Bold Justice: June 4, 2018

Bold Justice: Five more down!

We have opinions! The Supreme Court issued seven opinions since May 28. Here we go!

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In total, the Supreme Court heard argument in 69 cases this term, all of which you can track on our term overview page. Of those 69, the court has issued opinions in 39 cases. The court usually issues the remainder of its opinions by the end of June. Here are this week’s opinions:

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Court of Appeals in a 7-2 decision. The Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had violated Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips' rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution by issuing a cease-and-desist order to the bakery's owner after he refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in 2012, citing religious objections to same-sex marriages.

In this case, the couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, filed discrimination charges against the bakery's owner, Jack C. Phillips, under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA). An administrative law judge found in favor of the couple, and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission upheld this ruling, issuing a cease-and-desist order to Phillips requiring that he take corrective actions to ensure compliance with CADA and submit quarterly compliance reports for two years detailing those corrective actions. Phillips appealed this order to the Colorado Court of Appeals, which affirmed the commission's decision.

Phillips appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the United States, presenting the following question to the court: "Whether applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel Phillips to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment."

Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy penned the majority decision, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch. Kennedy wrote the following in the court's decision: "The Commission’s hostility [to Phillips' religious beliefs] was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. Phillips was entitled to a neutral decisionmaker who would give full and fair consideration to his religious objection as he sought to assert it in all of the circumstances in which this case was presented, considered, and decided."

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Sonia Sotomayor, dissented: "The different outcomes the Court features do not evidence hostility to religion of the kind we have previously held to signal a free-exercise violation, nor do the comments by one or two members of one of the four decisionmaking entities considering this case justify reversing the judgment below."

In City of Hays, Kansas v. Vogt, the Supreme Court issued a one-sentence opinion dismissing the appeal "as improvidently granted." This order leaves the case in the same place it would have been if the court had refused to hear the appeal in the first place: the opinion of the Tenth Circuit stands, but the Supreme Court did not affirm that opinion.

In this case, former police officer Matthew Vogt filed a civil suit alleging that his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination was violated when his statements, obtained during an internal police investigation, were used in a criminal probable cause hearing. On appeal, the Tenth Circuit agreed, ruling that the Fifth Amendment applied during probable cause hearings to the same extent it applied at trial.

Dismissed as improvidently granted is sometimes abbreviated as DIG. A reporter at SCOTUSblog, a website that covers Supreme Court proceedings, wrote, "At argument, [Justice] Breyer ultimately wondered 'whether this is, in fact, an appropriate case … for the Court to take.' Vogt, having won below, quickly embraced this as a DIG suggestion. With Justice Neil Gorsuch recused, the eight remaining justices, after three months of internal deliberations that we can only guess at, have now agreed with that disposition and dismissed the case without any discussion of the merits."

In Lagos v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the Fifth Circuit, ruling that the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA) did not cover the costs of a victim's private investigation. In this case, Sergio Fernando Lagos pleaded guilty to wire fraud of General Electric Capital Corporation (GECC). The district court ordered Lagos to pay GECC restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA), including restitution to cover the legal and expert costs GECC incurred during its investigation of the fraud. Lagos challenged that order, arguing that the MVRA was not intended to cover consequential damages like the fees the district court had awarded. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the restitution order.

In an opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed. Breyer concluded that the language of the statue favored a more limited reading of covered costs, not the broad reading the Fifth Circuit applied. Rather than comprehensively covering all costs, he wrote, the MVRA "specifically lists the kinds of losses and expenses that it covers." In sum, he ruled, the MVRA "does not cover the costs of a private investigation that the victim chooses on its own to conduct."

Finally, in Collins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled 8 - 1 that the automobile exception to Fourth Amendment searches did not allow a police officer to conduct a warrantless search of a motorcycle parked in a home's driveway. In this case, Ryan Collins was found guilty of receiving stolen property after a motorcycle in his possession was found to have been stolen. A police officer proved it was stolen by tracking its vehicle identification number (VIN). The officer obtained the VIN by entering private property without permission or a warrant, pulling off a tarp that had covered the motorcycle, and recording the VIN. Collins argued that the officer's warrantless search was unconstitutional and moved to suppress all evidence obtained as a result of the search. The trial court denied his motion. The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed, concluding that the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against warrantless searches applied and that the search was therefore lawful.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored the opinion for the court majority, joined by all the justices except Justice Samuel Alito. Sotomayor emphasized that the driveway was considered part of the home for Fourth Amendment purposes and that therefore the officer's search constituted a search of the home, not merely a search of the motorcycle. Since it was a search of a home, she continued, the automobile exception did not apply to authorize the officer's search. She concluded, "The automobile exception does not afford the necessary lawful right of access to search a vehicle parked within a home or its curtilage because it does not justify an intrusion on a person’s separate and substantial Fourth Amendment interest in his home and curtilage." However, the court noted that on remand, the state court should consider whether a different exception applied to authorize the officer's search.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented. Alito felt that “what the police did in this case was entirely reasonable.” He would have ruled that the officer’s search of the motorcycle was reasonable and, therefore, did not violate the Fourth Amendment. He believed that the rationales underlying the automobile exception applied in this case.

