Live blog of opinions - June 30, 2020
We live-blogged on Tuesday, June 30, as the court released opinions in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com and Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. SCOTUSblog is sponsored by Casetext: making litigation more efficient with A.I. and machine learning technology.
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Interesting that Roberts insists that this is about religious status rather than religious use of the funds- seems like they're about to tell us in Little Sisters that any teaching at a religious school is inherently ministerial. Those seem a bit incongruous, no? Maybe why we don't get them on the same day?
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Anybody else attempt to figure out what curveball some of the opinions and dissents are trying to set up? For instance Thomas opinion about establishment clause shouldn’t be recognized/incorporated as a result of 14a... What case/situation is he trying to signal to be brought forth?
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"Because the Montana Supreme Court applied the no-aid provision to discriminate against schools and parents based on the religious character of the schools," the Court will apply the most stringent test -- strict scrutiny. Fails strict scrutiny. "A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious."
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Mark Walsh wrote, "I think it [three month summer vacation] is largely based on tradition, and the need to get away from each other and from Washington.
Didn't Scalia and RBG take extended overseas trips together? If any two would seemingly have wanted to get away from each other, it would have been those two. -
Are none of the jurisdictional issues with this case addressed at all? The parties suing are not the beneficiaries of the statute's tax credit, the tax credit no longer exists, and it is therefore pretty hard to draw a line from this ruling to effective relief for anybody. How is this more than an advisory opinion that "Blaine amendments are bad (whether or not they are actual Blaine amendments because Montana rewrote their constitution recently)"?
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Okay, I'm going to get to work on my story on Espinoza. Thanks so much to Steve, Kevin, and Mark for joining me; it's wonderful to have their expertise to answer questions and unpack the opinions. And thanks to all of you! It's been fun, and with seven (eight) opinions left to go presumably we will be back here for at least two more live blogs, even if we don't know exactly when that will be. Take care, and stay safe!
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Thanks so much for joining us today. 8 or so opinions to go - Amy has a list of the remaining ones (just cross off Booking.com and Espinoza) here. No word yet on when the court will issue the next opinions, so it looks like we're heading into July for the first time in a while.
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For now there's an additional conference tomorrow and orders from that conference expected Thursday at 9:30 a.m. Look out for a Relist Watch soon from John Elwood about all the cases up for possible grants and other movement on Thursday morning. And, of course, coverage of today's opinion in Booking.com from Professor Jessica Litman and in Espinoza from Amy and a slate of others. We'll be back soon!
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