Jess Bravin for the WSJ: If the coronavirus is pitting nervous voters against state election officials, don’t expect the federal courts to solve their problem.That is the message from a string of Supreme Court orders since April, which saw the … Continue reading
Category Archives: Supreme Court
The Georgetown Law Journal Online has published the final version of my article, The Supreme Court’s Pro-Partisanship Turn. Here is the abstract: The United States Supreme Court’s conservative majority has taken the Court’s election jurisprudence on a pro-partisanship turn, which … Continue reading
Emmet Witkovsky-Eldred and Nina Totenberg for NPR: Voting rights advocates are batting 0-4 at the U.S. Supreme Court so far this year. A record number of election-related lawsuits are piling up in courts around the country as concerns mount about … Continue reading
Watch here: This lively discussion reviewed the Supreme Court’s key cases decided in the October 2019 term, drawing a large audience for the virtual presentation, recorded via Zoom. Moderated by Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science Richard Hasen, the all-star … Continue reading
Michigan withdraws its request for emergency relief at the Supreme Court after plaintiffs dismiss their case with prejudice. Why? It appears that the plaintiffs inadvertently misrepresented how much signature gathering they had been able to do. … Continue reading
The cert petition in Lieu v. FEC is designed to get the Supreme Court to address an issue addressed by the D.C. Circuit in the earlier SpeechNow case but never addressed by the Supreme Court: is it constitutional for Congress … Continue reading
New Leah Litman: Beyond that rather glaring defect, however, the new executive order also confirms the theory behind the lawsuits challenging the administration’s earlier attempt to add a citizenship question to the census. When the administration attempted to do that, … Continue reading
Adam Liptak deep dive for the NYT: For the fourth time since April, the Supreme Court this week made it harder for Americans to vote. The ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent, was part of “a trend of condoning disfranchisement.”The court’s … Continue reading
With at least three of the Court’s four liberal Justices dissenting, the Supreme Court refused to intervene in a case involving Florida felon voting rights, with big implications for voting in November. The procedural path of this case is complex, … Continue reading
The brief relies heavily on the question of timing. So both sides are pushing the Purcell Principle to support their position in this case. The brief is also remarkably dismissive of the rights of felons, saying they are not qualified … Continue reading
Jason Mazzone at Balikinization, raising exactly a point I’d been pondering: namudno (verb): to persuade one’s colleagues (esp. on a court) to sign onto an opinion with broader implications than they perceive and then accuse them of backtracking when they later … Continue reading
The following is a guest post from Paul Smith and Mark Gaber of the Campaign Legal Center: In a one-line decision issued on July 1, the en banc Eleventh Circuit stayed a district court order enjoining Florida’s “pay-to-vote” system for … Continue reading
You can find the petition (No. 20A1) at this link. [Corrected link] … Continue reading
Docket. … Continue reading
My thread starts here: So I think the Supreme Court performed pretty well during the pandemic, scheduling remote oral arguments with live audio and getting the most important cases out only a week late. But there's one big exception: #SCOTUS … Continue reading
WaPo: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suffered a fall at a Maryland country club last month that required an overnight stay in the hospital, a Supreme Court spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday night.The 65-year-old chief justice was taken by ambulance to … Continue reading
Jesse Wegman NYT column. … Continue reading
The Court’s decision in Chiafalo (the Washington election case) is at this link. The per curiam opinion in Baca (the Colorado case), with Justice Sotomayor recused, is at this link. The decision is a great relief because a contrary decision, … Continue reading
Adam Liptak: NEW: Supreme Court turns down request from Texas Democrats to allow everyone in the state to vote by mail, not just those over 65 pic.twitter.com/wuQGXnTJhS— Adam Liptak (@adamliptak) June 26, 2020 There is still a pending cert. petition … Continue reading
SCOTUS won't block lower court ruling that stopped petition gatherers in Ohio from collecting electronic signatures to put measures on the ballot this year pic.twitter.com/MUs50ohue7— Sam Levine (@srl) June 25, 2020 … Continue reading
Read the emergency application for a stay in Thompson v. DeWine. … Continue reading
