Friday round-up

Briefly:

• For the Los Angeles Times, David Savage reports that at their conference this morning the justices will consider a cert petition that asks them to overturn a case that bars “states from requiring mail-order sellers to collect sales taxes if the vendors ha[ve] no ‘physical presence’ in that state,” noting that “lawyers for 35 states, including California, are urging the high court to overturn the physical-presence rule as outdated and unfair to them as well as to the struggling ‘brick and mortar’ retailers who must collect sales taxes.” [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in this case.]
• For The Economist, Steven Mazie looks at Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, which will be argued next week and in which the Supreme Court will decide whether Ohio’s voter-roll-maintenance process violates federal voter-registration laws, reporting that “[t]he core of Husted involves a tricky detail of statutory interpretation” and that “[f]or decades, the Department of Justice (DOJ) understood the law the way the challengers do[, b]ut in a rare about-face the DOJ under Donald Trump now embraces Ohio’s position.”
• Subscript offers a graphic explainer on Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado, one of two original-jurisdiction disputes over water rights on Monday’s argument docket.
• Subscript’s second new graphic explainer covers Byrd v. United States, in which the justices will consider next week whether a driver has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a rental car when he is not listed as an authorized driver on the rental contract.

• At the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Melissa Holyoak discusses a cert petition filed on her behalf that asks the justices “to review a Google settlement resulting from a class action over the company’s alleged privacy violations by its search engine” and that challenges the “unfair practice of giving away class members’ money to third-party groups.”
• At Legal Sports Report, Ryan Rodenberg explains why the Department of Justice’s announcement yesterday that it is ending its “policy of non-intervention in the marijuana law enforcement context” increases the “importance of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Christie vs. NCAA…, as the ruling in the New Jersey sports betting case could impact a number of areas beyond sports gambling.”
• At The American Prospect, Simon Lazarus maintains that Epic Systems v. Lewis, in which the court will decide whether labor laws forbid class waivers in employment contracts, is a “sleeper [that] has received less attention than it deserves,” which “could strip foundational safeguards in place for over 80 years, essential to ensuring millions of low-wage and non-union workers of their right to fair pay, job security, workplace safety, nondiscrimination, and other guarantees protected by state and federal law.”

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