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Supreme Court

Court declines RNC request to intervene in Pennsylvania voting dispute

The Supreme Court on Friday night left in place a ruling by Pennsylvania’s highest court that requires election boards in the state to count provisional ballots submitted by voters whose mail-in ballots had been deemed invalid.

The brief unsigned order came just four days before election day. Recent polls show former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris tied in Pennsylvania, which both candidates regard as a key part of their hopes of winning the White House. The … Read the rest

Civil Law

Delaware Chancery Dismisses Claims in Viela Bio Merger Dispute

In a significant decision that clarifies the standards for determining controlling stockholder status, the Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed claims against AstraZeneca and Viela Bio’s directors in connection with Viela’s $ 3 billion sale to Horizon Therapeutics. The case, Sciannella v. AstraZeneca UK Limited et al., addressed whether AstraZeneca, which held a 26.7% stake in Viela, exercised control over the company and whether the merger was subject to business judgment review under Corwin v. KKR Financial Holdings LLC. Vice … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Court rules for South Carolina Republicans in dispute over congressional map

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a ruling by a federal district court holding that a congressional district on the South Carolina coast was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, it sorted voters based primarily on their race. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the justices cleared the way for the state to use the map going forward. The 6-3 decision, with the justices divided on ideological lines, means that the disputed district will remain a … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Justices seem to favor IRS in dispute over shareholder’s life insurance policy

The justices were considerably more subdued in the argument in Connelly v. Internal Revenue Service than they were on Tuesday, when they confronted the FDA’s treatment of the abortion drug mifepristone. This is a case about the tax treatment of life insurance policies that closely held corporations use to manage the death of a shareholder. Assume, as is common, a small corporation owned by members of the same family. When one dies, if the surviving shareholders want to keep … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Justices seem to resolve Dogecoin arbitration dispute during argument

Wednesday’s oral argument in Coinbase v. Suski was the court’s second case in February under the Federal Arbitration Act, and by all accounts this one will be a lot easier for them to resolve than Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries. Coinbase is a technical dispute about the “delegation clause” in an arbitration agreement, which “delegates” to the arbitrator not only the job of resolving the dispute between the parties, but also the threshold question whether any particular dispute falls … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Court won’t hear Trump immunity dispute now

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from Special Counsel Jack Smith to decide, without waiting for a federal appeals court to weigh in, whether former President Donald Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Smith had asked the justices to act quickly to resolve the dispute over Trump’s immunity during the 2023-24 term, but the justices turned him down, in a brief unsigned order issued on … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Court turns down request for relief in Arizona leadership’s voting law dispute

The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon denied a request from the leaders of the Arizona legislature to put on hold an order that would require them to be deposed about the legislature’s enactment of voting laws that make it more difficult to register to vote. In a brief unsigned order without any noted dissents, the justices turned down an emergency filing from Ben Toma, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, and Warren Petersen, the president of the … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Justices take up bump stock dispute

Less than a week before the justices are scheduled to hear argument in a high-profile gun-rights case, the court added another dispute involving firearms to its docket for the 2023-24 term. In Garland v. Cargill, the justices will decide whether a “bump stock” – an attachment that transforms a semiautomatic rifle into a fully automatic, assault-style weapon – is a “machinegun,” which is generally prohibited under federal law. The case was one of three new cases in which … Read the rest