In the Our Lady of Guadalupe case, the court held that a teachers who had alleged discrimination when fired from their jobs at religious schools could not bring employment-discrimination claims, because they fall under the “ministerial exemption” rule, which protects religious institutions against such claims when the employees in question have jobs that involve a significant religious component. Alito wrote the opinion for himself and all of the other justices except Ginsburg and Sotomayor, who dissented.
In Little Sisters of the Poor, the court upheld exemptions to the employer contraceptive coverage mandate of Obamacare. This lifts a nationwide preliminary injunction on those exemptions placed by the Third Circuit, and means that religious organization like Little Sisters will be able to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage in its employee health plans. Justice Alito wrote for himself and the other conservatives; Kagan write a concurrence, joined by Breyer (I don’t know yet how their analysis differs from the majority’s). Ginsburg and Sotomayor were, again, together in dissent.
Not necessarily. From the press release “The Court will announce all remaining opinions READY during this term . . .” They going to punt those decisions til October. Can’t release opinions until they are ready. The last thing Roberts wants to do is put a final nail in Trump’s coffin
Rare for them to put off a case that was already argued until next year . A lot of their cases impact elections so I don’t think they will dodge the Trump tax cases.
I wonder if the court will mention how Trump said he would release his returns and then backed away from that. Somebody told him there was bad stuff in the returns.
I must say, the language of that pres release does worry me a little. As far as I can tell, the only cases left to decide this term are the two Trump tax return cases, and McGirt v. Oklahoma. Why not just say, in your press release, that all remaining opinions, or “the three remaining opinions,” will be released on Thursday. There’s really no reason to stick the word “ready” in unless you’re not planning on releasing all of them.
The Court rules against Oklahoma in the McGirt v. Oklahoma case, holding that:
I’m not familiar enough with this case to know all the consequences, but my understanding is that it means that a significant portion of Oklahoma, including the city of Tulsa (the state’s second-largest) is now (or, to be correct, remains) an Indian reservation.
It was a 5-4 decision: Gorsuch wrote the opinion, joined by the four liberals; the other four conservatives were in dissent.
Looks like Trump is going to have to hand over his records to New York:
Another 5-4 decision: Roberts writing for himself and the liberals in the majority, with the other four conservatives in dissent. No word yet on the Congressional subpoenas.
Mazars looks like some baby-splitting balancing test that will take well past November to resolve, though Alito and Thomas dissented so it’s presumably at least slightly worse for the President than for the House.
In the last case, related to the Congressional subpoena, the ruling is Vacated and Remanded.
Basically, they said that the courts below:
Haven’t read the decision in full, but it seems like this will require a sort of do-over, where the court below has to start again and pay more attention to the separation of powers issues.
Another 7-2, with Thomas and Alito in dissent. Thomas’s dissent, rather than Vacate and Remand, would Reverse the lower courts’ rulings. Thomas argues that Congress can only get the President’s records using the impeachment power.
As Lord Feldon suggests, the V&R ruling means that this will probably drag out at the lower court level, and even if Congress wins, they won’t see the returns before the election.
The ruling was narrowly tailored for MCA - it seems the state criminal law applying to a Native American on “Indian country” made the difference, but the precedence is going to be interesting.
Gorsuch’s textualist approach has sure made some interesting rulings!
Right. This doesn’t suddenly mean that the Indian tribes can kick everyone off that Oklahoma land. It will, indeed, be interesting to see what the practical consequences are, and whether Indian tribes will bring any lawsuits arguing to expand the ruling beyond the MCA.
Reading the case more closely, this was a bit of an oversimplification. He’s probably going to have to hand over at least some records, but it has to go back to the lower courts so that his attorneys can argue about it. They can argue that he shouldn’t have to release all his records, but they can’t use the fact that he’s President to refuse to release them.
Either way, I don’t think that any of these tax return cases will be done by election time.
I do wonder if in future cases they may distinguish by saying federal law (rather than Oklahoma state law) will only apply when there is a complaint against a Native American. Though I think Gorsuch is too much of a textualist for that.
Trump lost both of the tax decsions 7-2 with Alito and Roberts dissenting. Let’s not celebrate though. Both decisions were remanded back to the lower courts for more analysis. This will likely delay things until after the election.