Christmas Week News

Legal blogs continue to buzz over the Court’s grant last week in City of Ontario v. Quon, (08-1332).  While Scotus Wiki added a new page for the case, both Nolo’s Employment Law Blog and Slate’s Double XX Blog discussed the case at length.  Last week, Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy noted that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Quon was written by a liberal panel and drew a heated dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc by a group of conservative judges.  “That one-two punch is hard for the Supreme Court to resist,” Kerr wrote. 

On Monday, Cockle Law Brief Printing Company printed the Petitioner’s Brief in Hamilton v. Lanning, (08-998).  The brief advocates a “mechanical” approach to calculating a debtors’ “projected disposable income” during Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings.  Such an approach, the brief argues, is “faithful to the language of the statute and the expressed intent of Congress.”  The Respondent’s Brief in Hamilton is due on January 22nd of next year. 

Adam Liptak at the New York Times reported on Monday that a new study suggests that there is a correlation between the type of employment taken by Supreme Court clerks after leaving the Court and the ideology of the Justice that hired them.  This article continues to merit a wide-range of response from legal bloggers, including posts from the Volokh Conspiracy, Cato Institute and the ABA Journal. 

Cockle Law Brief Printing Co. will be open until 12:00 PM Central Time on December 24th and December 31st, but will be closed on Christmas and New Year’s Day. 

Cockle Law Brief Printing would like to extend Happy Holidays to all our readers.

Court Grants City of Ontario v. Quon and Two Others

Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted three cert petitions and called for the Solicitor General’s view on another. In City of Ontario v. Quon, No. 08-1332, the Court will determine whether government employers may monitor employees’ text messages transmitted with a government-issued pager. 

The questions presented are:

1. Whether a SWAT team member has a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages transmitted on his SWAT pager, where the police department has an official no-privacy policy but a non-policymaking lieutenant announced an informal policy of allowing some personal use of the pagers.

2. Whether the Ninth Circuit contravened this Court’s Fourth Amendment precedents and created a circuit conflict by analyzing whether the police department could have used “less intrusive methods” of reviewing text messages transmitted by a SWAT team member on his SWAT pager.

3. Whether individuals who send text messages to a SWAT team member’s SWAT pager have a reasonable expectation that their messages will be free from review by the recipient’s government employer.

The petition for writ of certiorari can be viewed here, the brief in opposition here, and the reply brief here.

The Court also granted Robertson v. U.S. Ex Rel. Watson, No. 08-6261, and Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, No. 09-60. 

The Solicitor General was also invited to file a brief expressing the views of the United States in Thompson v. North American Stainless, 09-291.

The full order list is here.

Supreme Court News for December 8th, 2009

Yesterday, the Court granted two cert petitions.  The first questions whether it is unconstitutional for a public college to deny school funding to a student religious group that limits its officers and voting members to those who accept its religious beliefs.   Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (08-1371).  The second petition involves another aspect of the Court’s watershed ruling in United States v. Booker, (04-104).  In Dillon v. United States, (09-6338), the Court must decide how the advisory federal guidelines apply at re-sentencing hearings.

Today, the Court heard argument in two out of the three cases that will decide the scope of the federal mail fraud statute. Black v. United States, (08-876) and Weyhrauch v. United States, (08-1196).  The additional mail fraud case, Skilling v. United States, (08-1394), will be argued sometime in March or April of next year.  A SCOTUS Wiki link with electronic forms of all the merits briefs filed in Black, Weyhrauch, and Skilling, can be found here.