Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, February 14, 2020

Each week, the Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup presents a few tidbits of news and Twitter posts from the past week concerning appellate advocacy. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send a quick note to either (1) Dan Real at DReal@Creighton.edu or on Twitter @Daniel_L_Real or (2) Catharine Du Bois at DuBoisLegalWriting@gmail.com or on Twitter @CLDLegalWriting.

US Supreme Court Opinions and News:

• Texas has petitioned the Supreme Court to declare a California interstate travel-ban unconstitutional. The travel ban prohibits state-funded travel to states that fail to provide sufficient protections for LGBTQ people. Texas was added to the list of banned states in 2017 because of a Texas law allowing foster care agencies to use sincerely held religious beliefs as a basis to deny placements to gay couples. Texas argues that the ban violates the Dormant Commerce Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause. See the State of Texas filing. Reports are available from The Texas Tribune and Fox News and by Josh Blackman at The Volokh Conspiracy.

• The Supreme Court issued a memorandum formalizing some previously unwritten procedural  rules.  This memorandum discusses rules on scheduling private conferences and deadlines for petitions for certiorari.  Bloomberg Law has this report on the memorandum.  

• Adam Feldman has posted “About this Term: OT 2019” at his Empirical SCOTUS blog.

• In Supreme Court historical news, Christopher Brooks wrote an online essay about the first black man allowed to argue before the Supreme Court. And the Harvard Law School Library has released some of the papers of Justice Antonin Scalia. Harvard Law Today reported here.

Federal Appellate Court Opinions and News:

• The Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit threw out the emoluments claim against the president brought by 215 members of Congress. The DC Circuit applied Supreme Court precedent from House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill (2019) and Raines v. Byrd (1997), holding that “’individual members’ of the Congress ‘lack standing to assert the institutional interests of a legislature.’” The order reversed a lower court holding that the members had standing. The order is here. The many reports on this ruling include those from The New York Times , The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and Politico.  

• The Third Circuit ruled in favor of Philadelphia, finding that the city can prohibit an employer’s asking an applicant about salary history. The ruling was welcomed by wage-equity proponents, who claim the law could reduce gender- and race-based wage discrimination.  See reports from the National Law Review and the Philadelphia Inquirer and an essay about the equal pay implications by Professor Joanna L. Grossman. The ruling is here.

• After ruling that Arizona’s “ballot harvesting” law discriminates against minority voters (see The Weekly Round Up, January 31), the Ninth Circuit granted Arizona’s request to stay the ruling so that Arizona may seek Supreme Court review. The stay means that the law will remain in effect at least through the presidential primary in March. See report in the Arizona Daily Star and AP News.  

• The Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that argued that an Oregon school district policy violated the Constitution and civil rights law by allowing a transgender student to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. The court found that the policy did not violate the rights to cisgender students or their parents and dismissed the case. See reports from KATU News, Bloomberg (subscription required), and the ACLU.  The ruling is here.

• Brooklyn Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, the longest-serving federal judge in the country, has retired after a 53-year career.  See The New York Daily News report.