Alito is joined by Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh. Thomas has a concurring opinion. Ginsburg and Gorsuch have dissenting opinions.
This is NOT the final opinion for the day.
In Gamble, Gorsuch continues his pattern of both dissenting from his conservative colleagues's decisions and picking up strange bedfellows for his views.
The justices announce decisions in order of reverse seniority, which means that we are not likely to hear from Justices Sotomayor or Kagan today. Not sure what that means for Gundy . . . .
RGB's dissent is not a huge surprise in light of her dissent in Puerto Rico v. Sanchez-Valle.
Alito is still reading from his decision in Gamble. It is 31 pages long.
We have Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune Hill, from Ginsburg.
The appeal is dismissed. The court holds that the Virginia legislature lacks standing to appeal in its own right.
This was a case involving accusations of racial gerrymandering. Virginia had declined to appeal the ruling against it to the Supreme Court, so the state's House of Delegates had done so.
Alito dissents, joined by Roberts, Breyer, and Kavanaugh.
Ginsburg's opinion is joined by Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch.
"In short," Ginsburg writes, "Virginia would rather stop than fight on. One House of its bicameral legislature cannot alone continue the litigation against the will of its partners in the legislative process."
It thus was important to the decision that the challenge was brought by only one house of the Virginia legislature.
Alito writes that he would "hold that the Virginia House of Delegates has standing to take this appeal. The Court disagrees for two reasons: first, because the Virginia law does not authorize the House to defend the invalidated redistricting plan on behalf of the Commonwealth, and, second, because the imposition of the District Court's districting plan would not cause the House the kind of harm required by Article III of the Constitution. I am convinced that the second holding is wrong and therefore will not address the first."
Ginsburg is still reading from her summary of the decision.
As a lot of folks are commenting, the lineups today illustrate that the stereotype of the Court deciding cases based on a liberal-conservative split does not hold for an awful lot of cases.
She is finished now with her summary of the opinion, and the Court has moved on to admitting lawyers to the Supreme Court bar. When they are done, they will presumably say something about when they will be back, so I will stay online until then.
Ha, Sarah just beat me to it. :)
Yippee! The justices will be back with more opinions on Thursday
And with that, I am going to sign off and get to work. I have three opinions and an order list to cover today. And then I will get to work on a post "reading the tea leaves" to see what we might be able to predict about the remaining opinions. Thanks so much for joining us, and thanks so much to Casetext for making this all possible!
Hi all, time for us to shut down for today. Amy has a lot of work ahead of her today -- covering orders and three of today's opinions. Emily Hammond will cover Virginia Uranium v. Warren. Mark Walsh will have a "view" from the court. And then we will be back on Thursday, thank you!
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