Legal/scotus thread

I've been slammed at work and with the baseball season on hold, I haven't found myself on the site much lately. But we're about to come up on court opinion season so I thought I might made my predictions on how I think the court will go on some of the big cases. I'm not going to touch on the Trump financial records cases as they bore me to no end. Here I go:

R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission- This is one of the big culture war cases this term. It's several cases grouped together asking the question of whether Title VII's ban on employers discriminating on the basis of sex provides protection for transgender people. My prediction is the court will decide Title VII does not provide this protection. This isn't a case about constitutional rights, it's a case about statutory interpretation. There's a good argument that Title VII was never intended to cover transgender people and I think the 5 conservatives will latch onto that. Also, since it's a case about a statute, the Court can say it's Congress' job to expand protections and punt the ball to them. The court loves to do that.

Chiafalo v. Washington- This is the faithless elector case. It's unlikely to have practical importance. Electors are generally rabid party acolytes and POTUS races are rarely decided by one or two electors. It's more about having something in place for that "What if?" scenario of a candidate winning by one elector and there being chaos of jockeying for electors to switch sides. I predict the court will side with the electors and say they have the right to decide what they wish. This could be a strange bedfellow case with an odd collection of justices as it plays on different priorities of the different sides.

June Medical Services LLC v. Russo- Another big culture war case this term. This is the case about a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. These cases are always difficult to call. They have an out if they want it. The court can say the doctors lack third party standing. Since the case is being brought by doctors who are asserting the rights of their patients, they need third party standing. The court could say they don't have it which would force the case to be restarted with several patients as the plaintiffs. This is a close case and in close, high profile cases where the court has an out, the smart money is on the court punting.

Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue- Yet another culture war case. This one involves tax credits for donating to scholarship funds to private schools. The scholarships could then be used to fund children attending religious schools. It was then determined that the scholarships could not be used to attend religious schools. Parents of children benefiting from the scholarships sued saying that since the program was religiously neutral on its face, preventing their use at religious schools violated equal protection. Again we have a standing issue. The people suing are parents of children benefiting from the scholarships. However, they are not the taxpayers donating to the scholarship funds and they are not the schools whom the scholarship funds pay out to. So the court could again have an out here. Roberts seemed to be leaning that way so it wouldn't surprise me if that's how this comes down. If the court rules on the merits, I expect they'll allow the use of the scholarships at religious schools. It would fit with the recent trend.

Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California- The DACA case. This is an interesting case. DACA was set up using Homeland Security's discretion on when to prosecute deportation cases. The only way you get to it being a constitutional exercise in power without a change of the immigration statutes is by it being purely the Department's discretion. However, the flip side of that is that if it was discretion to create it, it's the discretion of the Department to end it. The courts are very reluctant to review administrative agencies exercising their discretion. However, DACA was relied upon by hundreds of thousands so that brings in some other sticky issues. Ultimately, I think DACA goes down. The court might not even answer whether the decision is reviewable or not. I could easily see the justices saying there were sufficient reasons listed by the government to shut it down even if it is reviewable so no matter what road was taken, the result would be the same.



New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York- This case was already decided. It was the obligatory gun case. It involved a New York City rule against transporting firearms that had since been repealed. The court found the challenge to the law was moot and sent it back to the lower court for a decision on any damages. This was the expected result. Courts will sometimes hear a case after a law or rule has been repealed if they see it as likely that the law or rule could be put back into place. Those risks weren't really present here.
 
goldfly said:
Yeah, we have a couple posters here that think otherwise
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People are free to disagree with the correctness of the government's public health powers but the current jurisprudence supports that authority.

Better arguments would be over the reasonableness of the restrictions. But even then the government gets deference.
 
striker42 said:
June Medical Services LLC v. Russo- Another big culture war case this term. This is the case about a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. These cases are always difficult to call. They have an out if they want it. The court can say the doctors lack third party standing. Since the case is being brought by doctors who are asserting the rights of their patients, they need third party standing. The court could say they don't have it which would force the case to be restarted with several patients as the plaintiffs. This is a close case and in close, high profile cases where the court has an out, the smart money is on the court punting.
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I think this is mostly right, but misses the big implications of this case. The law at issue is more or less indistinguishable from the one the court struck down 5-3 (post-Scalia, pre-Gorsuch) in 2016 in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, with Kennedy in the majority. Now Kennedy has been swapped out for Kavanaugh (and Gorsuch confirmed), and the same question is back before the court because the conservative 5th Circuit refused to consider Hellerstedt as controlling.

So if this is the first big test of the 5 justice conservative advantage on the abortion issue, and it is a challenge to a recent precedent. How they answer it will tell us a lot about how they are gonna handle the issue going forward. I honestly don't know how it will come out; Roberts seemed pretty concerned at oral argument. He was in dissent in Hellerstedt, but the fact that this was almost literally the same law the court already ruled on seemed to really bother him. The optics of the court so quickly reversing would be pretty bad, and that's something he definitely cares about.

I think the punting on standing grounds thing is also missing the importance of doing that; punting the case isn't actually punting the issue. The 5th circuit ruling below cuts directly against Hellerstedt; so if they punt the case, the LA law remains good law. And if they determine that doctors can't actually bring these kinds of cases, that's a huge signal that they are going to make it harder for abortion laws to be challenged going forward.
 
Metaphysicist said:
I think this is mostly right, but misses the big implications of this case. The law at issue is more or less indistinguishable from the one the court struck down 5-3 (post-Scalia, pre-Gorsuch) in 2016 in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, with Kennedy in the majority. Now Kennedy has been swapped out for Kavanaugh (and Gorsuch confirmed), and the same question is back before the court because the conservative 5th Circuit refused to consider Hellerstedt as controlling.

