Tag Archives: Gun Laws

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 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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