Category Archives: Civil Rights

June at the Supreme Court — October 2017 Term

By tmess2 | Published June 3, 2018

Because the Supreme Court has a custom of publishing opinions in the same term as the oral argument on a case and the justices like to wrap up their work before July 4, June is always an active month at the Supreme Court — the legal equivalent of an everything must go closeout sale.  Because during the rest of the year, the Supreme Court issues decisions as the opinions are ready for release, the June opinions reflect two groups of cases.  First, there are the cases from late in the year — March and April primarily — for which a June decision would reflect a somewhat normal opinion pace.  Even for a unanimous decision, it takes time to write an opinion, and sixty days is somewhat the norm even for unanimous opinion.  Second, there are the difficult cases.  While sixty days from argument to opinion is a good pace when everyone agrees, if other justices want to write an opinion (dissenting or concurring) in response to the initial opinion that extends things considerably — particularly if the original author revises their draft to respond to the other opinions as sometimes happens.

This year’s caseload for June is somewhat on the high end for recent years with 29 cases still pending.  (For now the Supreme Court is just issuing cases on Monday, but, at some point this month, the Supreme Court will add additional days each week.  Needing to issue seven cases per week, my hunch is that they will go to two days per week starting June 11, but they might hold off to June 18.)  While there have been other years with more cases still pending at this point in time, what makes this year exceptional is the low number of cases decided.  The Supreme Court only had 63 arguments this year, reflecting the continued decline in accepting cases.  Of those 63 cases, two were dismissed meaning that the Supreme Court has only decided 32 argued cases this year.   As would be expected, the Supreme Court has decided most of the cases from argued between October and January — 28 decisions out of 34 cases.  Of the twenty-nine cases argued in February, March, and April, the Supreme Court has dismissed two cases and decided four cases.  Because the Supreme Court tries to balance out opinion assignments from each argument session, that means that there is some clue as to who is handling the pending cases from the first four argument sessions, but very little clue as to the last three sessions.

From October, there is only one case left and it is bigly important — Gill vs. Whitford on partisan gerrymandering.  Based on the other opinions from October, it appears that Chief Justice Roberts got the initial assignment on the case.  Normally, that would be a bad sign for those who believe that the Supreme Court has some role to play in assuring fair elections.  However, after the initial conference, the Supreme Court did accept a second case on partisan gerrymandering.  I can also see a situation in which the majority saw problems with the standard used by the panel but could not agree on what the standard should be.  That split would allow Chief Justice Roberts to assign the case to himself but could lead to a situation (like the last time that the Supreme Court considered this issue) in which there was no majority opinion.  Or the argument in the second case may have clarified issues resulting in one of the other justices now having the majority opinion. Continue Reading...

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The Muslim Ban Case

By tmess2 | Published April 21, 2018

Wednesday is the last argument day of this year’s Supreme Court term, and the Supreme Court is going out with a really big case — Trump vs. Hawaii on immigration ban, version 3.0.  The significance and public interest in this case is revealed by the fact that the audio from the argument will be released later in the day.  (Usually, on argument days, the Supreme Court only releases the transcript with the audios from all arguments in a week being released on Friday.)

From the first day in office, President Trump has been attempting to ban immigration from certain predominately Muslim countries.  Version 1.0 was a rushed order that got into legal trouble quickly.  Version 2.0 reflected the administration taking the time to actually think about the terms of the order.  Version 2.0 expressly established a time frame for studying problems with the visa system and identifying which countries were problematic.  Version 3.0 placed restrictions on immigration from six Muslim countries (Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen) and two non-Muslim countries (North Korea and Venezuela).  According to Version 3.0, these eight countries do not adequately assist the United States in terms of sharing information on the background of visa applicants.

