Court grants six new cases
on Jan 11, 2013 at 2:50 pm
The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide a major case on the right to remain silent — a case testing whether that right exists for an individual who has not been arrested but is interviewed by police, and was not given Miranda warnings, when that silence was used to help prove guilt at a trial. That case — Salinas v. Texas (docket 12-246) — was one of six new cases accepted for review. (The order list is here.) These cases are likely to be heard in the April sitting, which begins April 15 — the Court’s last scheduled sitting of this Term.
The Justices also said they would decide whether the U.S. government may deny funds in the anti-AIDS program globally to organizations that do not actively oppose prostitution — a test of the First Amendment rights of the organizations seeking such aid. The case is Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International (12-10). Justice Elena Kagan is recused in this case.
Here, in brief, are the other new cases and the issues at stake:
** American Trucking Associations v. City of Los Angeles (11-798) — federal preemption of port regulations that limit the operations of federally licensed truckers within the port area. (Grant limited to questions 1 and 3.)
** Hillman v. Maretta (11-1221) — whether state or federal law controls the right to receive the death benefits from a federal employee’s life insurance policy.
** Sekhar v. United States (12-357) — whether the federal anti-extortion act applies to a private individual’s use of a threat in order to get a government authority to withdraw a recommendation that would be adverse to that private individual’s interest in a pension fund. The issue is whether such a recommendation qualifies as “property” under the Hobbs Act, which makes it a crime to obtain property by threats.
** United States v. Kebodeaux (12-418) — Congress’s authority in 2006 to make it a federal crime for an individual convicted years before of a sex crime to fail to register, after the individual had long since completed a sentence.
