Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The first week of the Supreme Court’s new term is in the books. It featured hearings over “ghost guns” and a rare request from Oklahoma’s top cop to stop an execution. Plus, we were reminded that the investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation wasn’t much of an investigation.
The court started Monday with the customary annual rejection of petitions that piled up over the summer. Among the many denials were a Biden administration appeal to protect emergency abortion care in Texas and a Pennsylvania GOP challenge to the president’s voter registration push.
Biden’s regulation on “ghost guns” could be safe if Tuesday’s oral argument in Garland v. VanDerStok is any indication. Ahead of the hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett had joined the three Democratic appointees to temporarily allow regulation of the kits and parts for making the weapons, which are harder for law enforcement to trace. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the hearing reflected a similar dynamic.
We won’t know until we see the final ruling, which, like the other cases that’ll be argued this term, should come by July.
One of the court’s stranger hearings happened Wednesday, in Glossip v. Oklahoma. Part of the strangeness stemmed from the fact that death row prisoner Richard Glossip wasn’t really “v.” Oklahoma. That’s because the state’s Republican attorney general agrees the defendant should get a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct. But the justices appointed a third party to argue in defense of a state court ruling that, if upheld, would put Glossip (who maintains his innocence) in the death chamber.
While Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito unsurprisingly sounded ready to rule against Glossip, the hearing left it unclear how a majority of the court will settle the life-or-death appeal. It could come down to the votes of Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh.
Speaking of Kavanaugh, he was back in the news personally this week for the sexual misconduct claims that almost kept him off the court during his confirmation process. A new report from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., scrutinized the Trump White House’s control of the FBI’s purported probe. “If anything,” the report reads, “the White House may have used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory or damaging information.”
Leave a Reply