With the Court’s winter recess underway, commentators continue their discussion of last week’s decision in United States v. Jones, the GPS tracking case. At this blog, Tom Goldstein provides an extended analysis of why Jones is less of a pro-privacy case than many initially reported, and why the opinions “may be the result of extremely savvy tactical moves by four members of the Court.” Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy tackles the question of why Jones is subject to such diverse interpretations, concluding that the decision is “a Rorschach test.” And at the Boston Review, Pamela Karlan discusses the difficulty of applying traditional interpretations of constitutional protections to new technologies — which is why, after Jones, many are “still left wondering, how should we understand privacy in an electronic age?”
Elsewhere, commentators look forward to what may soon come before the Court. At the Los Angeles Times, David Savage considers what the Court’s recent opinion in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC – holding that ministers cannot sue their churches for violations of employment discrimination laws – may mean for lawsuits challenging a provision of the Affordable Care Act which requires church-run institutions to provide free contraceptives to students and employees. And in The American Prospect, Abby Rapoport reports on a petition for certiorari filed by the League of Women Voters that argues that gerrymandering in Illinois is an unconstitutional regulation of speech.
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