TEXAS STIRS THE POT OVER SAME-SEX MARRIAGE | Good At The Law, Bad With Crystal Balls | Travel Ban Takedown Under Way
September 19, 2017
DIGGING UP OLD DIRT
|ICYMI, on Friday the city of Houston asked the Supreme Court to review a Texas Supreme Court decision that said the landmark SCOTUS decision legalizing same-sex marriage does not fully address the right to marriage benefits. Alexa Ura with The Texas Tribune reports the Texas Supreme Court found that the Obergefell decision requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages just as they do opposite-sex marriages, but did not hold that “states must provide the same publicly funded benefits to all married persons.”
YOU KNOW NOTHING JON SNOW
|“Supreme Court justices like to predict the future. They aren’t very good at it.” That’s Mark Joseph Stern with Slate opining that when the justices attempt to play oracle, they usually get their predictions wrong. Read his roundup of the justices’ most famous predictions and a status update on whether they have come to pass.
ABA TO SCOTUS
|Monday, the American Bar Association filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Supreme Court to permanently block PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S executive order banning the entry of nationals from six majority-Muslim countries. Lorelei Laird with ABA reports that in its current amicus brief, the ABA emphasizes limits on presidential power. The government had relied on a portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act which says the president may “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.” The federal government has argued that this language makes the executive order unreviewable by the courts, but the ABA rejected that idea.
TRAVEL BAN TAKEDOWN
|The ABA isn’t the only organization filing briefs against Trump’s travel ban. Yesterday, 30 universities and academic institutions (including all 8 Ivy League schools) filed an amici curiae brief asserting the ban has already done a great deal of damage to US schools and will continue to do so should it be upheld by the high court.
I GOT THE, I GOT THE POWER
|In The Washington Post, Ilya Somin notes that the amicus brief he filed in the travel ban case — along with other constitutional law scholars’ — explains why the Bill of Rights limits federal power over immigration. Somin writes, “The federal government may have the power to limit immigration in a wide range of ways, just as it has broad power to restrict interstate commerce. But it cannot restrict either in ways that violate the Bill of Rights.”
OTHER NEWS
Will the Supreme Court Stop Politicians from Choosing Their Voters?
Reason“The Supreme Court may soon decide whether a state’s electoral districts can be so stacked toward one party that they violate the Constitution. The case, Gill v. Whitford, revolves around the district boundaries established by the Wisconsin state legislature after the 2010 census. That map helped Republicans to win 60 of 99 legislative seats, even though Democrats won more votes statewide—1,417,359 to the GOP’s 1,249,562.”
The Supreme Court Didn't See E-Commerce Coming
Slate“The Supreme Court held 25 years ago that a state can collect sales tax only from a retailer that has a physical presence in the state. At the time, the justices did not anticipate that the explosive growth of e-commerce would lead to a dramatic rise in cross-state sales, and their decision has had a devastating effect on state finances in recent years. Fortunately, a new case will give the Supreme Court a chance to correct its quarter century–old error.”
Trump's Legal Nemesis Gets His Day in Court in Bid to Save DACA
Bloomberg“Los Angeles attorney Ted Boutrous has been itching for a courtroom battle with President Donald Trump. Now, he’s got it. Boutrous is taking on the president over the proposed end to a program that protects so-called Dreamers — children who were brought to the U.S. by undocumented immigrants.”