Tuesday round-up

AMY HOWE MAR 31, 2015 6:06 AM

Yesterday the Court heard oral argument in Brumfield v. Cain, a capital case from Louisiana.  Lyle Denniston covered the oral argument for this blog, with other coverage coming from Edward Lee at ISCOTUSnow, who predicts the winner in the case based on the number of questions for both sides at oral argument.

Other coverage and commentary focus on yesterday’s orders, in which the Court granted four new cases, issued two per curiam opinions, and denied some noteworthy cases.  Lyle Denniston covered the orders for this blog.  Other commentary on yesterday’s grants comes from Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences. 

At The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr analyzes the Court’s summary opinion in Grady v. North Carolina, in which the Court held that requiring a sex offender to wear a GPS monitor for the rest of his life constitutes a search and sent the case back to the state courts.  Other coverage and commentary come from Tony Mauro for the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required) and Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences,  In another post at Crime and Consequences, Scheidegger weighs in on yesterday’s second summary reversal, in the habeas case Woods v. Donald.

Commentary on the Court’s denial of cert. in Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education, in which a religious group sought the right to use public school facilities, comes from Leslie Griffin and Marci Hamilton at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights and Mark Walsh at Education Week’s School Law Blog. Walsh’s post also covers the denial of certiorari in a student speech case challenging a school official’s prohibition on T-shirts bearing the American flag on Cinco de Mayo; other coverage of that case comes from Lawrence Hurley of Reuters and Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News.  Elsewhere for Reuters, Hurley also covers the Court’s denial of a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “death panels.”

Briefly:

• At ACSblog, Emily Martin argues that the Court’s recent decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, in which the Court sent the case of a female UPS driver who became pregnant back to the lower court for it to reconsider its ruling, was “an important victory for pregnant workers,” but she also urges Congress to take action to “affirm and strengthen this decision.”
• At Hamilton and Griffin on Rights, Ann McGinley looks back at last week’s oral argument in City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan, in which the Court is considering the duties that law enforcement officers owe to the mentally disabled and ill under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• At PrawfsBlawg, Richard Re looks at whether “a distinctively anti-agency mood has taken hold at the Supreme Court.”
• In the Supreme Court Brief (subscription required), Tony Mauro looks ahead at the Chief Justice’s July trip to visit the Supreme Court of Japan.
• In The National Law Journal, Mauro discusses the case of Howard Shipley and observes that, although the “Court rarely offers practice pointers to the advocates who appear before it,” “it did just that on March 23,when it admonished members of the Supreme Court bar to use “plain terms” when they write briefs.”
• At Cato at Liberty, Ilya Shapiro discusses last week’s oral arguments in the challenge to the EPA’s regulations of utility emissions.
• At the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog, Jonathan Wood responds to the Constitutional Accountability Center’s series on the Chief Justice, and in particular to a recent installment discussing his environmental jurisprudence.

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