Not going to go into anything here, as pretty much everything today was relatively dry or procedural in nature.
Three scheduled opinion days left, Monday June 10, Monday June 17 and Monday June 24. There are 27 cases remaining to be decided, so we should start getting extra decision days next week.
Link above is to today’s order list.
Start with today’s Call for the Views of the Solicitor General.
Search - Supreme Court of the United States (LInk is to the Supreme Court docket in 22o65, Texas v Mexico)
The case is Texas v New Mexico, originally filed on June 27, 1974 and has been kicking arounding in the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction for just about 45 years. It is essentially a pissing contest over the waters of the Pecos River.
The three grants today:
Issue : Whether Congress validly abrogated state sovereign immunity via the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act in providing remedies for authors of original expression whose federal copyrights are infringed by states.
Issue : Whether Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer ’s “more harm than good” pleading standard can be satisfied by generalized allegations that the harm of an inevitable disclosure of an alleged fraud generally increases over time.
Issue : Whether a formal objection after pronouncement of sentence is necessary to invoke appellate reasonableness review of the length of a defendant’s sentence.
The four decided cases:
Holding : Because the Department of Health and Human Services neglected its statutory notice-and-comment obligations when it revealed a new policy that dramatically – and retroactively – reduced Medicare payments to hospitals serving low-income patients, its policy must be vacated.
Judgment : Affirmed, 7-1, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch on June 2, 2019. Justice Breyer filed a dissenting opinion. Justice Kavanaugh took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Holding : A creditor may be held in civil contempt for violating a bankruptcy court’s discharge order if there is no fair ground of doubt as to whether the order barred the creditor’s conduct.
Judgment : Vacated and remanded, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Breyer on June 2, 2019.
Holding : The charge-filing precondition to suit set out in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not a jurisdictional requirement.
Judgment : Affirmed, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Ginsburg on June 2, 2019.
Holding : Pretrial detention later credited as time served for a new conviction tolls a supervised-release term under 18 U.S.C. §3624(e), even if the court must make the tolling calculation after learning whether the time will be credited.
Judgment : Affirmed, 5-4, in an opinion by Justice Thomas on June 2, 2019. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Gorsuch joined.