You can find the cert petition here and application to vacate the 5th circuit’s stay of the district court order here. Here is the question presented: “Does Texas’s limitation of the right to cast a no-excuse mail-in ballot to only … Continue reading
Bozeman Daily Chronicle: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a case that challenged Montana’s law on disclosing the spending for political ads within 60 days of an election.In August 2019, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Montana’s … Continue reading
Listen. … Continue reading
Adam Liptak for the NYT: The Supreme Court seemed ready on Wednesday to allow states to require members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for the presidential candidates they had pledged to support.In two arguments concerning “faithless electors” … Continue reading
Steve Mazie for The Economist. … Continue reading
NYT: The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously overturned the convictions of two defendants in the “Bridgegate” scandal.The case resulted from a decision in 2013 by associates of Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey, to close access lanes to the George … Continue reading
Here at SSRN. … Continue reading
Linda Greenhouse NYT column. … Continue reading
Tony Gaughan has posted this draft on SSRN (American U. L. Rev.). Here is the abstract: One of the most controversial decisions in the modern history of the Supreme Court is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In a 5-4 … Continue reading
Larry at Medium: It is so rare to be able to write such a headline. But when it is true, given the rightful importance that the Dean of Election Law’s opinion has to so many, it is an important headline … Continue reading
Over at AZ Law. … Continue reading
Cert denied in LULAC v. Edwards Aquifer Authority. Here is my earlier coverage. … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Nina Totenberg for NPR’s Morning Edition: So, it was no surprise when the conservative majority refused to make even a modest accommodation to the pandemic. What was surprising was the tone of the opinion. Critics of the opinion, including some Roberts defenders, … Continue reading
You can find it here (Derek Muller and David Post have first two entries.) … Continue reading
Marcia Coyle for PBS. … Continue reading
Guy Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer in The Monkey Cage: On April 7, thousands of Wisconsin citizens braved a global pandemic to show up at the polls to vote. Some commentators blamed Republicans in the legislature for forcing voters to choose between their … Continue reading
Watch. … Continue reading
Order. And it appears that the oral argument will be livestreamed. This means we should have an opinion by the end of June unless the Court extends the term. … Continue reading
A sharp reader emails: Note the following passage from the Supreme Court’s per curiam opinion in RNC v. DNC: The unusual nature of the District Court’s order allowing ballots to be mailed and postmarked after election day is perhaps best … Continue reading
There has been a ton of commentary on the Supreme Court’s split decision in the Wisconsin voting case, which reversed a district court order allowing absentee ballots received by April 13 whether or not they were postmarked by the April … Continue reading
Linda Greenhouse NYT column. … Continue reading
NYT: In a pair of extraordinary rulings on Monday, the highest courts in Wisconsin and the nation split along ideological lines to reject Democratic efforts to defer voting in Tuesday’s elections in the state given the coronavirus pandemic. Election law experts said the stark … Continue reading
Joan puts Wisconsin in context. … Continue reading
Michael Morley has written this extensive analysis of today’s developments, which begins: This post offers a new perspective on the Supreme Court’s emergency order in Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19A1016 (U.S. Apr. 6, 2020). It explains … Continue reading
Interesting thread starts here: I want to make one point about the Supreme Court's decision in the Wisconsin case that I'm surprised has not been made. The Supreme Court & the federal courts more broadly have actually not done a … Continue reading
You can read the opinion and dissent here. In some ways, it is unsurprising that the Court divided 5-4 (conservative/Republican Justices against liberal/Democratic Justices) on a question whether the emergency created by COVID-19 and the dangers of in-person voting justified … Continue reading
You can find the filing here. I think that they have a strong argument about application of the Purcell Principle: Applicants rely heavily on Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 4-5 (2006), in which this Court cautioned that “[c]ourt orders … Continue reading
You can find the filing at this link. As expected the Purcell Principle plays a major role in the argument here, the idea that courts should not make last minute changes in election rules because doing so could confuse voters … Continue reading