Thursday round-up

For The Wall Street Journal, Jess Bravin reports that in Collins v. Virginia, in which the justices held on Tuesday that the automobile exception to the warrant requirement does not permit a warrantless search of a motorcycle parked in the driveway of a home, Justice Sonia “Sotomayor wrote that the Virginia court had too readily discounted constitutional concerns about government searches.” Additional coverage comes from Scott Bomboy at Constitution Daily, Jordan Rubin at Bloomberg BNA, and Steven Mazie at The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, who reports that “[i]n concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the main holding but was a lone voice announcing scepticism about the long-standing ‘exclusionary rule’ that suppresses illegally grabbed evidence.” In an op-ed for the Boston Herald, Evan Slavitt finds it “a bit surprising … that the decision was 8-1 with only Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in dissent.”

At PrawfsBlawg, Leah Litman weighs in on Tuesday’s cert denial in Planned Parenthood of Arkansas & Eastern Oklahoma v. Jegley, a challenge to an Arkansas law regulating medication abortions, asking “what will happen to abortion providers so long as they labor under this unfavorable and incorrect regime.” At The Atlantic, Garrett Epps observes that “even though this particular case is not the shattering defeat it may first have seemed, abortion rights and their advocates are playing defense in legislatures and court, and losing ground slowly.”

Briefly:

• At Law360 (subscription required), Jimmy Hoover “breaks down the big-ticket items for which court watchers are eagerly on the lookout” as October Term 2017 winds down.
• At The National Law Journal (subscription or registration required), Tony Mauro considers some of the factors that may have led the court to dismiss a Fifth Amendment case, City of Hays v. Vogt, as improvidently granted, observing that “no one except the court really knows which factor prevailed in the Hays”
• PrawfsBlawg kicks off its second end-of-term symposium this week.
• In an early contribution to the PrawsfBlawg symposium, Dan Epps observes that as opinions continue to trickle from the court, and the end of June is only four weeks away, “this Term in particular seems to be highlighting how much of a problem the Court’s uneven workflow can be.”
• Also at PrawfsBlawg, Erica Goldberg laments that “[t]he two most anticipated First Amendment cases of the Term, Masterpiece Cakeshop and Janus, are receiving the worst kind of attention,” but she maintains that “[w]ith so many people watching, the Court has the opportunity to both get it right and de-politicize these two decisions.”
• At The George Washington Law Review’s On the Docket blog, Jeff Ifrah and David Yellen look at Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, in which the court struck down the federal law that bars states from legalizing sports betting, noting that although the ruling “shows that the anti-commandeering doctrine is alive and well,” “the lineup of Justices does create questions as to how it might be applied in other circumstances that may come to the Court.”
• At Justia’s Verdict blog, Michael Dorf remarks that although last week’s Upper Skagit Indian Tribe v. Lundgren, in which the justices remanded a property dispute involving an Indian tribe to the lower court, “resolved virtually nothing,” “Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justice Kennedy, wrote an intriguing concurrence, which, taken to its logical conclusion, broadly undermines the basis for much of the Court’s own case law involving the sovereign immunity of US states.”
• At Howe on the Court, Amy Howe reports that the government has recommended that the court review Dawson v. Steager, which raises “issues relating to intergovernmental tax immunity.”

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