Wednesday round-up

Today the Supreme Court wraps up its December sitting with two oral arguments. The first is in Monasky v. Taglieri, which involves the “habitual residence” provision of an international child-abduction convention. Amy Howe previewed the case for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. Lachanda Reid and Grant Shillington have a preview at Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Center.

This morning’s second argument is in McKinney v. Arizona, a capital case in which the court will consider whether current law or the law in effect when a defendant’s conviction originally became final applies to resentencing. This blog’s preview, which first appeared at Howe on the Court, came from Amy Howe. Robert Reese Oñate and Thomas Shannan preview the case for Cornell. Subscript Law has a graphic explainer for the case.

Amy Howe analyzes yesterday’s argument in Maine Community Health Options v. United States, which stems from the federal government’s failure to reimburse health insurance companies for some of the losses created as a result of the Affordable Care Act, for this blog, in a post that first appeared at Howe on the Court. Nina Totenberg reports at NPR that the court “examined Obamacare for the fifth time on Tuesday, only this time the justices cast their skeptical gaze on Republican efforts to hobble the law.” At Fox News, Bill Mears reports that “[p]rivate health insurers are poised to prevail … at the Supreme Court over claims the federal government owes them billions of dollars from a now-defunct financial incentive program in the Affordable Care Act.” Additional coverage comes from Kevin Daley at the Daily Caller. Providing analysis at NBC News, Leah Litman maintains that although “[i]t’s not the Supreme Court’s job to give Republicans the laws they couldn’t pass in the legislature,” “the Trump administration implies that it is, … asking the court to peel back some of the most significant provisions of the Affordable Care Act after Congress failed to dismantle the law.”

Yesterday the court issued the first opinion of the term in an argued case: In Rotkiske v. Klemm, the justices ruled 8-1 that the one-year statute of limitations in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act applies even if the plaintiff does not discover the basis for the lawsuit until after the one-year deadline has passed. Kimberly Robinson reports for Bloomberg Law that “[t]he court rejected extending the time in which a FDCPA case be brought, saying the plain language of the statue unambiguously prohibits that interpretation.”

This blog’s analysis of Monday’s argument in Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr, which asks whether courts can review a request for equitable tolling of the deadline to file a statutory motion to reopen as a question of law, or whether it is a question of fact that cannot be reviewed, comes from Kit Johnson. John Duffy analyzes Monday’s second argument, in Thryv v. Click-to-Call Technologies, LP, in which the court will decide whether federal patent law allows an appeal of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision to institute a procedure for challenging the validity of a patent after a finding that a one-year time bar does not apply, for this blog. At PatentlyO (via How Appealing), Dennis Crouch discusses the argument in Thryv, anticipating “a split opinion with the majority affirming — holding that the no-appeal provision has no force in this particular case.”

Briefly:

• At Justia’s Verdict blog, Michael Dorf suggests that the newest case on the court’s merits docket, Carney v. Adams, a First Amendment challenge to a Delaware constitutional provision that limits the number of judges that can be affiliated with a particular political party, raises the question of whether “a state [can] act on the undeniable reality that judging is not completely separate from politics without leading the People to believe that … law is nothing other than politics.”
• At the Human Rights At Home Blog, Margaret Drew deplores the court’s refusal Monday to review a case upholding a Kentucky law “that requires details of ultrasounds be given to women seeking abortions.”

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