19 Discussion Thread - Politics

Supreme Court Decisions 6/20/19 Discussion Thread
I’m Caitlin Dickerson, National Immigration Reporter for The New York Times. I recently published a story about the youngest known child (4 months old) to be separated from his family at the border under Trump. Ask me anything about immigration, family separation, detention and deportation.
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Supreme Court Decisions 6/20/19 Discussion Thread

Posted: 20 Jun 2019 06:59 AM PDT

There are many cases to potentially be decided by ruling today, including:

Department of Commerce v. New York

Issues: (1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary's decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker -- including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials -- without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis; and (3) whether the secretary's decision to add a citizenship question to the decennial census violated the enumeration clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Lamone v. Benisek

Issue: In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs' claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as "undisputed" evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs' years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.

Rucho v. Common Cause

Issues: (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs' partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina's 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

The American Legion v. American Humanist Association

Issues: (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.

Flowers v. Mississippi

Issue: Whether the Mississippi Supreme Court erred in how it applied Batson v. Kentucky in this case.

Kisor v. Wilkie

Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency's reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.

Iancu v. Brunetti

Issue: Whether Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act's prohibition on the federal registration of "immoral" or "scandalous" marks is facially invalid under the free speech clause of the First Amendment.

Opinions begin at 10:00am EST.

A link to a live blog of SCOTUS rulings can be found here on SCOTUSblog

UPDATES:

Gundy v. US

Congress has sought, for the past quarter century, to combat sex crimes and crimes against children through sex-offender registration schemes. The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) makes more "uniform and effective" the prior "patchwork" of registration systems. Reynolds v. United States, 565 U. S. 432, 435. To that end, it requires a broader range of sex offenders to register and backs up those requirements with criminal penalties. Section 20913 elaborates the "[i]nitial registration" requirements for sex offenders. 34 U. S. C. §§20913(b), (d). Subsection (b) sets out the general rule: An offender must register "before completing a sentence of imprisonment with respect to the offense giving rise to the registration requirement." §20913(b). Subsection (d) addresses the "[i]nitial registration of sex offenders unable to comply with subsection (b)." The provision states that, for individuals convicted of a sex offense before SORNA's enactment ("pre-Act offenders"), the Attorney General "shall have the authority" to "specify the applicability" of SORNA's registration requirements and "to prescribe rules for [their] registration." §20913(d). Under that delegated authority, the Attorney General issued a rule specifying that SORNA's registration requirements apply in full to pre-Act offenders. Petitioner Herman Gundy, a preAct offender, was convicted of failing to register. Both the District Court and the Second Circuit rejected his claim that Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power when it authorized the Attorney General to "specify the applicability" of SORNA's registration requirements to pre-Act offenders.

Held: The judgment is affirmed.

McDonough v. Smith

898 F. 3d 259, reversed and remanded.

American Legion v. American Humanist Assn.

Held: The judgment is reversed and remanded

PDR Network, LLC v. Carlton Harris Chiropractic, Inc.

883 F. 3d 459, vacated and remanded

More opinions at 10AM Eastern tomorrow (6/21/19)

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I’m Caitlin Dickerson, National Immigration Reporter for The New York Times. I recently published a story about the youngest known child (4 months old) to be separated from his family at the border under Trump. Ask me anything about immigration, family separation, detention and deportation.

Posted: 20 Jun 2019 08:19 AM PDT

Here is my story about Constantin Mutu, the youngest child separated from his parents at the border. By the time he was returned to his parents he'd spent the majority of his life in US custody. His caseworker gave me a rare look into what it was like to care for separated children. At nearly two years old, Constantin still can't talk or walk on his own. The most recent episode of The Times's new TV show, "The Weekly," focused on Constantin's case.

Since joining The Times in 2016, I have broken news about changes in immigration policy, including that the Trump administration had secretly expanded the practice of separating migrant families along the southwest border, and begun chipping away at health and safety standards inside immigration detention centers. You can find all of my Times stories here.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/itscaitlinhd

Proof: https://i.redd.it/ck3i0io17d531.png

Edit: Thanks for these questions, everybody. I'm logging off for now (1pm EST) and will try to check back in later. I appreciate your time. -Caitlin

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Defends Concentration Camp Comments: ‘History Will Be Kind to Those Who Stood Up to This Injustice’

Posted: 20 Jun 2019 04:54 AM PDT