Tuesday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Jun 21, 2016 at 9:52 am

Yesterday was a busy day at the Court, with orders from last week’s conference and opinions in five argued cases.  Molly Runkle rounded up early coverage and commentary for this blog. In Utah v. Strieff, the Court ruled that that methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia found in a search conducted after a Utah man had been arrested could be used against him even though the warrant for his arrest was discovered as the result of an illegal stop.  Additional coverage comes from NPR’s Nina Totenberg, with commentary from Orin Kerr for this blog, Matt Ford for The Atlantic, Steven Mazie of The Economist, and Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences.

In RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. The European Community, the Court ruled in favor of tobacco giant RJR in the RICO suit filed against it by the European Community, which alleged that the company was part of an international money-laundering scheme; although the Court would allow some RICO lawsuits based on conduct that occurs overseas to go forward, it also ruled that private plaintiffs must show an injury in the United States.  Coverage comes from Adam Liptak for The New York Times, with commentary from Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences (who also weighs in on the ruling in Taylor v. United States), and from Cassandra Robertson and Howard Wasserman in two posts at PrawfsBlawg.

Coverage of yesterday’s decision in Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee, ruling that the Patent Office can apply the “broadest reasonable interpretation” standard in inter partes review, comes from Ronald Mann for this blog, with commentary from Michael Risch at Written Description.

This blog’s Ronald Mann also covered yesterday’s ruling in Encino Motorcars v. Navarro, in which the Court held that courts should not defer to a Department of Labor regulation on overtime for service advisers at car dealerships; commentary comes from Hera Arsen and Alfred Robinson at Ogletree Deakins.  And Rory Little had our coverage of the decision in Taylor v. United States, in which the Court held that “‘a robber who affects or attempts to affect even the intrastate sale of marijuana grown within the state’ necessarily satisfies the ‘affects commerce’ element of the federal Hobbs Act criminal statute.”

Other coverage anticipates the Court’s decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the challenge to Texas’s abortion regulations.  Molly Redden of The Guardian reports from Louisiana, which has similar laws, while commentary comes from Ian Millhiser, who at ThinkProgress describes the case as the “most significant” one at the Court since 1992.

Briefly:

• In The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports on yesterday’s denial of review in a “Second Amendment challenge to a Connecticut law banning many semiautomatic rifles.”
• At The Marshall Project, Andrew Cohen urges the Court to grant review in the case of an Alabama death-row inmate in whose case a judge adopted verbatim the proposed opinion written by the Alabama attorney general’s office.
• In an op-ed for The Hill, Gerard Robinson urges the Court to grant rehearing in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the challenge to mandatory union fees for public employees in which the Court deadlocked four to four earlier this year.
• At Empirical SCOTUS, Adam Feldman looks “at some of the interesting and unique voting coalitions this Term.”
• At Legal Aggregate, Gregory Ablavsky weighs in on last week’s opinion in United States v. Bryant, in which the Court ruled that tribal-court convictions can be used as the predicate offenses for a habitual-offender statute, even if the defendant did not have an attorney in the tribal-court proceedings; he suggests that, “as a legal question, the conclusion seems correct.”
• In The Washington Examiner, Paul Bedard reports that Ginni Thomas – the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas – has dismissed rumors that Thomas will retire as “bogus.”

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