Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our live blog, sponsored by Casetext. We're expecting orders from last week's conference momentarily, followed by one or more opinions at 10 am.
A couple of high-profile cases have been kicking around the relists for several weeks now, including the challenge to the Indiana law barring abortions based on (among other things) the sex or disability of the fetus, and requiring fetal remains to be buried or cremated.
The follow-on to Masterpiece Cakeshop, Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, was up for conference last week but wasn't relisted. This was the case of an Oregon couple who declined to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Okay, headed in to wait for orders now. Back momentarily.
We have one grant today, in Kansas v. Glover.
This is, full disclosure, a Goldstein & Russell case.
The justices do not appear to have acted on any of the cases we've been waiting on -- the Indiana abortion case, the cases involving whether federal employment laws protect LGBTQ+ employees, the Klein case.
Five-minute buzzer just sounded.
We have one box today, folks.
(For those of you who aren't regulars here, the number of boxes is a rough proxy for the number of opinions we might get. And, yes, I realize it becomes a totally meaningless metric in about ten minutes, when we KNOW how many opinions we are getting.)
Okay, I am headed into the press office to wait for opinions. Back soon-ish.
Justice Gorsuch has the opinion of the Court in Bucklew v. Precythe, a capital case. The Eighth Circuit's decision is affirmed.
This was a challenge by a death-row inmate to the decision by the state to execute him by lethal injection. The inmate argues that, because of an unusual medical condition, he would suffer severe pain if executed by lethal injection.
The vote is 5-4. Breyer dissents, joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan. Sotomayor also dissents separately.
The Court holds that its earlier decisions on lethal injection, in Baze v. Rees and Glossip v. Gross, govern all Eighth Amendment challenges, whether facial or as applied, alleging that a method of execution inflicts unconstitutionally cruel pain.
The Court also holds that Bucklew has not met the criteria under Baze and Glossip.
Going back in -- we are expecting at least one more opinion.
Kagan has the second opinion of the day, in Biestek v. Berryhill.
The decision of the Eighth Circuit is affirmed. The vote is 6-3. Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, and Kavanaugh join the Kagan opinion; Sotomayor dissents, and Gorsuch dissents, joined by Ginsburg.
This is a case about Social Security disability benefits. The court holds that a vocational expert's refusal to provide private market-survey data about the other kinds of work that Biestek could still perform, upon the request of an applicant for benefits does not categorically preclude the testimony from counting as "substantial evidence."
And . . . that is all for today.
I am going to sign off now. To the reader who asked about the Rhode Island letter in the Bladensburg cross case, I am working on it and hopefully will have more information by the time we are back here again. The justices are not in session next week. They have a conference on April 12; we would expect orders from that conference on April 15 (tax day!), followed by the possibility of opinions again on April 16 and/or 17. thanks so much for joining us, and have a good week.
Hi all -- I'm going to close us down for today. Thank you for being with us! In addition to covering today's orders and opinions, this week we will be running an online symposium on the census case, Department of Commerce v. New York. The justices are off for two weeks now. I think our next opinion day will be Tuesday, April 16. Thanks again!
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