A NOT-SO-SCARY HALLOWEEN with Cheerleaders and Puppies at SCOTUS Today
October 31, 2016
MUST LOVE DOGS
|Today at the Supreme Court, justices heard Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools — the case testing whether EHLENA FRY can bring her service dog, Wonder, to school with her. The twelve-year-old from Michigan has cerebral palsy, and when she brought Wonder to school, she was told the dog wasn’t allowed in the classroom with her. Her family withdrew Fry from school and filed a civil rights complaint alleging the school district violated the federal Americans with Disabilities and Rehabilitation acts. AP reports justices seemed sympathetic to the girl noting, “Most of the justices hearing arguments in the case Monday seemed to agree that federal disability law allowed Ehlena Fry to pursue her case in court.”
IF YOU'RE BEING A CHEERLEADER THIS HALLOWEEN
|Pay close attention. Justices heard arguments today about the designs of cheerleader uniforms and whether Varsity Brands can keep its copyrights on certain uniform designs. Basically, the question is a matter of who owns the decorations of a uniform (stripes, chevron, etc.) and it has the fashion industry in a frenzy. For The New York Times, Erin Geiger Smith reports.
WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK
|On Friday, the justices added more work to their schedule with some fiery cases worth paying close attention to. The first, of course, was the historic decision to hear a case out of Virginia in which a public school district is fighting to prevent a female-born transgender high school student named Gavin Grimm from using the boys’ bathroom. This will mark the first time in history in which the U.S. Supreme Court rules on transgender rights.
MEET GRIMM
|Thursday, Gavin Grimm wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post and he doesn’t waste any time in addressing the heart of his case. “If you told me two years ago that the Supreme Court was going to have to approve whether I could use the school restroom, I would have thought you were joking.”
TO BE, RATHER THAN TO SEEM
|Both the state motto of North Carolina and a nice segue into talking about another case headed for SCOTUS. Justices agreed Friday to decide whether a state law banning convicted sex offenders from Facebook and other social media sites is problematic in the face of that pesky First Amendment.
TRUMP V. CLINTON, AMENDMENT BY AMENDMENT
|Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern consider which presidential candidate most closely hews to the Constitution’s precepts. They take you amendment by amendment, and exposit the candidates’ public statements to determine how each candidate interprets the Constitution.
V CASUAL, V NBD
|Our friend Bob Egelko with the San Francisco Chronicle touches on the importance of the presidential election in shaping the future of SCOTUS. Egelko reports that Senate Republicans “raise the possibility that the court, in four to eight years, would be so bereft of its members that it could no longer legally hear cases or issue rulings.”
THE SILENT MAN
|“Justice Thomas has remained taciturn on the bench, once setting a modern record by asking no questions for more than a decade. His determined silences have led some people to think that he is sullen and disengaged. But Justice Thomas, 68, is neither of those things.” In The New York Times, Adam Liptak writes about JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS who last week celebrated 25 years on the Supreme Court bench with another allegation of sexual misconduct. Liptak: “He has written few important majority opinions, but his concurrences and dissents present a rigorous and consistent judicial philosophy rooted in what he says is the original meaning of the Constitution.”
CLARENCE V. CONTROVERSY
|Robert Barnes with The Washington Post reflects on the twenty five years JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS has dedicated to serving on the Supreme Court, and how he acquired his unofficial title of the court’s most polarizing justice.
CH-CH-CH-CHANGES
|Democratic vice presidential nominee TIM KAINE predicted late last week that Senate Dems might change the Senate rules to confirm a Supreme Court nominee and finally put a ninth justice on the bench. Kaine said, “If these guys think they’re going to stonewall the filling of that vacancy or other vacancies, then a Democratic Senate majority will say, ‘We’re not going to let you thwart the law.'”
POLL DU JOUR
|A new Pew Research survey looked at how voters are feeling about various issues that will undoubtedly be impacted by next week’s election. On the issue of the Supreme Court, 74 percent of HILLARY CLINTON supporters think SCOTUS rulings should be based on what the Constitution means for the present day, while 80 percent of DONALD TRUMP supporters believe rulings should be based on what the document meant as it was originally written.
OTHER NEWS
Supreme Court Won't Hear Challenge to FBI Fitness Test
The Associated PressSCOTUS declined to consider whether a physical fitness test for FBI special agents is biased against men, refusing to hear the appeal of a man who failed the test after completing only 29 out of 30 untimed pushups. Odds are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg showed little mercy knowing she’s 83 years old and does 20 pushups a day.