There are two side issues in this case.  The first issue is the question of whether the case is “justiciable.”  In plain English, whether a court can review the President’s exercise of executive power related to immigration.  Generally speaking, individual visa decisions are not reviewable, but this case involves a broader policy.  The other side issue is the question of “global injunctions.”  In plain English, typically, a judge can only issue an order that resolves the claims of the parties to the case.  There is an exception for class actions in which one plaintiff is a representative of a larger group of plaintiffs, but, in a class action, all members of the class are parties to the case and have a right to have input on any settlement.  Recently, there have been several cases — both under the Obama Administration and now under the Trump Administration — in which a judge has issued an injunction that covers the precludes the government from applying a new policy to anybody, not just the individual plaintiffs. Continue Reading...

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To Bake or Not to Bake

By tmess2 | Published December 2, 2017

This week, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.  The case involves Colorado’s civil rights statutes which prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.  The petitioner — a baker — claims that he should be exempt from that requirement because he believes that gay marriage is morally wrong and, by making him sell a wedding cake to the happy couple, the Colorado law is compelling him to endorse the wedding.

In many ways, this case is similar to the Hobby Lobby case from several years ago, but, in some key ways, it is different.  The main difference requires going back thirty years to a rather infamous free exercise decision, Employment Division of Oregon vs. Smith.  In Smith, Justice Scalia all but wrote the Free Exercise Clause out of the Constitution — holding that it created no exemption based on religious belief from a generally applicable law.  In response, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which was intended to restore the pre-Smith interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause.  There are, however, two problems with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  First, as shown by Hobby Lobby, it actually created more protections than the pre-Smith decisions.  Second, the United States Supreme Court has held that it only creates a rule for interpreting federal statutes and that Congress does not have the power to impose a similar rule on the states.  Because this case involves a state law, the RFRA does not apply.  While the baker attempts to raise a free exercise claim, that claim is unlikely to succeed under Smith as the ban on discriminating against homosexuals is a law of general application.  That does, however, leave the free speech claim.

The free speech claim brings us back into the Hobby Lobby universe where the question is whose perception controls.  Besides actual speech, free speech protection extends to expressive conduct.  Furthermore, as a general matter, the government may not compel speech.  The question is thus who is speaking in this case — a question that could blow a significant whole in civil rights law. Continue Reading...

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The Future of Redistricting

By tmess2 | Published October 2, 2017

At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, October 3, the Supreme Court Justices will take the bench and the Chief Justice will call for arguments in Gill vs. Whitford — a case on direct appeal from a three-judge panel in which the majority of the panel found that the legislative districts in Wisconsin were the results of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.  Then, on Friday, the justices will discuss the case in conference, and — depending on the vote — either Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy will assign this case to one of the justices to write the opinion.  Then — probably in February or March — we will get a series of opinions (with possibly no opinion having the support of five justices) that will define the rules for the next cycle of redistricting starting in 2021.

This case has its roots in the framing of the Constitution.  The original structure of the British parliament awarded a certain number of seats to each incorporated borough (town) and to each shire (county).  When combined with the fact that only freeholders (property owners) had the right to vote, by the middle of the Eighteenth Century, there were boroughs that were very small with only a handful of voters (so-called “rotten boroughs”).   The non-representative nature of the British Parliament was one of the reasons why colonists did not accept the argument that they were represented by the British Parliament.  In drafting the U.S. Constitution, at least for the House of Representatives, the framers decided that representation in Congress would depend upon population based on a decennial census.

By requiring that representation in the House would be based on representation, the Constitution created a de facto requirement that states draw new congressional districts (at least when a state’s representation changed).  Some, but not all, states also based representation in state legislatures on population — again requiring periodic redistricting.  In simply requiring redistricting, the U.S. Constitution was ahead of its time.  Now, most countries that use a first-past-the-post system also have periodic redistricting.  The vast majority of them also use a non-partisan commission with specific criteria to draw fair and competitive district lines.  The framers, however, did not have the extra two centuries of seeing what works and what doesn’t work in the redistricting process.  And it is some of what happened next in the U.S. that has led the other countries to have neutral agencies handle redistricting. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court 2017-18 Term Preview: Part III (Remaining Cases)

By tmess2 | Published September 23, 2017

In Part I and Part II, we looked at the cases that have already been scheduled for an argument.  This post will look at the cases for the remainder of the term.

