It’s approaching that time of year again — June at the Supreme Court.  The time of year when — with Congress merely slogging things out on legislation — attention in Washington D.C. turns to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court obliges with major decision on top of major decision.

For reasons that probably date back to the days when the Supreme Court Justices also heard cases in the Circuit, the Supreme Court has a tradition of wrapping up the business of deciding cases by the end of June.  For the most part, during the first part of the annual term, the Justices tend to take between two and five months to write an opinion on a case, with the exact length depending on the complexity of a case, the Justice’s writing style, and whether the decision is unanimous (by tradition, other Justices are given the opportunity to complete their separate opinions on a case and all of the opinions on a case are issued at the same time if there are multiple opinions).  Since the most significant cases tend to be split decisions, that tends to push them back and major decision from the December and January arguments sessions may not be issued until late May or early June where they share space with the decisions from the February, March, and April argument sessions (on which the Supreme Court lacks the time to take for or more months to complete their work).  Heading into Tuesday’s session (as the Court is taking Memorial Day off with the rest of us), there are twenty-eight cases still waiting for opinions and 5-6 weeks to go.  (The Supreme Court is currently showing that it will be issuing opinions and orders the week of June 29th. )  Of course, not all of these cases are significant from a political perspective.  What follows is what is currently known about the cases that followers of this site might find significant.In forecasting cases, the customs of the Supreme Court can be useful.  By tradition, the Supreme Court meets on the Friday after argument to take a tentative vote on a case.  The senior justice in the majority (either the Chief Justice or one of the four most senior Associate Justices) controls which Justice gets the opinion.  However, the Justices tend to try to keep the work load somewhat even.  That means, if there are nine cases argued in a month, each Justice should get a case.  (Of course, it is possible that the original Justice might lose the majority in a close case, especially if there are multiple issues or different theories about why one side wins.)

This year, there were nine cases in October, November, and March.  In December and February, there were 11 cases (meaning two Justices get an extra case in each month) and in January there were 10 cases (meaning one Justice will get an extra case for January).  Finally, in April, there were only seven cases (meaning two Justice will not get a case); however, it is more likely than not that the 4 Justices who did not get an extra case from December through February will get an April case to even out the work load.

At the present time, there are no outstanding cases from October and one each from November and December.  Given the above custom, most experts think it is pretty clear who is righting the decision in these two cases.  The only Justice without a November opinion is Justice Kennedy.  Given that he is typically (but not always) the 5th Justice in the majority in 5-4 decisions, it is more likely than not that Justice Kennedy has the opinion in Zhirovsky vs. Kerry — a tricky case about the dividing line of Congressional and Executive Authority over passports and diplomatic recognition (the specific issue being whether Congress can mandate that the State Department issue passports showing that people born in Jerusalem were born in the nation of Israel).  This case could have significant impact on other cases (like the President’s current immigration policy).  December is a slightly less politically significant case —  Elonis v. United States — a case dealing with the interaction between the First Amendment and the federal law on harassment, specifically in this case comments posted on the internet.  Justice Roberts should be the author on this opinion.  While the decision itself has significant repercussions in the field of domestic violence, it also is significant for its place in the Roberts Court’s focus on Free Speech issues — a focus that has already given us the gutting of campaign finance laws.  In addition to Elonis, Roberts has already written one First Amendment opinion from the January argument session and might have the second First Amendment case from the January session.  (There is another well as another First Amendment case from the March arguments, but  — as Roberts has already written an opinion from March — somebody else will probably have that case).  It is likely that sometime during June, I will take a look at the combined effect of these decisions rather than looking at them separately.

The only other January case that is of political significance is a case involving the Fair Housing Act and what needs to be proven to show discrimination in housing — Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.  Both knowing the nature of the recent past on Civil Rights laws in the Supreme Court and who is still due a January opinion bodes poorly for the Civil Rights community on this case.  The best hope for the Civil Rights community is that Justice Sotomayor has not yet written a January opinion.  On the other hand, neither have Justices Thomas and Alito.  Since we should get some January opinions on Tuesday, the picture might be a little clearer in 48 hours.

