Wednesday round-up

EDITH ROBERTS MAY 30, 2018 7:04 AM

Yesterday the Supreme Court released opinions in two argued cases. The first was Collins v. Virginia, in which the justices held 8-1 that the automobile exception to the warrant requirement does not permit a warrantless search of a motorcycle parked in the driveway of a home. Amy Howe has this blog’s opinion analysis, which first appeared at Howe on the Court. Subscript offers a graphic explainer for the decision. At NPR, Nina Totenberg reports that “[t]he court rejected the police’s contention that the motorcycle was like an automobile, which the court has long ruled can be searched without a warrant if an officer sees something in plain sight.” Additional coverage comes from David Savage for the Los Angeles Times, Greg Stohr at Bloomberg, Lydia Wheeler at The Hill, Elizabeth Lowman at Jurist, Jamie Dupree at AJC, Ariane de Vogue at CNN, Lawrence Hurley at Reuters, and Richard Wolf for USA Today, who reports that “[t]he Supreme Court in recent years has been a firm defender of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In yesterday’s second opinion, a unanimous court held in Lagos v. United States that private investigation costs and costs related to civil or bankruptcy proceedings are not compensable under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act. Courtney Lollar analyzes the opinion for this blog. Subscript’s graphic explainer is here.

The justices also dismissed as improvidently granted City of Hays v. Vogt, which asked whether a probable cause hearing is part of a criminal case within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment’s self-incrimination clause. Rory Little explains the factors that may have influenced the disposition for this blog. Elizabeth Lowman covers the dismissal for Jurist.

The court also issued orders from last week’s private conference. As Amy Howe reports for this blog, in a post that was first published at Howe on the Court, the justices did not add any cases to their merits docket, but they did deny certiorari in a case in which Planned Parenthood had asked the court to block enforcement of an Arkansas law regulating medication abortions, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas & Eastern Oklahoma v. Jegley. For The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports that the challenged law “requires providers of the procedure to have contracts with doctors who have admitting privileges at a hospital in the state.” Additional coverage comes from Kevin Daley at The Daily Caller, Nina Totenberg at NPR, Lydia Wheeler at The Hill, David Savage for the Los Angeles Times, Lawrence Hurley at Reuters, Brooke Singman at Fox News, Elizabeth Lowman at Jurist, Marcia Coyle at Law.com, and Robert Barnes for The Washington Post, who reports that the “[w]hile Planned Parenthood said it would immediately notify patients that it can no longer offer the procedure in the state, the case is expected to return to lower courts for more fact-finding about its benefits and burdens.”

Briefly:

• For USA Today, Richard Wolf reports that “[c]onservatives are controlling most of the Supreme Court’s closely divided cases so far this term by sticking to the words written by Congress.”
• At Take Care, Leah Litman maintains that Dassey v. Dittman, a cert petition filed by one of the subjects of the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” demonstrates that “[t]reating juvenile[] interrogations and confessions like adult interrogations and confessions is a widespread problem, and one that risks false confessions and wrongful convictions.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in this case.]
• At the Cato Institute’s Cato at Liberty blog, Jay Schweikert urges the justices to review a case that “directly asks the Court to reconsider its qualified immunity jurisprudence” and to reassess a “doctrine that lacks any legal basis, vitiates the power of individuals to vindicate their constitutional rights, and contributes to a culture of near-zero accountability for law enforcement and other public officials.”
• At the Pacific Legal Foundation, Timothy Snowball explains why the court should grant a cert petition and reverse a lower-court decision holding “that police may use outright deception as a pretext for gaining consent to perform a warrantless search of a home for evidence of illegal activity.”
• At FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux suggests that “[w]hen Supreme Court justices lack an understanding of what technology means for the lives of the people affected by their decisions, they will struggle to respond effectively to technological change,” a challenge highlighted in cases like this term’s Carpenter v. United States, which asks whether the government must obtain a warrant for cell-site-location information.

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