SCOTUS Watch: Order List

BAKER, RALPH W. V. COATES, TA-NEHISI, ET AL. Because the Court lacks a quorum, 28 U. S. C. §1, and since the qualified Justices are of the opinion that the case cannot be heard and determined at the next Term of the Court, the judgment is affirmed under 28 U. S. C. §2109, which provides that under these circumstances "the court shall enter its order affirming the judgment of the court from which the case was brought for review with the same effect as upon affirmance by an equally divided court." Justice Alito, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Barrett, and Justice Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.

The Order List generally was a nothingburger. 

As usual, however, something is interesting, especially for those interested in inside baseball. By federal law, six justices need to take part in a case for there to be a quorum (able to do business). 

If not, the lower court's opinion by rule is upheld without having precedential effect in later cases. This basically happens in cases like this where too many justices are recused. This tends to be by some frivolous personal suit against the justices. 

That does not seem to be the case here. The case involves a frivolous copyright suit. I think -- since the justices don't deign to explain -- the problem is that four of the justices might be involved with one or more of the people Ralph Baker is suing. They are all writers of books.

Alito is not, but he often is recused because one of his many investments results in a conflict. He separately recused himself in another case. As usual, being a conservative justice, he does not say why.

[Fix the Court agrees with me.]

The liberals did not follow their usual habit of explaining themselves. This is unfortunate. I assume they did not, since the conservatives did not. Perhaps, if the liberals did, they would have "outed" the conservatives.

Still, that is just supposition. If a standard rule applied to all justices to explain why they recused, which the liberals generally manage to do, it would have helped. 

Other Orders

Moving past this inside baseball bit, two more orders were dropped since this morning. 

Sotomayor dropped an administrative (temporary) stay in a case. Looks like a deportation case. 

A stay, with a special notice that does not cover certain other listed challenges, is placed in a case involving the DHS. Justice Jackson, who has taken a stricter view about stays, dissented without opinion. 

This case involves the Temporary Protected Status for many Venezuelans (to cite Chris Geidner). 

[SCOTUSblog article has a link to the SCOTUS case page, which has multiple briefs refuting Noem's take.]

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration expert, put the flashing red on much brighter: "Supreme Court has just allowed Trump to strip as many as 350,000 people of legal status, effectively IMMEDIATELY."  He is not impressed with the challenges left open.  

I don't know. Either way, one of those unexplained orders on the shadow docket is having some significant effect. Suffice it to say, don't trust Noem to handle this appropriately. 

They also flagged that Thursday will be an Opinion Day. This is likely to be typical for the rest of the term -- conference and opinions on Thursday, except for June 19 (holiday), where it shifts to Wednesday. 

Also, to look out for: three executions are scheduled this week. One or more orders might involve them.