. The need for those limits is growing only more urgent as voter data and computer-mapping technologies become more sophisticated, and politicians become more brazen in their efforts to protect their power.” That’s the Editorial Board of The New York Times weighing in on gerrymandering and calling on the Supreme Court to finally draw a line of their own when it comes to the common practice of manipulating congressional maps for political gain.
HEATIN' UP
|For The Washington Post, William Wan reports that the state of North Carolina’s battle over voting rights is intensifying. He notes, “At every turn, Democrats and voting rights advocates have stymied their plans, dragging them to court and condemning the GOP actions as discriminatory against the state’s minorities. Instead of giving up — even after two major defeats this month in the U.S. Supreme Court — North Carolina’s Republican leaders are working to push the battle over the ballot box into a new phase.”
THE BEST IS YET TO COME
|Ariane de Vouge with CNN explains why the next step the Supreme Court takes on gerrymandering would be the biggest ruling we’ve seen on the issue. “[It] could really change the game,” she writes. “Here’s why: The Supreme Court has a standard limiting overreliance on race in map-drawing except under the most limited circumstances. But it has never been successful in developing a test concerning a much thornier issue: partisan gerrymandering.”
FAMOUS FRENEMIES
|Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern considers whether Supreme Court frenemies ELENA KAGAN and SAMUEL ALITO are the new RBG and SCALIA. MJS writes, “It’s too soon to tell whether Kagan and Alito’s delightfully spirited debates will blossom into something akin to a Ginsburg and Scalia–style friendship. But the two plainly enjoy locking horns, a sign that they respect and even admire each other’s intellectual firepower. Their jousting draws out subtle nuances in the law and highlights the stakes in each case. And as each justice gains seniority on the court, the opportunity for both to write consequential opinions will only grow. These frenemies will be with us for a long time. Grab some frozen yogurt and enjoy the show.”