Good morning and welcome to our live blog. We are waiting for orders at 9:30 and decisions at 10:00.
Good morning, everyone! Sorry -- was running behind but am in the Court now and about to go wait in line for today's orders. Could be an interesting one . . . .
The justices have denied review in the North Carolina voting rights case. This case involved a challenge to the state's voter ID requirement and other changes, such as a reduction in early voting.
The Fourth Circuit had ruled in favor of the challengers and the state had asked the court to weigh in.
The Chief Justice has a statement respecting the denial in the case.
The Chief's statement ends with an admonition not to read too much into the denial: it "imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case."
The Supreme Court once again does not act on Masterpiece Cake Shop, a challenge by a Colorado baker who does not want to be compelled to create cakes for same-sex weddings.
The court also does not appear to act on Peruta v. California, the case on whether there is a Second Amendment right to carry a handgun for self defense outside the house.
But Peruta has "only" been relisted once going into last week's conference.
The Court also apparently does not act on the bevy of cases involving the retroactivity of tax liability and the multistate tax agreement for multistate businesses.
There are two calls for the views of the Acting Solicitor General: In Rinehart v. California (No. 16-970) and Clark v. Virginia Department of State Police (No. 16-1043).
The Court also did not act on the group of cases challenging the use of cell phone location data without a warrant.
At some point we could have a very interesting conference, given all of the cases still pending on the cert. docket.
And just as a reminder, we are likely to get opinions at 10 am; this is just about orders from last week's conference.
Just had the five-minute buzzer.
We have two boxes, which is kind of exciting.
For those of you who are new here, the number of boxes is a rough proxy for the number of opinions that we are likely to get. So two boxes means either several opinions or a few long ones.
Okay, I am going to get in line for opinions. "Talk" to you soon!
Justice Kagan has the court's opinion in Kindred Nursing v. Clark. This is an arbitration case out of Kentucky in which the state supreme court did not give effect to arbitration agreements executed by people who had power of attorney. Today the court reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.
It was a 7-1 decision in which Gorsuch did not participate; Thomas filed a dissenting opinion (although a very short one).
The KY Supreme Court had held that a general grant of power does not allow someone to enter into an arbitration agreement (here for nursing home care) for someone else; the person with power of attorney must also have specific authority "to waive his principal's fundamental constitutional rights to access the courts and to trial by jury."
That rule, the Supreme Court holds today, violates the Federal Arbitration Act by singling out arbitration agreements for disfavored treatment."
Justice Breyer has two opinions today, the first in Howell v. Howell, involving the division of military pay after divorce. Specifically, what happens when a veteran waives his share of retirement pay to receive nontaxable disability benefits instead?
Question before the court was whether the state can increase the spouse's portion from the veteran's retirement pay to make up for what she is not getting as a result of his waiver of some of that pay in favor of disability pay. Breyer says the "question is complicated, but the answer is not."
"Our cases and the statute make clear that the answer" is no.
So the decision in favor of the wife in the lower court is reversed and remanded.
Thomas concurs in part and concurs in the judgment. Gorsuch did not participate.
Another short opinion (8 pages) followed by a one-paragraph opinion by Thomas.
The issue in Howell v. Howell arose because a federal law allows states to treat the retirement pay as divisible property but excludes disability pay. The states can't work around that, the court holds.
Third and final opinion today, again from Breyer, in Midland Funding v. Johnson.
This is a case involving a proof of claim in a bankruptcy case.
The court holds that the filing of a proof of claim that is obviously time barred is not a false, deceptive, unfair, or unconscionable debt collection practice within the meaning of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. So the decision of the Eleventh Circuit in this case is reversed.
Breyer writes, the vote is 5-3; Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion joined by Ginsburg and Kagan.
A little more context: a debt collector filed a written statement in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceeding claiming that the debtor owed the debt collector money, but the statute of limitations for collecting the debt had already run. The question before the court was whether the filing of the statement by the debt collector falls within the scope of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act's bar on using a "false, deceptive, or misleading representation" or the use of " "unfair or unconscionable means" to try to collect a debt. The court says it does not.
Gorsuch did not participate in this case either.
So we still have one case outstanding from the November sitting: Sessions v. Morales-Santana.
There are two cases still undecided from December: Jennings v. Rodriguez and Cooper v. Harris.
Midland Funding was argued in January, but there are still several cases left from that month: Sessions v. Dimaya (immigration), Ziglar/Hasty/Ashcroft v. Abbasi (liability of government officials for actions taken in the aftermath of September 11 attacks), and Lee v. Tam (trademark).
Kindred is the fourth February opinion; there are 3 left.
I am going to sign off now and get to work on Howell v. Howell and today's orders (or, mostly, lack thereof). But there is another conference on Thursday, so we will be back here again at the same time next Monday. And stay tuned -- we'll have more on today's opinions and this week's relists, as well as the Ninth Circuit's argument in the travel ban case. Thanks for joining us!
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