Live blog of orders and opinions | May 13, 2019
We live-blogged as the Supreme Court released orders from the May 9 conference and opinions in Apple Inc. v. Pepper, Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt and Cochise Consultancy v. United States, ex rel. Hunt. SCOTUSblog is sponsored by Casetext: A more intelligent way to search the law.
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Justice Thomas has two cases this morning. The first is Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt -- which, as Thomas points out, is on its third trip to the Court. The question is whether the Constitution allows a state to be sued by a private party without its consent in the courts of another state. The Supreme Court today holds that it does not, thereby overruling its contrary decision in Nevada v. Hall, circa 1979.
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Here's a link to the opinion in the second case, Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt. Richard Re from UCLA Law will have our analysis:
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Here's a link to the opinion in Cochise Consultancy v. US ex rel. Hunt. Mark Walsh will have our analysis:
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We've also just gotten a really interesting handout in the press room just now. At the end of March, the justices blocked Texas from executing a Buddhist prisoner unless the prisoner was allowed to have his spiritual adviser in the death chamber with him. Here's my post at the time: https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/03/supreme-court-intervenes-in-execution-of-buddhist-prisoner/.
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Justice Kavanaugh had a short concurring opinion at the time. But today we got an opinion from Alito (joined by Thomas and Gorsuch) dissenting from the grant of the application for a stay, and then Kavanaugh (joined by the Chief) has an additional statement respecting the grant of the application for a stay.
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All the statements together on the Buddhist prisoner case are here on the Court's website: www.supremecourt.gov
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I will write in more detail about the Murphy v. Collier order in a post for SCOTUSblog later, but the upshot is that Alito writes that Murphy filed his claim too late. "If the tactics of Murphy's attorneys in this case are not inexcusably dilatory, it is hard to know what the concept means." But, Alito says, Murphy "raises serious questions under both the First Amendment and" the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
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Kavanaugh writes to point out that, as a result of the stay, Texas changed its policy so that everyone gets a spiritual adviser in the viewing room and no one gets one in the execution chamber -- which probably "passes muster under" RLUIPA. And this was different, Kavanaugh says, than when the court refused to stay the execution of a Muslim inmate who wanted to have his spiritual adviser in the execution chamber. But Kavanaugh agrees that, as a general matter, inmates should bring their claims "in a timely manner."
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There's a really interesting line at the end of Breyer's dissent in the Franchise Tax case: "Today’s
decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the
Court will overrule next." Perhaps a not so subtle allusion to the worry of over turning precedents like Roe v. Wade, etc? -
Okay, I am going to get to work now. Thanks so much for joining us, and have a great week. Hopefully we'll see you back here next Monday. We'll have a podcast coming out later today with John Elwood of Relist Watch, and we'll wait to see what Relist Watch has for us later this week.