Tuesday round-up

This morning the Supreme Court will hear 80 minutes of argument in five cases consolidated under Financial Oversight Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC, which ask whether the members of Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board were appointed in violation of the Constitution’s appointments clause, and, if so, whether the board’s decisions should be invalidated. Amy Howe had this blog’s preview, which first appeared at Howe on the Court. Brandon A. Slotkin and Prachee Sawantor preview the case for Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) argues that “the Justices shouldn’t stop the board from exercising powers granted by Congress under the Constitution.”

At The Bulwark, Walter Olson weighs in on a trio of cases argued last week in which the court considered whether federal law protects employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, noting that “this would not be the first branch of employment discrimination law to develop through surprise plain meaning readings.” At The World and Everything In It (podcast), Mary Reichard breaks down the oral arguments in the cases.

Briefly:

• At AP (via How Appealing), Roxana Hegeman reports on Kansas v. Garcia, in which the justices will consider tomorrow “whether states can prosecute immigrants … who use other people’s Social Security numbers to get a job.”
• For The New York Times (subscription required), Adam Liptak looks at a cert petition that asks “the justices to decide whether ‘faithless electors’ were free to disregard pledges they made to vote for their own parties’ candidates.”
• For The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Jess Bravin narrates a visual feature based on archived notes from the justices’ private conferences that “allow[] one to be a virtual fly on the wall as the nation’s most powerful jurists decided landmarks of American law.”
• In the latest episode of Bloomberg Law’s Cases and Controversies podcast, “hosts Kimberly Robinson and Jordan Rubin break down upcoming arguments over the constitutionality of Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board, the latest juvenile sentencing test involving the D.C. sniper rampage, and the first of several disputes this term at the intersection of immigration and criminal law.”
• At Quartz, Ephrat Livni talks to Supreme Court sketch artist and SCOTUSblog illustrator Art Lien about how Lien “sees for the people in a place where the electronic eye is barred by law.”
• At The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (subscription required), Daniel Cotter looks back at the first week of October Term 2019.
• At the Cato Institute’s Cato at Liberty blog, Jay Schweikert notes that recent actions on the court’s cert docket suggest that, “with several major qualified immunity cases on the horizon, it appears the Court may finally be preparing to take up the matter.”
• At Law360 (subscription required), Vivek Chopra weighs in on Mathena v. Malvo, in which convicted “D.C. sniper” Lee Boyd Malvo is asking the justices to overturn his sentence of life without parole, arguing that “Malvo’s story is a compelling example of how juveniles’ immaturity and vulnerability can lead them to commit terrible crimes, and yet possibly remain capable of change and redemption.”

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