Wondering where the cases came from this term? Check out this chart showing the number of appeals from each lower court:

SCOTUS trivia

Article III of the United States Constitution gives Congress the authority to set the number of Supreme Court justices. The court currently has one chief justice and eight associate justices, but the number has fluctuated since 1789. How many judges originally sat on the Supreme Court?

Choose an answer to find out!

News around the courts

The Texas Supreme Court ruled on May 29, 2018, that a homeowner in Bexar County, Texas, did not violate neighborhood association rules when he rented his home to short-term visitors. Homeowner Kenneth Tarr began renting his single-family home, located in the Timberwood Park subdivision, to short-term guests through rental sites like VRBO in 2014. The Timberwood Park Owners Association argued that Tarr's short-term rentals violated deed restrictions, which limited property use to residential and single-family purposes. They argued that allowing multiple guests to rent short-term was a commercial purpose since the house acted more as a hotel than a home. Tarr and his attorneys countered that the rentals were residential, as renters' activities (eating, sleeping, entertainment) were the same as any homeowner.

The Texas Supreme Court agreed with Tarr. Justice Jeff Brown wrote, "So long as the occupants to whom Tarr rents his single-family residence use the home for a ‘residential purpose,’ no matter how short-lived, neither their on-property use nor Tarr’s off- property use violates the restrictive covenants in the Timberwood deeds."

The Supreme Court's ruling broke with other courts' decisions: a Bexar County district judge ruled in favor of the association in 2015, as did the Texas Fourth District Court of Appeals in 2016.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) appointed circuit court Judge Mark Salter to the South Dakota Supreme Court. Salter replaces Judge Glen A. Severson, who plans to resign in June. At the time of his appointment, Salter had served as a judge on the Second Judicial Circuit in South Dakota since 2013.

Federal court action

Confirmations

The United States Senate did not confirm any additional nominees this week. The Senate has confirmed 39 of President Trump’s nominees to federal courts tracked in Ballotpedia’s Federal Vacancy Count.

Nominations

President Trump did not announce any additional nominees last week.

Vacancies

There are currently 148 vacancies in the federal judiciary. Of those 148 vacancies, 68 have no nominee as of yet during President Trump’s administration. According to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts and other outlets, an additional 30 judges have announced their intention to leave active judicial status during Trump’s first term. There are 80 pending nominations to seats tracked by Ballotpedia’s Federal Vacancy Count. Check out the chart below to see vacancies of four years or more:

Committee action

The Senate Judiciary Committee did not meet last week. The Committee is scheduled to meet on June 6 and June 7, 2018, to consider nominations.

Love judicial nomination, confirmation, and vacancies information? We figured. Our monthly Federal Vacancy Count, which is published on the last Wednesday of every month, monitors all of the faces, places, and spaces moving in, moving out, and moving on in the federal judiciary.

Need a daily fix? Our Federal Vacancy Warning System’s got you covered with continuing updates on the status of all federal judicial nominees.

Or, if you prefer, we maintain a list of individuals nominated by President Trump.

A judge you oughta know

Every week, we at Ballotpedia want to highlight a federal judge or judicial nominee. Right now, we’re taking a closer look at circuit court judges. This week, let’s get to know O. Rogeriee Thompson, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit and a judge you oughta know. She joined the court in 2010 after a nomination from President Barack Obama. A native of Anderson, South Carolina, Thompson earned her bachelor's from Brown University in 1973, and her J.D. from Boston University's School of Law in 1976.

Looking ahead

Here’s what we’re looking ahead to this week:

The U.S. Supreme Court released four opinions the morning of June 4, 2018, one of which was for Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In our June 11 issue of Bold Justice, we'll take a look at the three other rulings. Stay tuned!
We expect the Senate Judiciary Committee to meet to consider additional nominations.

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Bold Justice: June 4, 2018

Contents

Bold Justice: Five more down!

We #SCOTUS, so you don’t have to

SCOTUS trivia

News around the courts

Federal court action

Confirmations

Nominations

Vacancies

Committee action

A judge you oughta know

Looking ahead

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