JUSTICES TAKE UP DIGITAL PRIVACY | Trump Thinks He’ll Get Four SCOTUS Appointments | Anita Hill Sees Needle Moving
October 16, 2017
TODAY AT SCOTUS
|The justices agreed to hear a case against American Express Co. that centers on whether the company can continue to ban merchants from asking shoppers to use cards that charge stores lower fees. The Supreme Court’s decision to take the case offers new hope for retailers trying to reduce the fees they have to pay to credit card companies each year.
OVERSEAS OFF LIMITS
|SCOTUS today accepted another big case involving digital privacy, agreeing to hear a dispute between the federal government and Microsoft about emails stored overseas. The case will decide whether law enforcement officials conducting a criminal investigation can demand data held overseas. Federal and state officials will be pitted against the technology industry, which has lined up behind Microsoft in the litigation.
ONE DOWN, THREE TO GO?
|Jonathan Swan with Axios reported yesterday that sources say PRESIDENT TRUMP thinks he’ll get to appoint four Supreme Court justices by the end of his first term. When asked who he expects to leave the high court next, the president referred to JUSTICES RUTH BADER GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR and KENNEDY. Among the quotes shared by sources… “What does she weigh? 60 pounds?” about the Notorious RBG. And there was also — “Her health. No good. Diabetes.” — about Justice Sotomayor.
THE NEEDLE MOVES
|“It’s been 26 years since ANITA HILL, soft-spoken and deliberate in her bright blue suit, sat before a Senate panel and detailed the lurid sexual harassment charges that would transfix a nation. CLARENCE THOMAS went on to the Supreme Court, but Hill’s testimony was a watershed moment that raised awareness in incalculable ways.” The Associated Press reports Hill believes the HARVEY WEINSTEIN scandal will help “push the needle” as another one of those watershed moments for the movement to end sexual harassment and assault. Hill: “I think one of the reasons 1991 was so impactful was how public it was — people had faces and voices, and it was almost like a long conversation about how these things play out. This Weinstein story feels like a long conversation too, with different parts getting developed and different people being brought into it.”
ON THE ROAD
|Today, JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN will speak at the Chicago-Kent College of Law about her time as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Her interviewer will be the founder of the law school’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States, Carolyn Shapiro.
TODAY IN HISTORY
|On this day in 1962, JUSTICE BYRON R. WHITE joined SCOTUS as one of two appointments made by PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY. Read a retrospective on Justice White’s time at the Supreme Court by Lyle Denniston in Constitution Daily.
OTHER NEWS
It's Vital that the Supreme Court Defend Agricultural Innovation
The Hill“The U.S. solicitor general submitted a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a patent litigation case that could have far-reaching consequences for the type of agricultural innovations exemplified by Blue River Technology, not to mention the technology industry at large.”