Okay, so maybe it’s not Bullwinkle himself, but all the moose in Alaska (and unlike goose/geese, the plural of moose is … moose) are in the crosshairs of hunters on hovercrafts. But more on that later.
As most of us recall, the new term for the Supreme Court begins on the first Monday in October – today!
The docket for this term will most likely not produce the fireworks of last term with rulings we liberals liked, including the 5-4 decision to recognize a constitutional right to marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, the 6-3 ruling to uphold health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and the 5-4 decision to ratify a broad definition of discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.
This year’s docket, marking the start of Chief Justice Roberts’ second decade, is heavily tilted to favor the Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-Alito wing of the Court, with Kennedy casting his customary tie-breaking vote.
And there are no real breath-holding cases … so far. But there are currently only about 50 petitions, out of about 10,000 submitted, that have been granted cert. Usually the Court will hear about 80 cases in all, with the final docket not set until January.
So we’ll begin with the ones that are set. The case with the largest monetary impact – and one that is based on a ruling from the Civil War era – has been filed by Iran’s central bank (Bank Markazi v. Peterson).
More than 1,300 Americans have already been awarded almost $2 Billion by the courts, in frozen assets held by Iran’s central bank, Markazi, based on claims that the Iranian government sponsored the terrorists’ attacks involved in the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 service members and the 1996 Khobar tower bombing in Saudi Arabia.
The legal aspect deals with the Separation of Powers Doctrine. The Court in the 1872 case of United States v. Klein, ruled that under Article III of the Constitution, Congress cannot direct a federal court on how a pending case should be decided. Bank Markazi contends that Congress did just this with a law passed in 2012 that declared the victims were entitled to the bank’s assets.
A case from Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico v. Valle) deals with the limits of sovereignty with regard to the prohibition on double jeopardy provided for in the Fifth Amendment.
The Double Jeopardy Clause guarantees that a citizen will not be retried for the same crime. However, this does not protect a citizen from prosecution in both the State and Federal systems for the same action. And the claim is that Puerto Rico’s sovereignty granted in 1950 allows it to pass its own laws, and thereby precludes it from being subject to the Double Jeopardy Clause of someone already prosecuted under the US federal justice system.
The First Amendment is the focus of Heffernan v. Paterson, N.J. Hefferman was a police Detective who was seen by a superior picking up a yard sign for his bedridden mother supporting a candidate running against the incumbent mayor. He neither supported nor campaigned for that candidate, but the supervisor who saw him with the sign demoted him to patrol and assigned him to walk a beat. He maintains his First Amendment rights were violated by the demotion, but the courts ruled that since he was not supporting that candidate in any manner, he wasn’t exercising any First Amendment rights.
There are two cases that greatly excite conservatives because they deal with public unions and affirmative action in higher education.
Conservative hope to overturn the 1979 “Fair Share” decision allowing a public employee union (Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association) to collect from non-union members the part of union dues used to represent them in collective bargaining. It would allow non-union members to become freeloaders to enjoy the gains of winning union benefits while not contributing anything to unions’ pocketbooks.
And in the affirmative action case (Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin), conservatives hope to further limit utilizing race as a factor in admissions. The U. of Texas has created a hybrid program combining race-neutral and race-conscious factors to achieve diversity.
An appeals court has actually sustained the hybrid, but a small conservative advocacy group, the Project on Fair Representation, has brought this case forward.
The same right-wing group is mounting a challenge to the Voting Rights Act with Evenwel v. Abbott, which asks the court to address the meaning of “one person, one vote.”
It deals with whether state voting districts should have the same number of people, including undocumented immigrants, children and others not eligible to vote, or the same number of voters. Allowing states to count only voters would in many parts of the country shift political power from cities to rural areas, to the delight of Republicans.
The court will actually begin where it ended the last term – dealing with the Eighth Amendment and the death penalty.
In the ruling of the last case of the last term Justice Breyer was joined by Justice Bader Ginsburg in a surprising and comprehensive opinion in Glossip v. Gross, which announced that both Justices now “believe it highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment.”
