Thursday round-up
on Jan 2, 2014 at 9:40 am
Happy New Year! The end of 2013 was a busy one for Justice Sonia Sotomayor. As Lyle reported for this blog, on Tuesday Sotomayor – acting in her capacity as the Circuit Justice for the Tenth Circuit – temporarily blocked the enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate against some Catholic groups challenging the mandate, including the Little Sisters of the Poor in Denver. Other coverage of Sotomayor’s order comes from Mark Walsh of Education Week’s School Law blog (who also covers a similar order in the D.C. Circuit), NBC News, The Washington Post, and Meredith Somers of The Washington Times. At Balkinization, Marty Lederman analyzes the issues involved in the groups’ challenge.
That same day, as Tony Mauro reports for the Blog of Legal Times, Sotomayor also pressed the button for the annual ball drop in New York’s Times Square. And she fielded Utah’s request to stay a lower court’s order invalidating that state’s ban on same-sex marriages, ordering a response to the request by noon tomorrow. Lyle Denniston covered those developments for this blog; other coverage comes from Reuters (via CBS News).
Also on Tuesday, the Chief Justice issued his annual report on the state of the judiciary. Lyle Denniston covered the report briefly for this blog; Tony Mauro also covered the report for the Blog of Legal Times.
Finally, Andrew Cohen looked back at the biggest legal stories of 2013 – including the Court’s decisions on the Voting Rights Act and same-sex marriage — in a post for Politico.
