Friday round-up

EDITH ROBERTS MAR 6, 2020 6:45 AM

The dust continues to settle from Wednesday’s argument in June Medical Services v. Russo, a challenge to a Louisiana law regulating abortion in which the state contends that abortion providers do not have a legal right to sue on behalf of their patients. At The Daily Signal, Elizabeth Slattery argues that “[t]he court should make clear that abortion providers have to follow the same legal rules as all other litigants[:] Women can speak for themselves, and, perhaps, the fact that no woman joined this suit sends a message about what the women of Louisiana want.” In an op-ed for The Washington Post (subscription required), Mary Ziegler observes that “[a]ccepting Louisiana’s standing claim might make it much harder for anyone to get an abortion case to the Supreme Court,” “[b] But its impact would go beyond that, blessing the antiabortion claim that abortion providers don’t have women’s best interests at heart.” At the Reproductive Rights Prof Blog, Cynthia Soohoo writes that questioning at the argument “suggested that a majority of justices wished to focus on the very narrow question of how lower courts should apply [a recent precedent] to admitting privilege laws rather than to revisit the Court’s abortion jurisprudence.” Additional commentary comes from Anna North at Vox. At Bloomberg Law, Jordan Rubin and Kimberly Robinson report that “leaving the contentious issues in the dispute aside, the event served to spotlight the recurring problem of spectator access to the nation’s highest court.”

Bill Hutchinson and Ella Torres report at ABC News that “[t]he controversial execution of Nathaniel Woods was carried out late Thursday in Alabama just minutes after the Supreme Court denied a temporary stay, issued only hours earlier.” Amy Howe covered the court’s orders in the case for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court.

Briefly:

• At Bloomberg, Greg Stohr reports that “Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday he regretted the words he used the previous day to blast two Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, while rejecting accusations that he was making a threat.”
• For The Washington Post (subscription required), Matt Schudel reports that “Henry J. Abraham, a Holocaust refugee who became a leading historian of the U.S. Supreme Court and was an inspiring teacher during nearly 50 years on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and later the University of Virginia, died Feb. 26” at the age of 98.
• In the latest episode of The Heritage Foundation’s SCOTUS 101 podcast, Mark Walsh joins Elizabeth Slattery “to break down what the oral arguments in an important separation-of-powers case and the Louisiana abortion case,” along with “the recent dust up between John Roberts and Chuck Schumer and the news that the Court will hear a sixth case involving Obamacare.”
• A new episode of the National Constitution Center’s We the People podcast focuses on Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a constitutional challenge to the structure of the CFPB; host Jeffrey Rosen talks to Richard Cordray, the bureau’s first director, and Ilya Shapiro about the case.
• In an op-ed at The Hill, Ryan Owens and Ryan Black discuss a recent survey in which they asked members of the Supreme Court bar for their views on nationwide injunctions, and found that “71 percent of respondents believed the [Supreme C]ourt should step in and clarify the law.”
• Also in an op-ed at The Hill, Kyle Hawkins cheers the court’s decision to review Fulton v. Philadelphia, a challenge to Philadelphia’s exclusion of Catholic Social Services from the city’s foster care system because the group will not place children with same-sex couples, but maintains that “when it comes to protecting religious liberty, the Supreme Court shouldn’t stop at Fulton[:] The time has come to take up the case of a Washington florist who has been persecuted by the state because she refused to use her expressive and artistic talents to create a message supporting a same-sex wedding that contravenes her sincere religious beliefs.”

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