Good morning! Welcome to our live blog, everyone.
We're expecting orders from last week's conference very soon, followed by opinions in one or more argued cases at 10. Will this be the week that we get an order on wedding cakes or Indiana abortion? We'll know soon enough.
There are no new grants today at the Court.
Two cases I was keeping an eye on for Education Week were denied this morning: One is Millburn, N.J. v. Palardy, about "Whether, and how, the Supreme Court’s two-step framework for evaluating First Amendment retaliation claims by public employees applies to a claim alleging retaliation based on an employee’s association with a public-sector union." The petition was written by former SG Greg Garre.
The second denied case I was interested in is Tree of Life Christian Schools v. Upper Arlington, Ohio, which involved a religious school's challenge to a zoning regulation under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
The justices deny review in a case involving whether whether prisoners have a First Amendment right to include threatening, abusive and irrelevant language in their grievances. The prisoner prevailed in the Ninth Circuit and the state asked the Court to weigh in. The case is Dahne v. Richey; Justice Alito dissents from the denial of review, joined by Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissents from the denial of cert. in the case of Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, who is on death row in Tennessee (and who, in the interest of full disclosure, was my client for many years when I was practicing law).
Looking at the orders list from home today, I forgot to scroll to the bottom to see the written opinions relating to orders. When we get that list at the court, those opinions are stapled on top of the rest of the orders list.
The school prayer decision I'm thinking of (when 15 opinions came out in a single day) was in 1962 or 63.
Five-minute buzzer just sounded.
I have not gotten up but hear Ariane de Vogue of CNN saying two boxes. For the new-ish here, the number of boxes is a rough proxy for the number of opinions.
What? No five-minute buzzer sounded at my house! Normally, I would be seated upstairs in the courtroom by now and chatting with the handful of reporters who go up for opinion announcements.
Okay, I'm headed in to wait for opinions. Back soon.
We have the first opinion. It is Apple v. Pepper, from Justice Kavanaugh. The Ninth Circuit is affirmed.
The decision is 5-4. Kavanaugh is joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
Gorsuch dissents, joined by Roberts, Thomas, and Alito.
The court says that iPhone users purchased apps directly from Apple and therefore can sue Apple for antitrust violations. They allege that Apple has monopolized the retail market for apps and has unlawfully used its power to charge consumers higher prices.
The court does not decide the merits of the antitrust claims against Apple or whether Apple might have any other defenses. Just says that Apple can't rely on a defense known as Illinois Brick's direct-purchaser rule.
The justices announce opinions in order of reverse seniority, so we could hear from Kavanaugh or any other justice again today. He is still announcing his opinion.
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