As of this point in time, the Supreme Court has not yet announced the schedule of the cases that will be argued in December.  (The December argument session actually begins the Monday after Thanksgiving, November 27.)  There are six available dates for argument and ten cases available.  (To get to ten available cases, the Supreme Court granted review in the middle of August to replace one case that was dismissed.)  It is possible that some of the ten cases may end up in January, particularly if they do not accept many cases over the next several weeks for January.  (The briefing schedule typically requires at least three months between the Supreme Court granting review and the argument.  As such, the January argument docket will come from the cases already granted and the additional cases added between now and October 16.)

As with the previous posts, some of the cases available for argument in December are somewhat technical issues that will not get a lot of public attention. Continue Reading...

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A June to Remember/Fear?

By tmess2 | Published June 4, 2017

There are times when, through the normal cycle, and discretionary decisions, events start to come in rapid procession.  June is shaping up to be one of those month between elections (both in the U.S. and abroad), the end of the Supreme Court term, and the matters currently on the plate of Congress.  We have already had the first major event of June — the decision by the Trump Administration to make America weaker by playing to his misinformed base on climate change and withdrawing from the Paris Accords.  It’s almost impossible to count the reasons why this decision is wrong,  here are a few:  1) the agreement was non-binding; 2) being a signator gave us a seat at the table in future discussions; 3) withdrawing makes China and the European Union more powerful; 4) state laws requiring an increasing percent of energy to come from renewal sources are still in effect and will contribute to the U.S. meeting its pledge anyway; 5) the federal courts have held that greenhouse gases are a pollutant requiring federal action under the Clean Air Act (even though the precise terms of the regulations to reduce greenhouse gases are not yet final) which means that we may have to meet or exceed the pledge anyway.

Moving to the Supreme Court, June is looking like immigration month.  May ended with a decision in the first of four immigration cases heard this term.  The case involved what types of sexual offenses against a child trigger deportation hearings for authorized immigrants (e.g., permanent residents).  The Supreme Court narrowly interpreted the statute, meaning that — for some sexual offenses (those that can be committed against a 16 or 17-year old — the first offense will not trigger deportation.  Two of the other three also directly or indirectly concern deportation.  In addition, with the lower courts having barred enforcement of the travel ban, the Trump Administration is asking the Supreme Court to stay those injunctions.  (The real issue is the enforcement of the restrictions on visas and entry.  It is likely that the Supreme Court will grant relief to some overbroad language in those bars that could be read as suggesting that the Trump Administration can’t begin work on revisions to the vetting process.)  There are 22 other cases to be decided this month, so immigration will not be the only big news this month.  And, even aside from the decisions in cases already argued, the Supreme Court will be deciding what cases to take next term and there are some potentially major issues that could be on the agenda for 2017-18.

Moving to U.S. elections, there are still three special elections — all of which will occur this month.  Two — in Georgia and South Carolina — involve vacancies created by the Trump cabinet appointment.  The other — California — arose from a vacancy created by filling the vacancy in the California Attorney General position created when the former AG won the U.S. Senate election last fall.  Because California uses a “jungle primary” (i.e.  one in which all candidates from all parties run in one primary with the top two advancing to the general election), we already know that the Democrats will keep this seat and the only question on Tuesday is which Democrat will be elected.  For the most part, both parties in choosing members of Congress to fill vacancies have followed the rule of only choosing people from “safe” seats.  As such, while the Democrats have so far — in the first round in California and in Montana and Kansas — run around 10% ahead of 2018, this success has not changed the winner of any seat. Continue Reading...

