The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here.
Since our last post, the Supreme Court has been busy pruning the relist garden. In one form or another, the court trimmed seven cases from the relist rolls.
First, the marquee stuff: The justices granted review in one-time relist St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a challenge to Colorado’s universal preschool program – but only on questions involving the application of existing law to this program, leaving for another day the petitioners’ invitation to reconsider Employment Division v. Smith (the court’s landmark holding that government actions generally do not violate the free exercise clause so long as they are neutral and apply to everyone). That said, you can expect the court’s resolution of those issues to affect the strength of Employment Division going forward. And in five-time relist Beaird v. United States, an in forma pauperis Second Amendment firearms case, the court granted review limited to the question whether after Kisor v. Wilkie (which somewhat curtailed deference to agencies’ interpretations of their own regulations) courts should defer to U.S. Sentencing Guidelines commentary even if the underlying guideline is unambiguous. That means that nine-time relist Poore v. United States – the paid petition by frequent filer Neal Katyal presenting the same issue – presumably awaits life as a hold. I’m...
Pakistani actress and model Ayesha Omar has strongly denied a controversial statement falsely attributed to her on social media. In recent days, a statement circulated online claiming that the act...