Live blog of orders and opinions - Monday, June 29, 2020
We live-blogged on Monday, June 29, as the court released orders form the June 25 conference and opinions in Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, June Medical Services v. Russo and United States Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International. SCOTUSblog is sponsored by Casetext: making litigation more efficient with A.I. and machine learning technology.
-
Today the court holds that the government can enforce the condition as to the foreign affiliates of US nonprofits: "plaintiffs' foreign affiliates are foreign organizations," Kavanaugh writes, "and foreign organizations operating abroad have no First Amendment rights."
-
As Justice Breyer notes in dissent, this categorical statement in the Court's majority opinion in AID is obviously overbroad (and therefore will be the source of much mischief until corrected): "Foreign citizens outside U. S. territory do not possess rights under the U.S. Constitution."
-
From the Chief's concurrence:
I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and con- tinue to believe that the case was wrongly decided. The question today however is not whether Whole Woman’s Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.
-
As in WWH, Breyer writes, the district court in this case found that the statute "offers no signficant health benefit" but "will continue to make it impossible for abortion providers to obtain conforming privileges for reasons that have nothing to do with the STate's asserted interests in promoting women's health and safety."
-
Chief's bottom line is stare decisis: "The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents."
-
"We have examined the extensive record carefully and conclude that it supports the District Court's findings of fact. Those findings mirror those made in WWH in every relevant respect and require the same result. We consequently hold that the Louisiana statute is unconstitutional."
-
Alito's dissenting opinion is joined in bits and pieces by Gorsuch, Thomas, and Kavanaugh. Here's the playbill:
JUSTICE ALITO, with whom JUSTICE GORSUCH joins, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins except as to Parts III–C and IV–F, and with whom JUSTICE KAVANAUGH joins as to Parts I, II, and III, dissenting.
-
Alito's dissent suggests this is a really messy case (assuming it is roughly accurate): says that the plurality applies a test that is different from Casey, based on Whole Women's Health, and that the Chief would apply Casey and, thereby, overrule Whole Women's health to the extent it departed from Casey.Who knows where the truth lies, but this is likely going to take some time to digest.
Submit Event
