Wednesday round-up
on Oct 16, 2013 at 7:46 am
Yesterday the Court heard oral argument in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the challenge to an amendment to the Michigan constitution that bans the use of affirmative action by public universities. Lyle reported on the argument for this blog, while I added a Plain English recap. Other coverage comes from Nina Totenberg of NPR, Richard Wolf of USA Today, Mark Walsh at Education Week, and Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed. Commentary comes from Ruthann Robson of the Constitutional Law Prof Blog.
The Court heard oral arguments in two other cases yesterday morning: Daimler AG v. Bauman, in which the Court is considering whether the car company can be sued in U.S. courts for conduct that occurred overseas; and Heimeshoff v. Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co., an ERISA case. Lyle reported on the Daimler argument for this blog; Jaclyn Belczyk of JURIST briefly reports on all three of yesterday’s oral arguments.
The Court also issued orders from its October 11 Conference. Lyle reported on the order list for this blog, with other coverage of the list generally coming from Theresa Donovan of JURIST. Perhaps the most noteworthy action on the list was the Court’s grant (and then consolidation of) six petitions challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases; coverage of (or commentary on) those cases came from Richard Wolf of USA Today, Jeremy Jacobs and Jean Chemnick of Greenwire, Bill Mears of CNN, and Jonathan Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy. At Education Week’s The School Law Blog, Mark Walsh reports on yesterday’s denial of cert. in Spurlock v. Fox, a challenge to Nashville’s school assignment plan; in Greenwire, Jeremy Jacobs reports that the Court declined to weigh in on a case involving the timeline during which environmental groups may bring challenges to EPA regulations. And the Court also announced that it will not review the latest chapter in the battle over California’s prison crowding. Kent Scheidegger reports at Crime and Consequences.
Finally, the Court dismissed Madigan v. Levin, the age discrimination case in which it heard oral argument last week, as improvidently granted. Lyle reported on the “DIG” for this blog; other coverage comes from Mark Walsh at Education Week’s The School Law Blog.
Today the Court will hear oral arguments in two cases: Kansas v. Cheever, in which the Court will consider the scope of a defendant’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when he introduces evidence regarding his mental state to counter the charges against him; and Kaley v. United States, in which the Court will consider whether criminal defendants whose assets have been frozen have a right to a pretrial hearing to challenge the basis for the charges against them so that they can use the assets to hire their counsel of choice. I previewed both cases for this blog (here and here), while Nina Totenberg (with help from Isaac Chaput) does the same for NPR.
Finally, in The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin looks ahead to NLRB v. Noel Canning, in which the Court will consider a bottling company’s challenge to the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. He warns that if the Court were to uphold the decision by the D.C. Circuit invalidating the recess appointments, “the result will be a massive shift of power from Presidents to Senate minorities. Forty senators will have the power to stop an agency from functioning. Given the general political inclinations of the contemporary G.O.P., this would be a tremendous victory.”
[Disclosure: Kevin Russell of Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondents in Daimler AG. However, I am not affiliated with the firm and was not involved in the case.]
