Monday round-up

Nina Totenberg reports at NPR that, “[w]ith the county awash in protests over the death of George Floyd, the U.S. Supreme Court is examining” qualified immunity, “a modern-day legal doctrine created by judges that has shielded police and other government officials from lawsuits over their conduct.” At Constitution Daily, Marcia Coyle reports that “[a] series of petitions for review pending in the court challenge the underpinnings of the doctrine, and a number of cross-ideological organizations are telling the Justices that it is long past time to correct” it.

At The Hill, John Kruzel and Harper Neidig report that “[t]he Supreme Court is expected to hand down several blockbuster opinions in the next few weeks as one of the most politically volatile terms in recent memory draws to a close,” including in “fights over abortion, Electoral College procedures, LGBT rights in the workplace, the deportation status of nearly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants and the fate of President Trump‘s tax returns.” At Reason, Damon Root highlights “three cases to watch in the coming weeks.”

Briefly:

• Jordan Rubin and Kimberly Robinson write at Bloomberg Law that, “[r]eflecting on their historic livestream experiment, U.S. Supreme Court justices might worry that it went too well”: [F]resh off of their lauded live-audio debut in May—prompted by coronavirus social distancing measures—they’re left with little excuse not to continue the practice, especially when they return to the bench.”
• In an op-ed at The Hill, Lawrence Friedman suggests that if a “future spike in coronavirus infections … lead[s] to another wave of emergency orders that place restrictions on the way Americans live, work, and play, … [s]tates, in defending the next round of orders, will be able to point to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.”
• At Nahmod Law, Sheldon Nahmod looks at a cert petition asking the court to decide whether the former Illinois government worker who prevailed in Janus v. AFSCME, in which the court struck down an Illinois law allowing public-sector unions to charge nonmembers for collective-bargaining activities, has a “viable section 1983 damages claim[] against the public employee union[] that previously received [his] fair-share or agency fees.”

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