There are currently FIVE cases involving the Eighth Amendment as pertains to the death penalty on the docket, so we'll see if Justice Alito is correct when he said there’s a “guerilla war against the death penalty,” which prompted Justice Sonia Sotomayor to fire back that supporters of the death penalty would be content to allow condemned inmates to be burned alive.
To further heat things up, the court, which hasn’t heard an abortion case since upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Act in 2007, will likely hear a challenge to a Texas law (Whole Woman’s Health Center v. Cole) which would reduce the number of clinics providing abortion services from more than 40 to less than 10.
The state law requires all clinics to meet the criteria for “ambulatory surgical centers” and all its physicians having admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Standards few clinics currently have – or are deemed necessary by the medical community.
So this court, which “The New York Times” has called “the first in history split along partisan lines” and as a consequence “has generated more marquee decisions divided by party alignment than all other courts combined” will likely hand down that decision in June, 2016.
Such a divisive and volatile ruling will thus land in the middle of the presidential race. Emphasizing, yet again, the need to GOTV – “Get Out the VOTE!” – because the next president will likely have the responsibility to fill several anticipated vacancies, given the ages of several justices.
Oh, yeah … Bullwinkle. Let’s end on a lighter note. Well, the moose and his brethren are following Sturgeon v. Masica very closely.
Plaintiff John Sturgeon has been going on his annual moose hunting (and beer swilling) trips with his hovercraft on the Yukon River and its tributaries for years. But in 2007 he was stopped by National Park Service agents who told him the vehicle was banned in waters inside the national preserve. So he did what any proud gun-toting, moose-killing, hovercraft-hunter would do – he immediately pulled out his satellite phone to call his lawyer.
The question is whether the federal government is allowed to enforce federal rules pertaining to federal navigable waters in federally operated National Parks. Now you would think this is pretty clear cut, but apparently you would be wrong.
So far Sturgeon has lost at every stage. But he now gets to plead his case before SCOTUS, armed with amicus briefs from Sarah Palin’s state of Alaska as well as a hunting rights group, Safari Club International.
We can all recall how Cecil the Lion fared against the Minnesota dentist. So heads up, Bullwinkle – or maybe heads down – because you’re in the hovercraft hunters’ crosshairs!
Multiple Sources:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/10/court-to-rule-on-congresss-power-over-courts/
http://jostonjustice.blogspot.com/2015/10/for-courts-conservatives-new-term.html
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060025691
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme-court-agenda-abortion-birth-control
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/10/supreme-court-watch-of-moose-and-men-and-hovercrafts/
31 Responses to “Upcoming SCOTUS Cases: Bullwinkle the Moose vs. Hovercraft Hunters”
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Excellent analysis! Thanks Nameless. This week has a CA Supreme Court case on whether or not the voters get to vote on the proposition to undo the damage of the Citizens United ruling from SCOTUS…
I'm curious, given Article VI, Paragraph 2 – the Supremacy Clause, of our Constitution, how does that even work?
Sounds like one of those "States' Rights" things – only involving a proposition I'd support.
The US Constitution and Federal Law trump State Constitutions and State Laws. It doesn't mention territories, but I expect there is case law that they also get trumped. The thing about Puerto Rico that makes it different from other territories is that it has "sovereignty" granted (not sure through what means) in 1950, and no one seems to know what that means. It's not spelled out. All there is, is case law.
http://www.puertoricoreport.com/justice-oconnor-ruling-confirms-that-puerto-rico-is-not-a-nation/#.VhP2B1KFPL8
http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/exploiting-puerto-ricos-fuzzy-sovereignty
Interesting – but I was referring to CA undoing the damage of Citizens United.
It is structured to be an advisory measure since we are supposed to have the power to advise our representatives on how to represent us–so not states rights issue IMO.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-court-ballot-20151006-story.html
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/33124-will-california-court-let-voters-repudiate-us-supreme-court-on-citizens-united
The SCOTUS situation, despite the recent findings that make us progressives happy, scares the hell out of me!
Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts are the four horsemen of the 1700's, and their god, St. Reagan!
Sad, but true!
Posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/3915069
An analysis which keeps me reading and interested, which i am afraid none of your sources did. Great post!
Thanks. And yeah, it was pretty dry reading – and a LOT of it to boot. Kind of a labor of love.