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Redistricting Advanced Course

By tmess2 | Published May 27, 2017

We are four years away from the next full round of redistricting.  The redistricting process is a combination of federal law, state law, and local politics.  The fact that there are legal rules governing the process means that individuals who do not like one of the many maps (congressional, state senate, state house, county commission, city council) can bring a court challenge to that map.  When discussing federal law, there are two crucial provisions — the Fourteenth Amendment and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  (Additionally, there is some suggestion that the First Amendment may have an impact on certain types of gerrymanders.)  This week the Supreme Court issued an opinion on North Carolina’s congressional districts that attempted to reconcile the Fourteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Acts.

The background of this case is that, two decades ago, the Supreme Court (in a case involving North Carolina) held that a racial gerrymander — one in which race played a significant role in the drawing of the lines — would be subject to strict scrutiny (the most state unfriendly form of review — requiring showing of both a “compelling interest” justifying the use of race and that the use of race was “narrowly tailored” to meet that compelling interest).  Over the years, the Supreme Court has clarified that, to trigger state scrutiny, race must be the predominate factor in drawing the lines.  The Supreme Court has also clarified that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be a compelling interest.

North Carolina currently has three Democratic representatives in Congress — from the 1st district, the 4th district, and the 12th district.  Before the last round of redistricting, African-Americans represented around 48% of the voting age population (BVAP in election law jargon) of the 1st district and 43% of voting age population of the 12th.  That BVAP was enough to make African-Americans into a very significant segment of the Democratic primary vote in those districts and there are enough white Democrats in those districts that — even in bad years nationally, the Democratic candidate gets well over 60% of the vote in those districts.  In short, African-Americans could get their preferred candidate selected in those districts even though they did not have 50% of the vote.  In the trial court, North Carolina conceded that they did take race into account in drawing the 1st district but claimed that they did so to meet Section 2 (that is by making the 1st district into a majority-minority district),  On the 12th district, North Carolina claimed that they did not draw that district to pack it with African-Americans but rather to pack it with Democrats.  However, there was some evidence that — at least for one county in the district — they did expressly consider race and, also, that they used race as a proxy for partisanship.  Additionally, the 12th was already compliant with “one man, one vote” even if North Carolina had kept the old district lines and the changes added mostly African-Americans while removing mostly whites. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court 2016-17: Forthcoming Opinion Watch

By tmess2 | Published April 30, 2017

Like much in government (including the school-year that many of us remember from growing up), the Supreme Court follows a cyclical calendar.  Beginning with the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court has seven argument sessions each year.  Each session is two weeks followed by a recess.  Five of these recesses are for two weeks, but the recesses taken over Christmas and after the January arguments are usually for four weeks.  During these approximately thirty weeks, the Supreme Court is engaged in three basic tasks:  1) reviewing applications from parties that want their cases heard by the Supreme Court; 2) preparing for and holding arguments in those cases that have been accepted; and 3) writing opinions.  Because the task of preparing for arguments (reading the written arguments of counsel and reviewing the record from the trial court to get an idea of the “facts” underlying to which the law has to be applied) is time consuming, opinions tend to slowly dribble out during these first thirty weeks.  As a result, when the arguments end in late April (or early May depending upon the calendar), there are typically a significant number of cases still waiting for opinions.

During this year’s term, as is not unusual, there were a handful of opinions issued in December and January (a total of six) with the number going up slightly during February, March, and April (a total of twenty-one so far with the possibility of several more on Monday before the Supreme Court leaves for its final recess.  However, with arguments for the year having wrapped up this past Wednesday, there are currently thirty-eight cases in which opinions have not yet been issued.  While there are some exceptions to the rule, by this time of year, the Supreme Court has issued opinions in most of the cases heard last Fall.  During the argument portion of the year, it takes between two and six months to get an opinion.  The simple cases in which there is unanimous agreement among the Justices (which represent about half of the cases) tend to come quickly.  When the Justices disagree, the process stretches out as the Justices in the minority draft opinions responding to the majority opinion, and the majority opinion then makes changes to address the issues raised by the minority (and so on until everyone believes that no further changes are needed).    The bottom line is that, at this point of the year, opinions have been issued for all of the October arguments, for about two-thirds of the November and December arguments, for about half of the January and February arguments, and for none of the March and April arguments.  The expectation, especially for the remaining cases from November and December, is that the delay represents some significant disagreement in the early cases.

