SCOTUS Opinion Megathread: June 21
Rather than separate threads per opinion I will be updating this post with the cases as they come out. It could be a big day, there’s 2 scheduled opinion days left, today and June 26th, but there are many outstanding cases. SCOTUS also tends to hold the “controversial” cases for the end.
SCOTUS could always add more opinion days, as they did yesterday. But the term is coming to a close, and we may get some fast and furious output. Actual SCOTUS reporters believe they may go into July with opinions rather than do “Dump days” Stay tuned, releases generally start at 10am US EST. Thread is in contest mode.
There are 18/19 remaining decisions too be rendered, depends if you count the NetChoice cases as one or as two separate.
Most of the summaries will be from Amy Howe over at SCOTUSBlog as I’m watching the livefeed.
Updates below this line:
Three Boxes, expected 4-6 opinions.
Case 1: Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado
It is 5-4. Gorsuch dissents, joined by Thomas, Alito and Barrett
This was a case about the federal government’s objection to a consent decree that would resolve the water dispute between the states and codify a methodology to determine each state’s allocation of the waters of the Rio Grande. The court upholds the U.S.’s objections and denies the states’ motion to enter the consent decree.
“Through the consent decree, the States would settle all parties’ Compact claims and, in the process, cut off the United States’ requested relief as to New Mexican groundwater pumping. Because our precedent does not permit that result, the States’ motion to enter the consent decree is denied.”
Case 2: Department of State v. Munoz
6-3 Dissenting are Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson. Gorsuch as a separate concurring opinion.
This case is about whether the denial of a visa to the non-citizen spouse of a U.S. citizen violates a constitutionally protected right of the citizen and, if so, whether the government properly explained its decision to deny the visa.
The court holds that a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.
Barrett explains that Munoz’s argument is built “on the premise that the right to bring her noncitizen spouse to the United States is an unenumerated constitutional right. To establish this premise, she must show that the asserted right is deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” — but, Barrett writes, she cannot. “In fact, Congress’s longstanding regulation of spousal immigration–including through bars on admissibility– cuts the other way.”
Case 3: Erlinger v. United States
6-3 Dissenting are Kavanaugh, Alito, and in-part Jackson who has her own dissent.
The question before the court is whether, in cases arising under the Armed Career Criminal Act, which imposes mandatory prison terms on some defendants who have committed three violent felonies or serious drug offenses on separate occasions, a judge should use a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard to decide whether the offenses were committed on separate occasions or instead a jury must make those decisions unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a unanimous jury to make the determination beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant’s past offenses were committed on separate occasions for ACCA purposes.
Case 4: Smith v. Arizona
More or less unanimous. No dissents but a few concurring for different reasons.
This is a case about the Confrontation Clause, which guarantees a criminal defendant the right to confront the witness against him. Whether the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a defendant the right to confront the witnesses against him, allows prosecutors to use expert testimony about evidence – here, a report prepared by a different crime lab analyst who no longer worked at the lab and did not testify at trial – that was not itself admitted into evidence, on the grounds that the testifying expert was simply offering his own opinion and that the defendant could have subpoenaed the original analyst.
The court holds today that when an expert conveys an absent analyst’s statements in support of the expert’s opinion, and the statements provide that support only if true, then the statements come into evidence for their truth.
Case 5: US V. Rahimi
The Supreme Court rejects the challenge to the constitutionality of a federal law that bans the possession of a gun by someone who has been the subject of a domestic violent restraining order.
8-1 only Thomas dissents
The court holds that when an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.
Roberts explains that “Since the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. As applied to the facts of this case, Section 922(g)(8) fits comfortably within this tradition.”
This is what we expected, and IMO, is consistent with history and tradition. Because people suspected of posing credible threats were usually detained in jail, and disarmed. You threaten to murder someone, you get arrested.
That’s all for today. We got Rahimi, the next big case is Raimondo v. Loper Bright. Come back Wednesday for a new thread.
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