Tuesday round-up

For this blog, in a post first published at Howe on the Court, Amy Howe reports that “[t]he Supreme Court declined to intervene [yester]day in a lawsuit filed by a group of 21 children and teenagers who allege that they have a constitutional right to a ‘climate system capable of sustaining human life.’” Additional coverage comes from Lawrence Hurley at Reuters, Timothy Cama at The Hill, John Siciliano at the Washington Examiner, Greg Stohr at Bloomberg, Mary Papenfuss at Huffpost, and Lyle Denniston at his eponymous blog, who reports that “[i]n refusing as ‘premature’ the Administration’s multiple requests to thwart the lawsuit, the order issued by the Court … called the basic constitutional claim in the case ‘striking’ in its breadth, and commented that there are ‘substantial grounds for difference of opinion’ about whether the case was simply too ambitious even to be allowed to proceed in court.”

At The Hill, Jordain Carney reports that “GOP Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) on Monday said that he will support President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh,” noting that “[w]ith Paul’s decision to support Kavanaugh, the already uphill path for Democrats to block his nomination gets even narrower.” For Politico, Burgess Everett and Elana Schor describe Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s strategy in the confirmation battle, noting that “[w]hile his red-state members stall in the face of attacks from their GOP challengers, Schumer hopes to place massive pressure on moderate Republicans by raising damaging questions about Kavanaugh’s views on abortion, health care and presidential power.” At The Daily Caller, Kevin Daley reports that “Kavanaugh met with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for 90 minutes Monday, his first private interview with a Democratic lawmaker since his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.” Alexander Bolton reports for The Hill that “Democratic leaders are giving Manchin plenty of room to make a decision on Kavanaugh, even though his reelection is looking more and more like a sure thing.”

At CNN, Joan Biskupic reports that as “as health care promises to become a flashpoint in his Senate confirmation battle, Kavanaugh may have to persuade crucial middle-ground senators, such as … Manchin, that he would preserve Obamacare, particularly its protections for people suffering from cancer, diabetes and other so-called pre-existing conditions,” and that “Kavanaugh’s record indicates skepticism for the multifaceted law but not surefire rejection.” For this blog, Frank Ravitch looks at Kavanaugh’s record on issues involving law and religion.

At The Federalist, Ilya Shapiro explains why, although “libertarians aren’t going to agree with Kavanaugh on everything[,] … he’s a big step forward for constitutional liberty.” At Reason’s Volokh Conspiracy blog, Randy Barnett adds that “[w]hat will matter a great deal to me is that he affirms at his hearings–readily and without apology–that he is a public meaning originalist.” In an op-ed for the Las Vegas Sun, Ruben Garcia argues that“[b]ased on his rulings on the Washington, D.C., Circuit federal court of appeals, Brett Kavanaugh will be highly skeptical of legal protections of workers if he takes a seat on the United States Supreme Court,” “because his rulings show a willingness to depart from decades of precedent that have formed the basis of the New Deal’s protection for workers.” John Podesta and Todd Stern, former White House staff secretaries, maintain in an op-ed for The Washington Post that many issues in which Kavanaugh “may well have been substantively involved, given advice or expressed views as staff secretary” “are potentially relevant to [his] confirmation process.”

Briefly:

• At the Associated Press, Jessica Gresko reports that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s various answers to the perennial question of when she will retire “all boil down to the same thing: She isn’t ready to go.”
• At Constitution Daily, Lyle Denniston looks at what retirement may hold in store for Justice Anthony Kennedy, who ends his 30-year tenure on the Supreme Court today.
• At Rewire.News, Imani Gandy writes that “[a] Christian legal advocacy group asked the U.S. Supreme Court this week to rule that employers can legally discriminate against transgender people in the workplace.”
• In the latest episode of their First Mondays podcast, Dan Epps and Ian Samuel talk to two Supreme Court practitioners at Akin Gump about “the strategy behind the firm’s win in Patchak v. Zinke, … their important amicus brief in Trump v. Hawaii, and … how to build a successful Supreme Court practice in an increasingly crowded field.”

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