So if this is the first big test of the 5 justice conservative advantage on the abortion issue, and it is a challenge to a recent precedent. How they answer it will tell us a lot about how they are gonna handle the issue going forward. I honestly don't know how it will come out; Roberts seemed pretty concerned at oral argument. He was in dissent in Hellerstedt, but the fact that this was almost literally the same law the court already ruled on seemed to really bother him. The optics of the court so quickly reversing would be pretty bad, and that's something he definitely cares about.

I think the punting on standing grounds thing is also missing the importance of doing that; punting the case isn't actually punting the issue. The 5th circuit ruling below cuts directly against Hellerstedt; so if they punt the case, the LA law remains good law. And if they determine that doctors can't actually bring these kinds of cases, that's a huge signal that they are going to make it harder for abortion laws to be challenged going forward.
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You're spot on in your analysis. I think it hinges on Roberts too. Punting plays into Roberts concerns about the court while also furthering his pro life leanings.

Punting allows him to avoid the bad optics of reversing so recent a decision and, as you said, makes it harder to challenge these laws. Not a lot harder but some.
 
It is fascinating to see how much Roberts has at times in the last 10 years, had to side with the liberal justices on some things. He has had to strike a major balance on the court with the makeup of the court changing so much. I will give him a bit respect for trying to keep the integrity of the court as apolitical as possible during one of the most politically polarized eras in the history of this country.

Was also interesting to see in Ginsburg's documentary how she over time has had to move farther left on her votes and opinions than when she came in to keep balance in tact.
 
We have the Transgender protection cases back. The court surprised me and extended Title VII to both gender identity and sexual orientation. This is a pretty massive expansion of Title VII and is pretty shocking considering the makeup of the court. The court is often willing to expand the Constitution but is more reluctant to expand statutory protections. They see it as Congress' role.
 
Alito is pissed about the Title VII decision today.

"There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation."

"A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall."

Honestly, he has a point. It's not common to see anything approaching this broad in terms of statutory interpretation.
 
The first case was filed by Gerald Bostock, a gay man who was fired from a government program that helped neglected and abused children in Clayton County, Ga., just south of Atlanta, after he joined a gay softball league.

The second was brought by a skydiving instructor, Donald Zarda, who also said he was fired because he was gay. His dismissal followed a complaint from a female customer who had expressed concerns about being strapped to Mr. Zarda during a tandem dive. Mr. Zarda, hoping to reassure the customer, told her that he was “100 percent gay.”

The case on transgender rights is R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, No. 18-107. It concerns Aimee Stephens, who was fired from a Michigan funeral home after she announced in 2013 that she was a transgender woman and would start working in women’s clothing. Ms. Stephens died on May 12.

“What I must tell you is very difficult for me and is taking all the courage I can muster,” she wrote to her colleagues in 2013. “I have felt imprisoned in a body that does not match my mind, and this has caused me great despair and loneliness.”

Ms. Stephens had worked at the funeral home for six years. Her colleagues testified that she was able and compassionate.

Two weeks after receiving the letter, the home’s owner, Thomas Rost, fired Ms. Stephens. Asked for the “specific reason that you terminated Stephens,” Mr. Rost said: “Well, because he was no longer going to represent himself as a man. He wanted to dress as a woman.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled for Ms. Stephens. Discrimination against transgender people, the court said, was barred by Title VII.

“It is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee’s status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee’s sex,” the court said, adding, “Discrimination ‘because of sex’ inherently includes discrimination against employees because of a change in their sex.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

I think the question is whether an employer can ask an employee to "present" themselves as straight or male or female. Dress like a man or a woman for example. I think the dress code might be legal if everyone (male and female) had to dress the same way. Or were given the same options on how to dress. Otherwise, I don't see how the employer is not discriminating on the basis of sex. Requiring women to wear nylon pantyhose for example is a no no, unless men were subjected to the same requirement.

The vote was 6 to 3, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch writing the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
 
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Too many people will get caught up in the policy arguments and cultural impact of the decision. But this is a case of the Court deciding what a statute means. It's not something amorphous like fundamental rights the court can play with. The court is determining what Congress meant by the words of a statute. To see such an unconstrained interpretation with two "conservative" justices joining is rather shocking.
 
What's interesting about this case is Gorsuch peeling off from his conservative brethren. And that he was given the assignment to write the opinion.
 
nsacpi said:
What's interesting about this case is Gorsuch peeling off from his conservative brethren. And that he was given the assignment to write the opinion.
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There's a narrative that the Court is ultra conservative because 5 of the justices were named by Republican presidents. However, in major cases we've seen time an again one or more of the Republican appointed justices cross over. Roberts did it in Obama-care, Kennedy (Republican appointed) did it in DOMA, Gorsuch and Roberts did it today.

What shocks me about Gorsuch writing this opinion is has a statutory interpretation guy. That's his big thing. He's traditionally interpreted statutes very narrowly. It shocks me he reversed course here. His opinion basically rejects a lot of what he wrote as a federal court judge. I figured if it went the plaintiffs' way it would because Roberts crossed to protect the image of the court. That happened but I'd have put Gorsuch as almost certain to side with Alito and Thomas.
 
Title VII was passed in 1964. The issue of transgender workers was not on anyone's radar. Each generation of judges has to confront the issue of how to interpret statutes whose authors never contemplated certain things. It does seem to me that a statute banning discrimination based on sex is being correctly interpreted (in a narrow technical sense) by the majority in this case. The plaintiffs are being required to present in a certain way by their employers because of their sex. There is no way to get around that. And the solution is not an onerous one. Dress codes simply have to be modified to be gender neutral.
 
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