Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, April 28, 2023
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
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In the final oral argument of the term, the Supreme Court heard a case about whether the state should be allowed to retain profits when a property is sold after being seized for failure to pay taxes. The challenge is to a Minnesota tax law that allows the state to take absolute title of a property if the owner fails to pay taxes for five years. Under that law, Minnesota seized Petitioner’s home, sold the home in a tax foreclosure sale, and kept the $25,000 profit. The petitioner claims that the law violates both the Fifth Amendment’s bar on uncompensated taking of private property and the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines. A ruling is likely this summer. See reports from NPR, Reuters, and NBC.
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The Supreme Court issued a ruling preserving the status quo about the national availability of an important abortion pill, Mifepristone, keeping the drug widely available pending the Court’s review of the merits. The ruling became necessary after a stunning pair of decisions from Texas. The first decision was issued by a federal district judge and attempted to block the medication nationwide. That decision ruled that the 23-year-old FDA approval of the drug had exceeded the FDA’s authority. (Note, the statute of limitation to challenge FDA approval is six years.) The second decision issued from the Fifth Circuit and was a partial stay of the widely-criticized district decision. That decision also attempted to limit national availability of the drug by questioning the FDA’s process and authority following 2016 and 2021 revisions to the drug’s risk assessment. The Supreme Court blocked the rulings last Friday; Alito dissented and Thomas would have denied the application. See the Supreme Court order and dissent. See reports concerning the Texas decision from The New York Times, Reuters, and NPR and about the Supreme Court’s decision from Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
State Court Opinions and News
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Judge Rowan Wilson was confirmed as chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York. Judge Wilson will be the first Black chief judge. See a report from The New York Times.