Monday round-up
on Dec 7, 2015 at 6:04 am
This morning the Court will hear oral arguments in two cases. In Dollar General Stores v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Court is considering whether Indian tribal courts have jurisdiction to hear civil tort claims against non-members. Ed Gehres previewed the case for this blog, with other coverage coming from Nicole Greenstein and Gerard Salvatore for Cornell’s Legal Information Institute. Commentary comes from Gregory Ablavsky, who discusses the case with Stanford Lawyer.
The Court will also hear oral arguments in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, in which the Court will consider whether a state agency can be haled into another state’s courts against its will. Lyle Denniston previewed the case for this blog, with other coverage coming from Kelsey MacElroy and Katie Marren of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute.
On Tuesday the Court will hear oral arguments in Evenwel v. Abbott, the “one person, one vote” challenge to the state legislative maps in Texas. Lyle Denniston previewed the case for this blog, with other coverage coming from Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News. Commentary comes from Rick Hasen, who at his Election Law Blog contends that “the Court strongly suggested in the 1966 Burns v. Richardson case that a state has discretion to use something other than total population, at least when the standard is not too divergent from total population.” And at Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer suggests that the “plaintiffs behind this high-stakes legal challenge are an unusual pair.”
The other case on Tuesday is Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, a challenge to an independent commission’s redistricting maps for the state legislature in Arizona. I previewed the case for this blog. A video from the Campaign Legal Center describes the stakes in the case.
On Wednesday the Court will once again hear oral arguments in the challenge to the University of Texas at Austin’s consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process. Lyle Denniston previewed the case for this blog, with other coverage coming from Ralph Haurwitz of the Austin-American Statesman and Mark Sherman of the Associated Press. And at his eponymous blog, Kenneth Jost concludes that “all eyes will be on” Justice Anthony Kennedy “during the arguments on Wednesday as he is likely to hold the pivotal vote in this case too.”
On Friday the Court issued orders from its December 4 Conference, adding four new hours of oral argument to this Term’s docket. Lyle Denniston covered the orders for this blog, with other coverage of the grant in the attorney’s fees case CRST Van Expedited v. EEOC coming from Tony Mauro for The National Law Journal. Coverage of another of Friday’s grants comes from Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal, who reports that the Justices agreed “to review Puerto Rico’s moves to restructure public utilities’ debts by enacting its own bankruptcy law.”
Coverage of last week’s first signed decision of the Term, in last week’s decision in OBB Personenverkehr v. Sachs, comes from Tony Mauro, who in The National Law Journal describes the decision as “the latest in a series of rulings in which the high court has limited the use of U.S. courts as a forum for adjudicating wrongs that took place primarily outside the country.” And at Lawfare, Ingrid Wuerth notes that the Court’s ruling “left for another day” questions relating to “claims with less tangible injuries such as the misappropriation of trade secrets and other data or intellectual property-related actions, some of which may prove difficult to analyze under the Court’s gravamen test.”
Briefly:
- At PrawfsBlawg, Steve Vladeck discusses the split in the circuits over whether the Court’s recent decision in Johnson v. United States applies retroactively, noting that the Court “may well be on the verge of doing something it hasn’t done in decades (and of settling a messy, messy circuit split in the process).”
[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioners in Dollar General. However, I am not affiliated with the firm.]
