As noted in Part I and Part II of this series, there are some very big cases in the first two months of the upcoming Supreme Court term — the applicability of Title VII to sexual orientation and issues related to the board managing Puerto Rico’s debt in October and DACA in November.  Likewise, December has a big case — maybe.

That big case — New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. City of New York — is currently set on the first day of the December argument session.  At issue is a New York City ordinance which limits the transportation of firearms by gunowners.  The corporate gun lobby has pushed a Second Amendment challenge to this ordinance. Now, for the catch.  When the Supreme Court took this case, New York City and New York State saw the writing on the wall with this Court.  The original ordinance probably went too far even for those who want tighter restrictions on the sale of handguns.  So New York City repealed the original ordinance and passed a new less restrictive ordinance, and New York State passed legislation clarifying the powers of cities in this matter.  Because the ordinance being challenged no longer exists, the City wants the Supreme Court to dismiss the case as there is no longer a live “controversy” — and under the Constitution the Supreme Court can only hear “cases and controversies.”  There are exceptions which allow a court to review repealed statutes and, one of the issues at the October 1 term opening conference is whether to dismiss this case or keep it on the calendar for argument.

The second case on December 2 involves how copyright law applies to government documents.  Generally speaking, past decisions hold that governments are not allowed to copyright judicial opinions or statutes.  So, any person can go to the library (or an internet site) and copy a judicial opinion or a statute and then establish their own internet site (or publish and sell their own books) containing those opinions or statutes.  This limitation on government copyrights assure that the public has access to the decisions of their government.  One of the things that publishers do to enhance value is create “annotated” copies of statutes — a version in which each statute is followed by a series of notes setting forth the cases that have considered that statute and what those cases have held.  For the most part, these annotated versions are created by private companies.  Georgia, however, has an official copy of its annotated statutes.  The issue is — since a state can’t copyright its statutes or court cases — whether a state can copyright an annotated version of its statutes.  Many of the main legal publishing companies have filed briefs generally in support of Georgia (for fear that a holding in favor of the public interest groups in this case might eventually be used to attack their copyrights on their annotations as well). Continue Reading...