Wednesday round-up

AMY HOWE MAR 11, 2015 9:04 AM

Coverage and commentary continue for Monday’s decision in Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association, holding that amendments to interpretative rules do not require notice-and-comment rulemaking.  Brian Wolfman and Bradley Girard analyzed the opinion for this blog, while Noah Feldman weighs in at Bloomberg View.  Elsewhere at Bloomberg View, Cass Sunstein looks at both Perez and Monday’s other decision in Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads, holding that Amtrak is a governmental entity; he describes the unanimous result in the two cases as “a triumph for the ideal of a Supreme Court that focuses on law.”

One week ago today, the Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the challenge to the availability of tax subsidies for individuals who purchase their health insurance on an exchange operated by the federal government.  Michael Dorf weighs in on federalism-related arguments in a column for Verdict and a post at Dorf on Law.  And in the Macon Monitor, David Oedel considers the possibility that his home state of Georgia might not establish its own exchange and concludes that, at this point, “any case for coercion is speculative, and therefore unconstitutionally unripe.”

Briefly:

• At Hamilton and Griffin on Rights, Linda Berger explains why she co-edited Feminist Judgments: Written Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, an upcoming book that will “produc[e] alternative judgments as seen from a feminist perspective.”
• In his Sidebar column for The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports on a pair of cert. petitions asking the Court to review an Alabama law that allows judges to override a jury’s sentencing recommendation in capital cases.
• At the blog of the National Conference of State Legislatures, Lisa Soronen discusses the possible influence of the amicus brief filed by the State and Local Legal Center on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s recent concurring opinion in Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl.
• At Cato at Liberty, Ilya Shapiro discusses the amicus brief that Cato filed recently in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage, in which it “urge[s] the Court to reverse the Sixth Circuit’s decision and finally fulfill the Constitution’s promise of equal protection under law to millions of gay Americans and their children.”
• At its Legal Briefs blog, Cato discusses the amicus brief that it filed in the Takings Clause case Horne v. Department of Agriculture, which is scheduled for oral argument in April.
• At the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog, Wen Fa marks the one-year anniversary of the Court’s decision in Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust v. United States, the “rails to trails” case.

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