Tuesday round-up
on Dec 3, 2013 at 9:13 am
Yesterday’s coverage of the Court focused primarily on the order list from the November 26 Conference, and in particular on the cases that the Court declined to review. Lyle Denniston covered the orders for this blog.
The cases in which the Court denied certiorari included two petitions by Internet giant Amazon.com and Overstock.com, who had asked the Court to review a decision by New York’s highest court holding that the companies are subject to the state’s sales tax on purchases by New York customers. Richard Wolf covered the story for USA Today, and Robert Barnes did the same for The Washington Post. The Court also denied review in Liberty University’s challenge to the employer mandate – the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers with fifty or more employees provide health insurance for their workers. Addison Morris covered that denial for JURIST. And the Court invited the Solicitor General to file a brief expressing the views of the United States in ONEOK, Inc. v. Learjet, a case that asks the Court to determine whether federal law prohibits customers who bought natural gas in the retail market from filing state antitrust lawsuits challenging price-setting in the wholesale market; Jeremy Jacobs reported on that order for Greenwire.
Other coverage focuses on merits cases that either were argued this week or are slated for argument in the near future. At JURIST, Jaclyn Belczyk reports on yesterday’s oral arguments in Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community and BG Group v. Argentina, while Robert Barnes of The Washington Post previews Wednesday’s oral argument in United States v. Apel, a case in which the Justices will balance military authority and the First Amendment rights of protesters. (Lyle Denniston previewed Apel for this blog earlier today.)
Briefly:
- In The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen urges the Court to grant review in Gomez v. United States, a sentencing case scheduled for this week’s Conference, and “affirm the just principle that a man cannot constitutionally be sentenced based upon charges that are not brought or upon facts that a jury does not even hear.”
- At Cato at Liberty, Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus discuss the amicus brief that they recently filed in support of the canning company in NLRB v. Noel Canning, the challenge to the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments to the NLRB. They contend in their brief that “the Court need only answer one question to invalidate President Obama’s recess appointments: ‘Who decides if the Senate is in session?’”
- And in The New York Times, Adam Liptak previews the January argument in Paroline v. United States, in which the Court will consider how to allocate liability for restitution for victims of child pornography among the users of that pornography.
[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in BG Group, but the author of this post is not affiliated with the blog.]
