Good morning, everyone! Welcome to our live blog, sponsored by Casetext. Thanks for joining us.
There are no more oral arguments scheduled for the term, so today we are expecting orders from last week's conference and one or more opinions in argued cases, and then that's it for the week. There is no conference scheduled for this week, so we won't actually be back until May 13.
We're expecting orders at 9:30. Last week the justices finally acted on the cases asking them to weigh in on whether federal employment discrimination laws protect LGBT employees. We are still waiting on Box v. Planned Parenthood, the challenge to the Indiana law barring abortions based on (among other things) sex or disability of the fetus and requiring that fetal remains be cremated or buried. We're also waiting on Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, aka Masterpiece Cakeshop 2 -- the case filed by the Oregon couple who declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Then again, the justices might not act on either of those cases at all.
The Court has asked the U.S. solicitor general to file a brief weighing in on Google v. Oracle, on whether copyright protection extends to software interfaces.
[Google is represented by Goldstein & Russell.]
There do not appear to be any new grants today.
The justices do not appear to have acted on either Box or Klein.
So it looks like we'll have to wait until at least May 13 to hear about Box and Klein.
Returning to the merits picture, Gundy v. United States is the oldest case outstanding, from October 2. We expect that Justice Sonia Sotomayor is likely writing the opinion in that case.
Just to continue with the big picture, as is almost always the case, we don't know how many opinions we are getting or which ones. There's not a lot of low-hanging fruit left from November or December. I feel like there are a couple of relatively non-controversial ones (Return Mail v. USPS, on whether the government is a "person" for purposes of the America Invents Act, I'm looking at you) in January or February that we should be getting soon.
I am not at the Court today, but Ariane de Vogue of CNN is reporting one box of opinions at the Public Information Office.
For those of you who are not regulars here, the number of boxes is a very rough proxy for the number of opinions that we could get. More boxes generally means more opinions.
First opinion is in Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority.
It is by Justice Kagan and it is unanimous.
The decision of the Eleventh Circuit is reversed and the case is remanded for further consideration.
Court holds that the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is a government-owned corporation that supplies electricity to millions of people, has a broad "sue and be sued" clause that waives sovereign immunity from suits challenging any of its commercial activities. "The law thus places the TVA in the same position as a private corporation supplying electricity," Kagan writes. "But," she continues, "the TVA might have immunity from suits contesting one of its governmental activities, of a kind not typically carried out by private parties," so the court sends the case back for determination of whether that kind of limited immunity might apply here.
This is apparently the only opinion of the day, according to my colleagues who are down at the Court. (I am home with a sick child today.)
Okay, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. We won't know for sure until the end of next week (and by "for sure" I mean that we will know that there is a "possibility of opinions"), but we would expect to be back here on May 13 for the next round of orders and opinions. Have a great week!
Yes, thanks, all! We'll have Amy covering today's orders, Gregory Sisk with today's opinion, and the next episode of SCOTUStalk -- Amy interviews Kimberly Robinson from Bloomberg about last week's oral argument in the census case. Thanks for reading the blog!
Submit Event
