Monthly Archives: September 2024

Supreme Court Preview — Part 3 — Possible Cases for Later this Term

By tmess2 | Published September 29, 2024

This post is always the speculative part of the term preview.  The Supreme Court only grants review on about 1% of the applications that it receives.  Our legal system is based on the principle that courts are always open to anybody with a legitimate case.  In practical terms, that means that anybody can file a case and that courts sort out the clearly meritless cases after they are filed.  And the Supreme Court certainly gets a significant number of applications from people who “want to take their case all the way to the Supreme Court” even though the lower courts clearly applied current law correctly and there is no good argument for Supreme Court review.  But even eliminating those cases, there are still a large number of applications that raise issues that deserve to be decided by the Supreme Court.

In practical terms, the Supreme Court is looking for the “right” case to present an issue.  The Supreme Court has, in recent years, gotten better at screening out cases that have procedural issues that might prevent the Supreme Court from reaching the “merits” of the issue raised by the “questions presented” part of the application for review.  The application process means that (at least after the early October conferences) the Supreme Court considers accepting review of cases approximately 5-8 months after the decision by the lower appellate court.  That means that the cases to be heard this year involve lower court decisions that have already been made.

Among the cases that we should learn about in October are a pair of cases involving Uber and Lyft.  Both companies have agreements with their drivers requiring arbitration of disputes.  Under the Federal Arbitration Act, those contracts are valid and enforceable.  California, like many states, have laws that give the state government the power to enforce minimum wage and overtime laws.  The issue presented in those case is whether those state laws allowing the government to take action to enforce the employees right to additional compensation is a valid way to get around the arbitration requirments. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court Preview — Part 2 — December and January Arguments (?)

By tmess2 | Published September 22, 2024

In last week’s post, we covered the cases that already have argument dates scheduled for October and November.  In this week’s post, we cover cases which the Supreme Court accepted this past Spring.   As of today, the Supreme Court has not yet released its December argument schedule.  Thus, we do not know which of these cases will be heard in December and which might be held over for January.

The Supreme Court tends to schedule cases in the order in which they were accepted for review.  However, all of the cases that might be scheduled for December or January were accepted for review in the last three weeks of the old term (June 17, June 24, and July 2).   So this post will go in order by the date on which review was granted.

From June 17, only one case remains to be set for argument.  (The other cases will be heard in November.)  Kousisis vs. United States is a criminal case, but it implicates two issues of political significance.  The first is that this case is a fraud case involving government benefits.  The harm to the government is that the false statements allowed defendants to get a government contract over a potential alternative bidder.  But there is no indication that the defendants failed to properly fulfill the core of the contract.  In recent years, the Supreme Court has been pushing back against broad reading of fraud statutes and have not been inclined to allow charges based on noneconomic harm.  The second is that the fraud related to minority participation in the contract.  The business in its bid claimed to meet the goals for minority participation but, on closer analysis, the proposed minority participation was a mere shell to create the illusion of minority participation.  Again, the Supreme Court has been pushing back on such affirmative action programs in recent years.  This case presents another opportunity to minimize the role of attempts to assure minority businesses have the chance to participate in federal contracts. Continue Reading...

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Supreme Court Preview — Part 1 — October and November Arguments

By tmess2 | Published September 15, 2024

We are three weeks away from the start of the new Supreme Court term.  While the Supreme Court (specifically Chief Justice john Roberts) tries to present itself as outside of politics, the reality is that some members of the Supreme Court encourage politically controversial cases.  Even without such efforts, courts have become the first resort for people who do not like political decisions.

As of this point in the year, the Supreme Court has announced the cases that it will be hearing in its October and November argument sessions.  It has also taken some other cases for argument, but it has not yet scheduled them for argument.  (More on how argument works and how cases are taken are in an “appendix” at the end of this post.)

The first potentially controversial case of the term is the “ghost guns” case — Garland vs. VanDerStok.  The issue in this case is whether the regulations that the ATF has proposed for ghost guns (guns which are assembled from parts by the user) is consistent with the federal statutes on firearms.  As we have seen last year with the bump stock case and others, the Supreme Court has taken the position that it will determine whether proposed regulations are consistent with statutes and it tends to strictly interpret the firearms statutes in a way that makes it hard for ATF to keep pace with changes in the gun market.  This case will be heard on October 8 — the second day of the term. Continue Reading...

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Convention wrapup

By Matt | Published September 8, 2024

Some odds and ends after the Chicago gathering:

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Trump Legal Watch — Labor Day 2024

By tmess2 | Published September 2, 2024

This week saw several developments in the on-going effort to bring Donald Trump to justice.

To start with the most frivolous, Trump is attempting to remove the New York criminal fraudulent business records case to federal court.  Given that this attempt is coming post-trial, the odds of the case being removed are almost certainly less than none.  Additionally, the attempted filing was rejected for procedural defects.  It’s not clear that Trump can remedy the procedural defects given that this filing is very late in the case.  In any case, the trial court is likely to take up and then deny Trump’s frivolous motion for new trial and then proceed to sentencing.   While Trump is attempting to delay the sentencing, he has presented no legal reason why his criminal case should be treated differently from ordinary defendants other than a non-existent “presidential candidate” exception to the standard procedure.  As of today, a decision on Trump’s motion for new trial (almost certainly a denial) is due on September 16 with sentencing to occur on September 18 unless the motion for new trial is granted or the trial court decides to postpone the sentencing.

The other three are more significant but routine. Continue Reading...

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