Supreme Court down to three major cases this term
With the Supreme Court’s surprising decision in the Obamacare contraception case on Monday, the high court is down to just three major decisions in the last month or so in its current term.
In recent years, the Justices have concluded their business in late June, before taking some time off in the summer. And usually, the term’s final cases are among the Court’s biggest- and potentially landmark decisions.
But this year, after the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia in February, an eight-person Supreme Court has conducted its business in a different fashion, with several major cases returned to lower courts after a tie vote or a unanimous decision to remand a case.
For example, the Court split in the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case, where it was asked to decide if requiring public school teachers to pay mandatory dues for union activities violated the First Amendment.
The tie vote affirmed the rights of public unions to ask teachers to pay union dues, in a one-sentence statement, sending the case back to lower courts to consider again.
And in Monday’s Zubik vs. Burwell decision on Obamacare, all eight Justices agreed that the Court wouldn’t decide this dispute over Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate and religious rights, telling lower courts and the parties involved to find a compromise solution.
Court followers have pointed to three major cases that remain outstanding, sometimes theorizing or guessing how the Court and Chief Justice Roberts will handle them with a bench consisting of four conservatives and four liberals.
The oldest-pending major case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which was heard on December 9, 2015. The case is a challenge to affirmative action at Texas’ flagship public university. The University of Texas was required to admit all high school seniors who rank in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. Candidates for any remaining spots underwent a “holistic” evaluation process in which race is among the considered factors. The Court in 2013, the Court indeed issued a decision in the case, sending it back to the lower courts to be reviewed under a tougher constitutional standard.
Then there is the case of Whole Women’s Health v. Cole on abortion, which was heard on March 2, 2016. It is about a Texas law enacted in 2013 that would force about 75 percent of the state’s abortion services to close. The law requires that doctors at clinics have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinics, and that clinics have facilities equal to those of an outpatient surgical center. The Court is considering is an appeals court properly handled a question about if the new restrictions would actually work to protect the health of women, and if the law imposes an undue burden on women who seek abortions. The Court last ruled on the second question in a 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which reaffirmed the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.
Finally, the Court is considering a challenge to President Obama’s executive orders on immigration in United States v. Texas, which was heard on April 18, 2016. The dispute between the Obama administration and 26 states and includes questions about the ability of the states to sue the administration and the alleged unwillingness of President Obama to honor the Constitution’s “Take Care Clause” to execute laws passed by Congress.
Two lower courts that ruled on the case agreed that the state of Texas had standing to sue the Obama administration because it had been potentially injured by immigration enforcement decisions, which could defer the deportation of 5 million undocumented immigrants. In November 2015, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s injunction that blocked President Obama’s executive orders on immigration from taking effect. The Supreme Court added the Take Care Clause issue when it accepted the case.
Among the other pending cases to be decided in the next four to six weeks are the corruption case of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, a case involving Puerto Rico and double jeopardy, and a question over the discovery of evidence during a traffic stop in Utah.
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