Monday round-up

Ariane de Vogue reports at CNN that “[u]ndocumented immigrants who work as health care providers are asking for their efforts fighting the coronavirus to be taken into consideration as the Supreme Court considers the Trump administration’s bid to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,” in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California. For The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports that in a letter filed with the court on Friday, attorneys for a group of DACA recipients told the court that there are “about 27,000 young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers who work in health care, many of them on the front lines in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.” For USA Today, Richard Wolf talks to “DACA recipients working in the health care field in California, Florida, Texas and in the suburbs of New York City, where the coronavirus has hit hardest.” Marcia Coyle reports for The National Law Journal that “[i]t’s rare that the justices are asked to address issues that come up after arguments,” but “[t]he letter from the DACA lawyers is not the first time that new events have made their way to the justices’ attention in a pending case.” Commentary comes from the editorial board of The Boston Globe.

At the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Pulse blog, Richard Samp writes that although “[t]he Supreme Court took a step in the right direction [last] week when it held [in Comcast v. National Association of African American-Owned Media] that civil rights plaintiffs are not exempt from the but-for causation requirement applicable to all other tort claims,” “it should be vigilant to ensure that lower courts do not water down the but-for causation requirement by authorizing discrimination lawsuits to proceed through discovery when unsupported by factual allegations rendering those claims plausible.” At Understanding the ADA, William Goren unpacks the decision, pushing back on the idea that “Comcast necessarily means the Supreme Court will decide but for causation is the standard for [Americans with Disabilities Act] matters outside of the retaliation and association discrimination contexts.”

Briefly:

• Robert Barnes reports for The Washington Post (subscription required) that “[t]he Trump administration’s efforts to force state and local authorities to abandon ‘sanctuary’ policies and cooperate with federal immigration agents have mostly been panned by lower courts, and the Supreme Court soon may weigh in.”
• In an interview posted on the Pacific Legal Foundation blog, Mark Miller discusses “how the COVID-19 pandemic could affect the cases currently before the Court and the constitutional issues that the Court is deliberating.”

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