Supreme Court takes eight new cases, no action on Redskins’ appeal
On Thursday morning, the United States Supreme Court said it would accept eight new cases for its 2016 term, which starts next week. For now, it didn’t act on an appeal from the Washington Redskins football team about a trademark ruling.
Among the cases accepted on the Court’s Order list were a dispute over a rock band that trademarked an offensive name and the rights of a disabled child to attend a public school.
Link: Read The Order List
Another trademark case the Court accepted is Lee v. Tam. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found in Lee v. Tam that a lower court ruling that barred a rock band from trademarking the name “The Slants” was invalid under the First Amendment because the decision imposed impermissible content-based and viewpoint-discriminatory burdens on protected speech.
Lawyers for the Washington Redskins football team tried to link an appeal about a trademark ban on the team’s controversial name to the Lee v. Tam case, but the Washington team’s appeal wasn’t accepted or denied on Thursday.
Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District involves the following question: “What is the level of educational benefit that school districts must confer on children with disabilities to provide them with the free appropriate public education guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act?”
A 15-year-old Littleton, Colo., student, identified only as Endrew F. (his parents call him “Drew”), is challenging a federal appeals court ruling. The youth is autistic and has attention deficit disorder, compromising his verbal and non-verbal communications skills.
When his parents and school officials couldn’t agree on a plan for him in public schools, he was placed in a private school that specializes in teaching autistic students. The family then sued to recover the private school tuition, contending that the school district was obliged to pay because it failed to provide Drew with an adequate educational opportunity. A trial judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit denied the challenge, finding that the law only required a benefit just above the trivial, and that Drew had done a bit better than that in public school.
There was no word on the date of the other cases the Court considered on Monday at its long conference. Each September, the Supreme Court justices reconvene in private to consider a huge number of new cases for its new term. Known as the “long conference,” the meeting usually evaluates about 2,000 petitions and other motions.
Other cases accepted on Thursday included Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman, which is a dispute over how merchants in 10 states tell customers they are paying more for their services and products using a credit card instead of cash.
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