Okay, headed in to wait for opinions. It is eerily quiet in the press room right now.
Justice Gorsuch has the first opinion, in US v. Haymond.
The 10th Circuit's ruling is vacated and remanded.
The court holds that a federal law requiring a defendant who is registered as a sex offender to return to prison for at least five years if a federal judge finds that the defendant violated the terms of his supervised release is unconstitutional.
Gorsuch is joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan in concluding that the application of this law violated Haymond's right to a trial by jury. Breyer has an opinion concurring in the judgment.
Alito dissents, joined by Roberts, Thomas and Kavanaugh.
Breyer's decision here is substantially narrower than the plurality opinion, and begins by saying that it "agrees with much of the dissent."
Gorsuch writes that only "a jury, acting on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, may take a person's liberty." But in this case, a federal law required a judge to send Haymond to prison without "empaneling a jury of his peers or requiring the government to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. As applied here, we do not hesitate to hold that the statute violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments."
Okay, headed in to wait for the next one.
We have Kisor v. Wilkie, from Justice Kagan. The Federal Circuit's ruling is vacated and remanded.
This case was about whether to uphold the doctrine known as Auer deference, which instructs courts to defer to an agency's interpretation of its own regulation.
Kagan says the only question before the court is whether to overrule Auer, and the answer is no. But "even as we uphold it," she writes, "we reinforce its limits. Auer deference is sometimes appropriate and sometimes not."
"Whether to apply it depends on a range of considerations that we have noted now and again, but compile and further develop today. The deference doctrine we describe is potent in its place, but cabined in its scope." The court sends the case back to the court of appeals for it to consider whether it applies to the agency interpretation in this case.
Says the Federal Circuit didn't consider in this case whether the VA regulation at issue is genuinely ambiguous.
Interesting concurrence from the Chief Justice. He "write[s] separately to suggest that the distance between the majority and JUSTICE GORSUCH is not as great as it may initially appear" and explains that "the cases in which Auer deference is warranted largely overlap with the cases in which it would be unreasonable for a court not to be persuaded by an agency’s interpretation of its own regulation."
The vote is complicated, and I have to go back in, so hopefully someone else will post. No dissents, though. Lots of joining in parts and concurring in judgment.
We have our third and FINAL opinion of the day.
It is in TN Wine and Spirits v. Thomas, from Alito.
This is the challenge to the constitutionality of Tennessee's residency requirements for retail liquor licenses.
Justice Gorsuch concurs in the judgment because he agrees that the decision below needed to be reversed. But he's gunning for Auer, beginning his separate opinion with: "It should have been easy for the Court to say goodbye to Auer v. Robbins."
The Supreme Court affirms the Sixth Circuit's ruling, which struck down the residency requirement.
In Kisor, Justice Kavanaugh invokes the balls-and-strikes trope, noting: "Umpires in games at Wrigley Field do not defer to the Cubs manager’s in-game interpretation of Wrigley’s ground rules. So too here."
In Kisor, the Chief Justice and Justice Kavanaugh each make this point: "Issues surrounding judicial deference to agency interpretations of their own regulations are distinct from those raised in connection with judicial deference to agency interpretations of statutes enacted by Congress. See Chevron..." And both note that they "do not regard the Court’s decision today to touch upon the latter question.
The court holds that the state's two-year residency requirement for retail liquor licenses violates the Constitution's Commerce Clause, and is not saved by the 21st Amendment. The Commerce Clause bars states from discriminating against out-of-state residents, while the 21st Amendment gives states some latitude with respect to the regulation of alcohol.
Alito is still reading from his opinion in TN Wine. Gorsuch dissented in this case, joined by Thomas.
(Sorry, I had some internet issues, but got back online with another hotspot.)
In footnote 4 of Justice Alito's opinion, he preserves the possibility that the Dormant Commerce Clause is not itself a good idea, and that the principle of non-protectionism should be rooted in other clauses. This maintains a tension with Justice Alito's own writing where he often votes for (and authors) cases depending on the dormant commerce clause, while also throwing shade on it for lacking any textual basis in the Constitution (see McBurney).
The Chief just announced that the court will be back tomorrow, and tomorrow will be the last day.
In Tennessee Wine, Justice Gorsuch (joined by Justice Thomas) writes that the the 21st Amendment "embodied a classically federal compromise: Nationwide prohibition ended, but States gained broad discretion to calibrate alcohol regulations to local preferences," and that "under the terms of this compromise, Tennessee’s law imposing a two-year residency requirement on those who seek to sell liquor within its jurisdiction would seem perfectly permissible."
Okay, I have three opinions to write about today, so I'm going to sign off. Nothing appears to have happened in the census case at the Supreme Court while I was on the live blog, but it's only 10:23, so there's still plenty of term. To recap, we got three decisions today: US v. Haymond, Tennessee Wine and Spirits v. Thomas, and Kisor v. Wilkie. We're waiting on five cases: Carpenter v. Murphy, the two partisan gerrymandering cases (Lamone v. Benisek & Rucho v. Common Cause), the census case (Department of Commerce v. NY), and Mitchell v. Wisconsin. I will put up a new summary of the remaining cases and try to read some new tea leaves later on today, but -- as several of you noted - it seems very likely that the Chief Justice is writing the partisan gerrymandering cases (which would not be a big surprise). Thanks so much for joining us, and hope to see you again tomorrow!
Twenty-first Amendment scholars are going to have fun with Justice Gorsuch's dissenting opinion.
Hi all, I am going to close the live blog. We will be back tomorrow for the final opinions of the term. Today we will have Amy's analyses of the three opinions -- Haymond, Kisor and Tennessee Wine. We will also begin an online symposium on the Kisor decision.
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