As Lyle reported yesterday for this blog, the federal government has asked a federal district court in Texas to hold that the state must obtain approval before it makes any changes to its voting laws or procedures. The move comes after the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, struck down the criteria used to determine which states must comply with the preclearance requirement imposed by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act; after the Court’s decision, Texas announced plans to implement a voter ID law for which it had not been previously able to get preclearance. The federal government also announced that it would seek to intervene in a challenge to the state’s redistricting plan. Other coverage comes from Charlie Savage of The New York Times, Holly Yeager of The Washington Post, and Reid Epstein of Politico.
At The Hill, Sam Baker reports on the current state of play in the cases challenging the birth control mandate of the Affordable Care Act – the requirement that employers provide their employees with insurance that includes access to contraceptives. The conflicting rulings by two different federal courts of appeals on the constitutionality of the mandate, he notes, “significantly increase the likelihood the mandate will end up with the Supreme Court.”
At Crime and Consequences, Kent Scheidegger weighs in on the November argument calendar, the release of which Lyle also covered for this blog. Noting that several of the criminal cases on that month’s docket are either returning to the Court for a second time or present issues similar to those that the Court has considered recently, he suggests that, although “Hollywood has been criticized for making too many sequels lately, . . . it seems SCOTUS has caught the bug as well.”
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