Virtual SCOTUS: No Drama Monday

We are into July now, but with May orals, more SCOTUS opinions are forthcoming.  There were three cases probably likely to be not too stressful: a do not call matter (what happens when an exception for government debts is added to a general law), a Native American sovereignty case that is splitting the justices but isn't really an emotional case and the faithless electors case that the justices seemed to agree had to go to the state.  The first and last were handed down, both without much stress. 

Justice Kagan (with Thomas, Gorsuch going part of the way, agreeing on different grounds) has a crisp faithless electors opinion of a little over seventeen pages with a lot of history and some jokes.  Basically, even if some framers thought the Electoral College would involve independent voting, the text doesn't compel that and history never had it.  A sort of clash of originalism with textualism and post-ratification history.  They took the case basically because of competing lower court opinions, Sotomayor not taking part in one because she is friendly with a party.  The case everyone joined was just applied to the other though Thomas alone this time only concurred. Gorsuch joined Kagan's opinion in full too, which is a bit confusing, since the two approaches don't quite seem to match up. 

The other case -- see the blog post -- also was decided as expected.  The debt provision was deemed to be illegitimate content based discrimination but it could be severed, allowing the overall law to be upheld.  The statute in this case easing the process by specifically having a provision for that.  Sotomayor concurred, if agreeing with Breyer and the libs that a lower level of scrutiny could be applied to such an economic regulation.  As the majority notes, Breyer's approach doesn't match precedent -- I respect it, but think here the government's interest is just too weak.  Even Breyer admits a regulation of who can call someone deserves some extra scrutiny.  Brett in the majority opinion sucks up to three different justices though in one case (rightly) calls out Breyer for not holding to precedent.  

(More here.  This case is easier since we are dealing with phone calls, so even though it's an economic regulation, it still is a regulation of speech. On that front, I'm wary of Breyer's approach.  But, a few years ago, a regulation regarding credit cards at point of sale. Seems a stretch.  As to the result being a cheat, as noted by one person, that is how the cookie crumbles. You sometimes lose; you sometimes win in a dubious way. In the long run, the equality principle can help in some other case.)

I think it a good idea to space out opinions to allow them to be reported and digested separately.  Again, wish they had opinion announcements available here.  No report yet when the next opinion day will be, but figure there will be at least two more (with a clean-up order list).  There is also an execution scheduled later this week of someone who murdered over twenty years ago at age 18.  If need be, this entry will be edited.       

ETA:  Later in the day, we have this: "The U.S. Supreme Court refused to let construction start on TC Energy Corp.'s Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline, rejecting a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to jump-start the long-delayed project."  But, so says the article, construction elsewhere can go on. No explanation on the whys here.  On the docket page, the briefing speaks of an Endangered Species Act requirement.