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15 Jun Opinion analysis: Federal employment discrimination law protects gay and transgender employees (Updated)
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination “because of sex.” Today the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, ruled that even if Congress may not have had discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status in mind when it...
10 Jun Wednesday round-up
Briefly: Jordan Rubin reports at Bloomberg Law that “[t]he U.S. Justice Department’s determination to resume federal executions after a decade-plus hiatus is back in Supreme Court justices’ hands, with the filing of a petition from death row prisoners challenging the way the government wants to...
08 Jun Monday round-up
Nina Totenberg reports at NPR that, “[w]ith the county awash in protests over the death of George Floyd, the U.S. Supreme Court is examining” qualified immunity, “a modern-day legal doctrine created by judges that has shielded police and other government officials from lawsuits over their...
05 Jun Petitions of the week
This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that involve, among other things, challenges to Arizona voting policies, such as its out-of-precinct policy, which does not count provisional ballots cast in person on Election Day outside of the voter’s designated precinct, and its...
04 Jun Ask the authors: The long and winding road from shortlisted to selected for female Supreme Court nominees
The following is a series of questions posed by Ronald Collins to Renee Knake Jefferson and Hannah Brenner Johnson in connection with their new book, “Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court” (New York University Press, 2020), which tells the untold stories of...
01 Jun Opinion analysis: Supreme Court protects defined-benefit plan fiduciaries from lawsuits
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held in Thole v. U.S. Bank that participants and beneficiaries in defined-benefit plans do not have the legal right, known as standing, to assert fiduciary breach claims, at least in the absence of catastrophic plan and sponsor failure....
30 May Court declines to lift restrictions on crowds at church services (UPDATED)
Last night the Supreme Court declined to intervene in challenges by churches in southern California and the Chicago area to stay-at-home orders issued as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The churches had asked the justices earlier this week to lift restrictions on crowds in...
28 May Thursday round-up
The latest episode of Bloomberg Law’s Cases and Controversies podcast “highlights an issue that’s been piling up on the high court’s docket: Qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that serves to shield law enforcement from liability even in the face of the most egregious allegations of...
