Wednesday round-up

Briefly:

• For The National Law Journal, Marcia Coyle reports that “[d]espite putting a temporary hold Monday on a decision approving a U.S. House Committee subpoena for President Trump’s financial records, the U.S. Supreme Court soon will face a more critical question: whether to hear and decide the president’s separation-of-powers challenge in the current term.”
• At Bloomberg Law, Jordan Rubin reports that “[t]he briefs are in for ‘Serial’ podcast subject Adnan Syed’s Supreme Court petition, and now the justices will weigh whether to take his case,” “one that could produce a significant decision for other convicts claiming innocence and for how courts across the country review ineffective assistance of counsel claims.”
• A Fix the Court report on federal appellate court transparency concludes that “the Supreme Court is the least transparent federal court by a host of measures.”

• At Slate (via How Appealing), Lorelai Laird writes that United States v. Sineneng-Smith, in which the court will review a lower-court ruling that invalidated a federal law making it a crime to encourage or cause illegal immigration for financial gain, “has the immigrant rights community worried that the court—with its recent record of unprecedented deference to the president on immigration matters—could greenlight the Trump Justice Department to criminalize routine legal work and political speech.”
• At National Review (via How Appealing), Robert George argues that in two cases that ask whether federal law protects employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, “policy views are driving a supposedly ‘formalist’ choice of the hypothetical scenario used to detect sex discrimination — and, in the process, driving us away from the only fair reading of Title VII.”

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