Good evening, and welcome to another edition of Supreme Court updates. An especially warm welcome to the new “subscribers” to Supreme Court updates. For the newcomers, these updates are intended to provide a fast and friendly guide to orders and opinions issued by the Supreme Court, and therefore allow you to keep up with the Supreme Court with minimal investment of time. If you have any comments, questions, or corrections, send them along!
And now for today’s headlines: No opinions today, but three grants (campaign finance, ADA, and death penalty), and some miscellaneous orders of interest.
First, in FEC v. Beaumont (02-403), a campaign finance case, the Court agreed to consider whether 2 U.S.C. 441b, which prohibits corporations and labor organizations from making campaign contributions or independent expenditures in connection with a federal election, violates the First Amendment when it is applied to restrict the actions of a nonprofit advocacy group. (This case is unrelated to litigation concerning the validity of McCain-Feingold.) The Fourth Circuit held that it was unconstitutional as applied to the advocacy group before it, “North Carolina Right to Life, Inc.,” and the Solicitor General, on behalf of the Federal Election Commission, petitioned for cert. This last part is somewhat interesting because the SG dropped a footnote to indicate that while the FEC had not asked him to seek cert in this case, he was doing so as part of his responsibility to control and conduct litigation on behalf of the United States. (That must have been an interesting internal debate!) The SG’s action is not surprising as this case involves the constitutionality of a federal statute.
Next, in Medical Board of California v. Hason (02-479), the Court will visit the intersection of two issues it has addressed with frequency in recent years: the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Eleventh Amendment. In this case, the Ninth Circuit held that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar a suit against a state entity alleging a violation of Title II of the ADA. (The respondent alleged that that the denial of a medical license on the basis of the his mental illness violates the ADA.). The Supreme Court left this precise question open in Board of Trustees v. Garrett, when it decided that the Eleventh Amendment bars suits against states under a separate title of the ADA.
In Wiggins v. Corcoran (02-311), the Court will review a Fourth Circuit holding, in a capital case, that defense counsel’s failure to investigate potential mitigating evidence does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel.
Aside from these grants, the Court asked the Solicitor General to present his views on two patent cases: In Monsanto Co. v Bayer CropScience SA (02-197), the question presented is whether patent licensees have a “bona fida purchaser” defense to claims of patent infringement, and in Dethmers Mfg. Co. v. Automatic Equip. Mfg. Co. (02-429), the questions presented involve the validity of a patent office regulation that does not require word-for-word correspondence between a reissue declaration and a reissue application.
Finally, for your entertainment, and in the category of “this case could only arise in the Ninth Circuit,” I note that the Court denied cert in Gerber v. Hickman. In that case, a California prisoner serving a life sentence claimed that the prison’s refusal to allow him to ship his sperm to his wife violated his right to procreate. Although a Ninth Circuit panel ruled in his favor (can you imagine a Fourth Circuit panel ruling for the prisoner on this?), the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc held that the right to procreate is fundamentally inconsistent with incarceration, and thus rejected his claim. Today, unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court denied cert.
That’s all for today.
Sandy