Before going into the highlights of what is left to come down — either on Monday or more likely between mid-May and the end of June when the Supreme Court returns from its last recess — one point to make.  Justice Gorsuch only participated in the arguments for this last two-week session.  The tradition is that a Justice does not vote in cases heard before the Justice joined the Supreme Court.  However, it is not unusual to schedule a case for re-argument if the a Justice joins the Court after argument and the vote of the eight Justices who heard the case is split 4-4. Continue Reading...

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The Never-ending Battle — Redistricting 2011

By tmess2 | Published March 5, 2017

One of Charles Dickens’s lesser known novels is “Bleak House,” dealing with a legal case over an estate that lasted so long and was so expensive that the expenses of the case exceeded the value of the estate.  The same is unfortunately true of disputes over the redistricting process.   We are now almost six years into the current ten-year cycle of district lines.  The run-up to the next cycle begins with elections in several states this year and next that will pick some of the governors and legislators that will be in office in 2021 when the redistricting process begins again.  You would think that, by this point of the cycle with three congressional elections and two or three state legislative elections (depending on the state) under the new lines, all court cases about those lines would be over.  Unfortunately, we are not at that point yet.

This week, the Supreme Court decided the most recent redistricting case (and it has another one under submission).  This week’s decision involved the Virginia House and whether the  drawing of its lines represented a “racial gerrymander” that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  The key issues in a racial gerrymander case is whether race is the predominate reason for the drawing of the lines of a particular district and (if race is the predominate reason) whether there is a sufficiently compelling reason for the reliance on race.  Such a challenge focuses on particular district lines.

In this case, the challenges concerned twelve districts.  The original three judge panel found that race was only the predominate reason for one of the twelve districts.  In part, this decision relied on the fact that the other eleven districts did not have unusual shapes and the lines could be justified by “traditional” redistrict considerations.  While the panel found that race was the predominate explanation for the twelfth district, the panel found that the need to bump up minority votes in that district to survive pre-clearance (as the Virginia lines were drawn before the Supreme Court abolished the pre-clearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act) was a sufficiently compelling reason. Continue Reading...

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Hate in America

By DocJess | Published February 27, 2017

Last night, we in Philly heard that hundreds of headstones were turned over Saturday night at a Jewish cemetery, a week after similar vandalism in St. Louis. Many people are saddened, appalled and surprised. They should be sad and appalled, but not surprised. This is Trump’s America.

I have been working with Indivisible locally, and I am heartened by the number of people completely new to politics who are suddenly aware, and ready to take action to both resist the Trump agenda, and help elect people who will serve America, and not what is actually the Bannon administration.

I keep hearing two themes through my work with Indivisible. First, people are concerned about what they can do to stop hate. And by “hate” I mean not just the vandalism, but the verbal abuse people see foisted upon innocent people, just for the colour of their skin,  The ICE roundups are another form of hate: people question what they can do to help those who will be caught up in the dragnets. Hate also in the form of the administration’s moves against sick people (“repeal Obamacare” and dismantle Medicaid), Hate in the form of transgender bathroom rights. I’m a doctor, and I’m telling you, the only thing that matters is that you wash your hands. (If you’re a long-term reader, you remember back to SARS and fingers, nails, fingers, fingers, fingers.) And let’s not forget the hate of literacy in terms of claiming the media is the “enemy of the people”.  The hate is creeping down from the Cheeto Team, and up from the GOP state legislatures. Continue Reading...

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