Commentaries by Glenn C. Smith

(c) Wikimedia Commons (The White House/Shealah) Craighead

Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation would not have happened if more than two Republican Senators had earlier stood up against the rush to confirm a new Supreme Court justice in the blazing heat of a highly contentious election and in a climate suggesting the basest of partisan motivations. Had Republican Senate ranks contained more true [...]

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The Supreme Court’s 5-4 invalidation, in Department of Homeland Security, et. al. v. Regents of the University of California, et. al. of the Trump Administration’s attempt to rescind the DACA program has obvious practical (if only temporary) significance for millions of Americans. The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program provided renewable two-year deferrals from [...]

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The Supreme Court created quite a stir recently when it held in Bostock v. Clayton Country, Georgia that Title VII, the major federal anti-employment-discrimination law, protected gay and transgender employees on the same basis as heterosexual employees. Deciding three companion cases involving different employees, the Court filled a major gap in employee protection – most [...]

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If any mental picture is evoked by the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision invalidating the State’s COVID-19-era stay-at-home/business-closure Order (Wisconsin Legislature v. Palm, et. al.) it’s probably of unrestrained partying — without masks and social-distancing — engaged in by less-risk-averse residents when unexpectedly freed of the Order’s constraints. That’s certainly one vivid takeaway from the case. [...]

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©WikiMedia (US Census Bureau)

On the last day of its 2018-2019 Term, the Supreme Court decided in Department of Commerce v. New York that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross could not add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census solely on the basis of the “contrived” and “pretextual” reason he cited (the need to better enforce the Voting Rights [...]

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© WikiMedia (photo by Gage Skidmore)

Before January 15th, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to have every 2020 Census respondent answer a question about citizenship (for the first time in sixty years) lived as either a story of bureaucratic and political intrigue or a high-profile case on the Supreme Court’s docket. The bureaucratic-intrigue focus would have included a chain of events [...]

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On November 8, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit became the first appellate court to enter one of the most high-profile legal fights against the Trump Administration.  In lead and concurring opinions running 99 pages, three appellate judges in Regents of the University of California v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security affirmed [...]

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One of the year’s most-watched Supreme Court controversies, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Limited v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission , was never likely to deliver the full faceoff between Religious Free Exercise and Anti-Discrimination Rights that many people expected.  As I’ll explain more fully below, cake baker Jack Phillip’s claim to avoid administrative sanctions despite refusing on religious grounds to sell [...]

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