On Wednesday morning, in Town of Greece v. Galloway, the Justices heard oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by two residents who argue that the town council’s practice of beginning its meetings with a prayer violates the Constitution. (I previously previewed the oral argument in Plain English.) A court of appeals had ruled that although prayers are permissible, these suggested that the town was endorsing Christianity. When the hearing was over, it looked like the prayers would survive. If that happens, though, a win for the town may have less to do with the Justices’ strong convictions that the prayers are on firm constitutional ground than with their sense that a ruling allowing the prayers to continue would create fewer challenges for the courts than the alternatives. Let’s talk about the oral argument in Plain English. Continue reading »
In the broadest ruling so far by a federal appeals court barring enforcement of the birth-control mandate in the new federal health care law, a divided Seventh Circuit Court panel decided on Friday that two profit-making companies and their Roman Catholic owners are likely to win their constitutional challenges. The decision temporarily blocking the mandate is here: sixty-four pages in the majority ruling, ninety pages in the dissent.
While other circuit courts have ruled in favor of challenges either by profit-making companies or by their owners individually, none before Friday had provided protection for both companies and owners under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Other circuit courts have turned down the challenges. The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider three cases on the mandate at its private Conference on November 26 (see this earlier post). A fourth petition on the issue was filed at the Court on Tuesday (Gilardi v. Department of Health and Human Services, docket 13-567), seeking protection for two related business firms in Ohio.
The petition of the day is:
Issue: Whether the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel’s assistance at bail determination proceedings.
The Oyez Project at Chicago-Kent has posted this week’s oral argument audio. Continue reading »
On the premise that taking photos is a form of story-telling — recall the old idea about how many words a picture is worth — an Albuquerque studio on Friday asked the Supreme Court to protect its owners from having to send the message that the uniting of same-sex couples in marriage-like ceremonies is acceptable.
The new case of Elane Photography v. Willock does not ask the Court to rule on any right of gays and lesbians to marry, but it does seek a decision on how far a state may go to protect same-sex couples from discrimination in the marketplace. The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in August that the studio violated a state anti-discrimination law by turning away a request to take photos of a same-sex commitment ceremony.
As more legislatures — including Congress — pass or at least consider bills to outlaw discrimination against homosexuals, the spread of marriage or civil unions among gays and lesbians is now raising more issues about how those laws apply to such relationships. The Elane Photography case could help provide an answer.
The Justices certainly did not speak with one voice when they heard arguments Wednesday in Mississippi v. AU Optronics Corp. That case involves the Class Action Fairness Act of 2001 (the “CAFA”), which allows defendants to remove to federal court large class actions filed in state court. The question is whether that statute applies to this case – an action brought by the state of Mississippi (which obviously is not a class) based on the injuries that defendants’ products caused to a large number of Mississippi residents (who could be a class).
The argument this week in Medtronic v. Boston Scientific Corp. presented one of those surrealistic moments – when the correct answer to a problem seems so obvious to the Justices that it is difficult to imagine how it came out differently at the court below. The issue here is who bears the burden of persuasion when a user of technology files suit against a patent-holder, seeking a declaratory judgment that its actions do not infringe a particular patent.
Coverage of Wednesday’s oral argument in Town of Greece v. Galloway, in which two residents of a New York town are challenging the town’s practice of beginning its council meetings with a prayer, continues. Chantal Valery reports for AFP, while Steven Mazie does the same for The Economist.
In other Court-related news, on Wednesday evening the Supreme Court Historical Society continued its lecture series focused on plaintiffs in landmark twentieth-century cases with a lecture by Kelly Shackelford on Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, a case involving the free speech rights of students. Coverage of the lecture comes from Kali Borkoski for this blog and Mark Walsh at Education Week’s The School Law Blog. Continue reading »
On Wednesday evening, Justice Alito hosted the fourth and final lecture in the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2013 Leon Silverman Lecture Series. Once again the focus of the lecture was on litigants in landmark twentieth-century cases – this time, the petitioners in the 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community Schools District. As Justice Alito told the audience in his introduction, although names like “Tinker” come to represent abstract ideas and legal tests, they are also tied to actual controversies and actual people. In Tinker, those “actual people” were three Iowa students: John Tinker, who was fifteen when the case began; his sister Mary Beth Tinker, age thirteen; and sixteen-year-old Christopher Eckhardt.
The petition of the day is:
Issue: Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.