SCOTUS Watch

Orders: There was a short order list on Monday, but the Supreme Court granted a case of some importance about applying equal benefits to Puerto Rico residents. The lower court agreed with the challenge so the grant makes sense. Since Puerto Rico does not have the same tax liabilities and so forth, the details would be interesting to see. There is this interesting bit from the summary:

Last month, Democratic lawmakers and religious leaders urged President Joe Biden to withdraw the lawsuit and give Puerto Rico residents access to SSI benefits, but Biden’s acting solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, did not take any action in the case after replacing Wall. The justices granted the government’s petition on Monday; absent any further developments, the case will likely be scheduled for oral argument in the fall.

The other case taken concerns the rules for military pay, which sounds more of a run of the mill sort of thing. The interesting thing to me there is that when I checked the docket page, the filings were done by paper pursuant to some rule that allowed that sort of thing. (I checked the docket page, using the docket number, to quickly get a sense of the details of the case. Here, the electronic filings were not there.) From what I can tell, this is often done to keep certain personal material private, which would apply in such a personnel related matter. One of those inside tidbits. 

Various other odds and ends.  

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Garland: On Monday, the Garland nomination advanced out of committee 15-7 with basically the usual suspects voting against him, Sen. Ben "Trump is guilty" Sasse's vote is a bit of a surprise. He engaged with Garland on executive/legislative power issues without any real sense of finding him a problem. Those opposing the nomination were Sens. Michael Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). Notably not there is the ranking member, Chuck Grassley, who tossed in some bullshit remarks before voting the other way. 

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Voting Rights: I noted the important oral argument -- as much as for the rule applied as much as the specific challenge -- on voting rights earlier. Again, H.R. 1 is being debated by the House.  So, I'm not sure really -- just as Biden has changed more than one Trump executive policy -- what the long term effects will be. Also, for a major oral argument, accessible live via telephonic arguments, it annoys me that C-SPAN did not provide live coverage on television. Brian Lamb et. al. has long made it a cause to allow Supreme Court to be televised, but now that at least audio is available, it gets second level status even for major oral arguments (online). 

Today, an amendment was defeated that tried to go all the way regarding voting rights of felons, at least in federal elections. That is, allowing convicted felons in prison to vote. I support that but only a narrow number of Democrats did. Not surprising since only two thinly populated states and two maybe states (D.C. and Puerto Rico) allow it.  So, maybe that tried to bite too much at once. How about non-violent crimes? How about anyone not in prison (even if they are on parole or probation or under the control of the criminal justice system somehow)?

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Opinions: Two opinions released on Thursday, Breyer writing dissents in both with Sotomayor joining, Kagan joining the second.  The first is something of note, even if a technical question involving how far to cover disclosure requirements, since it was Barrett's first opinion. She shouldn't be there.  Again, Kagan joined this opinion, Breyer using his often multi-factor judgment process to dissent. It was a fine tuned thing.

[Interesting analysis noting Breyer argued the "drafts" in this case usually actually was the "final" one in. Called the dissent "minor." The dissent was also later edited to add "with respect" before the "I dissent."  That sort of adverb usage is of some notice to those who keep track of these things though I'm not sure -- wouldn't surprise me -- if a deep dive study was done.]

I'll repeat a couple standard things -- I wish SCOTUS itself released audio and transcripts of opinion announcements, COVID not even allowing them to be released eventually by Oyez.com. Second, I actually favored Barrett over Kavanaugh, but that isn't how it went down.  It was a big tainted process, even if in a vacuum she might have been acceptable for a conservative POTUS (or whatever Trump is).  Hard to take these people.

The first tainted Trump seat wrote the second opinion, involving statutory rules as applied to deportations for at times relatively minor crimes even if the person was in the country for maybe decades.  The Court has had a mixture of these cases, sometimes deciding for the immigrant. Not this time and Breyer had a pretty strong dissent.  One notable thing here is that Breyer argued the text (a common trope for conservatives) compelled the result, while the majority arguably was more pragmatic. 

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Biden Changes: "[Biden Administration] asked the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss three pending appeals on [Trump’s] effort to withhold millions of dollars in law enforcement funds from states and cities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities."  The Bush43 to Obama transition by one account I read had very little of this sort of thing (if any at all), but Trump is Trump, and the Administration itself was very energetic about not only changing policy but reaching out to try to do so.  

The Supreme Court clerk per rule accepted the request. 

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Big V: Retired Supreme Court reporter veteran Lyle Denniston tweeted that "The word from the Supreme Ct today that the Justices have now been vaccinated," following up with a hope that they immediately go back to live sessions. He is a big critic of the telephonic arguments. But, as a reply noted, it isn't just about them. It is about the advocates and everyone else. Biden said we should all have shots by the end of May. The Supreme Court has one more session of arguments. You can eke it out. 

I'm wary about them as noted in the past but think there are some good points. Each person asking questions is good though the time restraints clearly bother some of them.  The ideal situation would be live video, which other courts here and abroad have found quite possible. Video would provide a means to fairly easily use the traditional approach even remotely.  The problem is multiple justices simply don't want to do that -- since other courts handle it, I don't believe there is any other real reason for it being impossible. Also, decent bet they suddenly stop live audio too.

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Other: We will have orders and opinion(s) next week. As seen, though some of this is tangential, even without many opinions, the Supreme Court keeps observers busy.  There was no orders after the set day on Monday as of after six p.m. (the vaccine note was not posted on the website btw), but I'm aware of there habits now. I won't close this off until the morning.  

No late night stuff.