TWO CONSERVATIVES HAVE TWO DIFFERENT IDEAS ON POLICE SEARCHES | The Radical SCOTUS Decision We All Forget | Baker Decision Won’t Be The Last Slice Of Cake For Justices
May 30, 2018
THE SEARCHERS
|ICYMI, the justices decided yesterday that police need a warrant before they can inspect vehicles parked on a home’s driveway or carport. Ruling 8-1 the justices gave vehicles parked adjacent to homes the privacy protection of the 4th Amendment. JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR wrote for the court, with only JUSTICE ALITO dissenting.
MINDS OF THEIR OWN
|Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner reports on yesterday’s SCOTUS decision that held a Virginia search of a man’s motorcycle without a warrant was unconstitutional. He notes that while the ruling comes as a strong rebuff of police intrusion, the court’s two most conservative justices weren’t entirely sold on the idea. He writes, “The court’s two most conservative justices — JUSTICES CLARENCE THOMAS and SAMUEL ALITO — laid out a divergent pair of visions for restricting legal rights against police searches: one that would limit people’s protections against illegal searches conducted by state and local police and one that would provide less protection under the Fourth Amendment than any other current justice believes exists.”
TOP-ED
|“Above all the Roberts Court is strongly pro-business. The court recently demonstrated that again when it closed the courthouse doors to the ability of many workers to sue for wage theft, harassment, and discrimination.” That’s Erwin Chemerinsky opining in The Sacramento Bee about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Epic Systems v. Lewis. He suggests that although this should have been an easy decision in the other direction, the majority landed on a collective reasoning bound by “many serious flaws.”
LEST WE FORGET
|In The Atlantic, Will Stancil reminds us of the radical Supreme Court decision that most of America has forgotten. “Americans like to imagine the civil-rights era as a single, sustained burst of progress, surging forth in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education and building to a crescendo before terminating, somewhat hazily, in the late 1960s. But the real narrative of civil rights refuses to yield to this familiar arc.” Reality reflects that it wasn’t until Green v. New Kent County — more than a decade after Brown — that federal school integration really began.
OTHER NEWS
Skakel Appeal Appears Bound For U.S. Supreme Court
The New York Times“Prosecutors in Connecticut have indicated plans to appeal a state court decision overturning the murder conviction of Michael C. Skakel to the United States Supreme Court, creating yet another wrinkle in the drawn-out legal battle over a case that has captured widespread attention for decades.”
Baker Decision Won't Be Justices' Last Word On LGBT Rights
The Associated Press“A flood of lawsuits over LGBT rights is making its way through courts and will continue, no matter the outcome in the Supreme Court’s highly anticipated decision in the case of a Colorado baker who would not create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Courts are engaged in two broad types of cases on this issue, weighing whether sex discrimination laws apply to LGBT people and also whether businesses can assert religious objections to avoid complying with anti-discrimination measures in serving customers, hiring and firing employees, providing health care and placing children with foster or adoptive parents.”