SCOTUS Watch: Order List

The application for stay and recall of the mandate and an injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.

An order was dropped on Friday. The docket page notes that the proceedings go back to May.  The Mississippi Supreme Court disqualified Amanda Gunasekara from running for Public Service Commissioner.  This turned on requirements of state law though she also at some point (procedural issues are involved too) made constitutional claims.  A report:

At issue was how long the former Trump administration appointee had lived in Mississippi. You must have lived in the state five years before the general election to be a candidate. Special Judge Lamar Pickard said evidence showed Gunasekara voted on November 6, 2018, in the District of Columbia, as a resident there. She would then have to be an official resident of Mississippi on the very next day to qualify. Pickard said that didn’t happen until the spring of 2019.

Justice Alito is the circuit justice for that region and eventually referred the matter to the Court. Which (as is usual even with a lot more "shadow docket" stuff in recent years) found it unfounded.  

This took a little bit of digging to clarify the basics. There are not too many freestanding orders (various procedural things occur that are only found on the docket page).  A brief discussion would have been useful.  But, for more run-of-the-mill things like this on the shadow docket, it is more appropriate to be bare bones. It's not a death penalty case or even something particularly significant. 

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Order lists are scheduled collections of orders that are released on scheduled days, including (in recent years) three during the summer recess.  These are separate from these "miscellaneous" orders found on the Order List page or a range of procedural orders or internal actions (such as relists) only found on docket pages. Again, a basic FAQ page found on a convenient location spelling this out would be useful   

Monday's list had the usual little interesting things though nothing major happened.  Kagan (prior government employment) again flagged why she did not take part in a case.  Kavanaugh noted (without comment) that he would have taken a state’s constitutional challenge to the American Rescue Plan Act. 

And, (a tad late), the stays involved in the big voting rights act case decided last week were removed.  The net result of this case (and perhaps a change in New York districting) might have significant effects on the Democrats in the sooner-than-you-think 2024 House elections.  There is now another execution coming up this week.  Thursday and Friday are opinion days.  And, we might have something else.  See you soon.