There are two big cases still pending from February.  The first is a case on the power of the voters of the State to move the authority over drawing Congressional district lines from the legislature to an independent citizens’ commission — Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.  The other case is a little case on whether taxpayers in those states unwilling to set up their own health care exchanges are eligible to receive subsidies when they purchase insurance on a federally-run exchange — King v. Burwell.  Nothing really significant in this case beyond the future of health insurance in the United States.  At this early date, it is impossible to tell who will have the opinion on either case (but a good bet is that the health subsidy opinion will be written by Justice Kennedy or Chief Justice Roberts).  The only thing that can be said for sure is that it is unlikely that Justice Breyer will have either as he has already written two opinions from the February Session, and probably will not be Justice Kagan (who has already written one opinion from the February Session).  Depending on the reasoning, the decision in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Ambercrombie & Fitch (accommodation of religion in the hiring process) might be significant from a Free Exercise (with more free exercise claims in connection with the Affordable Care Act working their way through the lower federal courts) and Civil Rights perspective.

In March, besides the First Amendment case (Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans — the right to participate in a state’s commemorative license plate program), there is also an EPA case — Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA — dealing with the proper way to do cost-benefit analysis on the effect of regulations.  Given the staunch Republican resistance to any proposal to modify EPA authority, each of these cases has the potential to have a broad impact on the power of the EPA to do its job on numerous issues related to the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.   At this point, Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Alito have released opinions from the March Sessions.  Other than eliminating these three, it is too early to tell who might have these opinions.

Lastly, the April session.  With no opinions out, it is difficult to project April yet.  As Justice Sotomayor is second most junior and already has a two opinion month (December), there is a change that she might not have an April opinion.     From the perspective of this blog, the most significant case is the consolidate case on same-sex marriage.

As always, the highlighting of cases for this blog is from the perspective of political significance — which cases will impact elections, either by changing the rules or creating an issue that the candidates will have to address from significant interest groups.  The majority of the work that the Supreme Court does is assuring the uniform interpretation and application of federal law in legal fields that matter mostly to practitioners (at least until you are the person declaring bankruptcy or trying to sue a police officer for excessive force or hoping for justice after being victimized in a criminal case).  For those of us who practice in these fields, the rest of the Supreme Court docket is very significant, even though these cases rarely get more than a paragraph or two even in a major newspaper (which then tend to gross oversimplify the actual holding), and no candidate is likely to run on the rules governing patents and copyrights.

UPDATE (May 30).  After this week’s opinions (nothing major),  we have a little more information on judicial assignments.  We have three cases left in January, only Justice Thomas and Justice Kennedy have yet to write an opinion.  While we do have a Justice Kennedy opinion from March, we do not have any opinions from Justice Kennedy in November, January, or February.  We have three Justices (Scalia, Breyer, and Sotomayor) who already have a two opinion month.  I will go out on a limb and guess that besides Zhirovsky, Justice Kennedy also has the Fair Housing Case from January and either the redistricting case or Burwell from February.  We would expect the Chief to have the other and an extra case from January or February and that Justice Kennedy will have an extra case in the other month.

UPDATE (June 6).  Four more opinions in argued cases.  We’re down to two opinions left from January (still waiting for Justice Thomas and Justice Kennedy) and we had a second January opinion from Justice Ginsburg.  In theory that leaves one extra opinion from February (I would still tend to predict an extra opinion from Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Kennedy, but might go to one of the others if those two are handling the major cases).   This week’s cases did include Elonis (where the Supreme Court avoided the First Amendment issue).  At the present time, we do not yet have any April opinions.  We do have five of the nine March opinions.   While the only “conservative” Justice without a March opinion is Justice Scalia, the remaining cases from March are cases that are not necessarily liberal vs. conservative cases.  At the present time, we do not have enough February opinions to project who will get the major cases.