It's odd, but about half my good friends are doctors and the other half are lawyers – kind of an "odd couple" matchup. But the lawyers say that even at the SCOTUS level, most of what they do is pretty tedious stuff – and we only read about the ginormous cases.
After putting this one together, I'd say "AMEN!"
Do you suppose that's why Melvin Belli took a role in an episode of the original "Star Trek" -to get away from boredom?
I suspect, though, it's true in every occupation and not just the glamorous ones – really interesting stuff is few and far between. (Of course if it were common it wouldn't be interesting long.)
One other factor is the longer one stays in a position and/or organization, the less there is that is new to learn and what was once new becomes routine. In some places, new technology or software integrated with the work can be the main thing new for people.
A green star for you on this statement . . . if we had green stars!
Fisher v UTex Austin – Actually I kind of like the U Texas at Austin's admission policy. It's almost Solomonic but doesn't involve killing a baby.
Evenwel v Abbott – Republicans wanting to count only voters doesn't seem to have made its way to Florida, where they are proposing to eliminate Colleen Brown from Congress by redistricting in such a way as to pack her district with prisons.
I think Justice Sotomayor's comment on the Death Penalty was an understatement. There are plenty of supporters of the death penalty who would be thrilled to see ALL inmates burned alive, regardless of the offense. Just read the comments, even on primarily liberal sites, on any article which touches on prisons remotely.
I do hope Bullwinkle is following the case from the relative safety of Frozen Falls, MN (or wherever it was). I wouldn't want him to be in Alaska right now.
I agree–if he were in Alaska right now his future would be way too Rocky…
Ummm – groan.
As Gene corrected me on Care2 it was Frostbite Falls. I misspent my childhood with no TV LOL
Love what Justice Sonia Sotomayor said about the Death Penalty! I second that.
Thank you, Nameless. and Joanne for getting this great post out here. Plenty of good reads.
The New York Times has an opinion piece on the cases in this session. Interesting reading. I have not had a chance to read your links yet as I am trying to finish tomorrow's articles.
Good to see you post – I was beginning to be concerned with you incognito mode.
(Relieved to see that the NY Times and I agree pretty much WRT what cases will be pivotal. Then again, so does most of the legal community. Not exactly inventing the wheel here.)
Oh, and peruse all the links at your peril … for the most part they are B-0-R-I-N-G!!! At least to a layman like me.
I was at physio and then teaching ESL so I didn't get home til 4:30 pm. Talk about boring . . . no not boring but a very long article on Don Blankenship and Massey Energy Co . . . what did you think?
I stop in at Mother Jones every day, so I saw it last week. Certainly important – but not exactly page-turning reading.
Agreed. Many will read a blog version of a story when it is transformed to interesting reading, sometimes with a little humor like it is in this post, when they would otherwise scan for highlights perhaps or skip.
Thanks. One of the useful lessons from my old HS newspaper editor days was learning that you got to hook 'em first before you can reel them in.
Something we probably all know, but not everyone is equally good at. I know I am lacking.
Good point. I know I don't do as well when my focus is on what I want to say, especially on something that triggers my emotions, compared to when my focus is on the audience and what they would find of interest/value, etc.
I think that may be one of the sources he listed Lynn–a NY Times op ed in today's edition.
Not that I could see . . . I checked the urls. They are all different.
Thanks for double checking Lynn–I must've not succeeded in my new copy attempt of url to open and didn't notice when I brought up a duplicate.
Thanks, Nameless, I will bookmark this to read when I have more brainpower to use.
Thanks, Nameless, for an excellent post, one that is now bookmarked for further reference when the cases are taken and ruled upon in due time. I'm sure this SCOTUS is going to do everything in it's power to make a lot or Republicans happy and give the GOP candidate(s) a push.
I noted that the article started with some of last terms rulings that were favorable towards liberals; funny how one or two of these at the end of term tends to make us forget the terrible rulings like Hobby Lobby and on the safety zone around an abortion clinic. I'm sure it works the other way around for Republicans though, so we're bound to see a lot of rulings going their way "to make up for it".
This should be an interesting session for SCOTUS. Let's just hope they don't get an attack of the SCROTUS!