U.S. Courts News Reporter
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Each weekday, we select a short list of news articles, commentary, and other noteworthy links related to the Supreme Court. To suggest a piece for us to consider, email us at roundup@scotusblog.com.
Here’s the Tuesday morning read:
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The Petitions of the Week column highlights a selection of cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.
In our modern gig economy, independent contractors constitute an increasingly large share of the American workforce. Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Amazon rely heavily on these workers, because the lack of any formal employment relationship means they do not have to provide them with benefits like health care and retirement … Read the rest
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, asked the Supreme Court on Friday to block a Georgia grand jury from questioning him about phone calls after the 2020 election to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wants to ask Graham about the calls, in which he allegedly discussed the state’s absentee-ballot process and allegations of voter fraud, as part of her investigation into possible election interference by former President … Read the rest
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to block the execution of an Oklahoma man with schizophrenia, rejecting a claim from his legal team that he does not understand the reason for his execution. Benjamin Cole is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Thursday.
The court turned down Cole’s last-minute appeal in a brief order with no recorded dissents. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the decision. Gorsuch likely recused himself because he was a judge on … Read the rest
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The Supreme Court will not reconsider the Insular Cases, a widely criticized and racist group of early 20th-century decisions holding that the residents of U.S. territories do not automatically enjoy all of the rights protected by the Constitution. The announcement came on a list of orders released on Monday morning from the justices’ private conference last week. The justices did not add any new cases to their merits docket for the 2022-23 term.
The request to overrule the Insular … Read the rest
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The Petitions of the Week column highlights a selection of cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.
In a case that prompted satirical news outlet The Onion to file its first-ever amicus brief in the Supreme Court, an Ohio man sued police for violating his constitutional rights when they arrested him for creating a Facebook page parodying the local police department. This week, we highlight cert petitions … Read the rest
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Wednesday’s argument in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith wandered widely, as the justices considered whether a famous set of images that Andy Warhol based on a 1981 photograph of Prince by the award-winning photographer Lynn Goldsmith were such a “fair” use of the photograph that Warhol’s successors can license them for commercial use without the permission of (or compensation to) Goldsmith.
As Roman Martinez explained on behalf of the Andy Warhol Foundation (which controls the … Read the rest
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The Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon rejected a request from former President Donald Trump to allow a special master to review about 100 documents, marked as classified, that the FBI seized from Trump’s home. The ruling came in an unsigned one-sentence order; there were no dissents recorded.
The documents at the center of the dispute were among the 11,000 documents seized by the FBI in an Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida. In September, … Read the rest