Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup Friday, June 24, 2022

Each week, the Appellate Advocacy Blog Weekly Roundup presents a few tidbits of news and Twitter posts from the past week concerning appellate advocacy. As always, if you see something during the week that you think we should be sure to include, feel free to send a quick note to either (1) Dan Real at [email protected] or on Twitter @Daniel_L_Real or (2) Catharine Du Bois at [email protected] or on Twitter @CLDLegalWriting.

US Supreme Court Opinions and News

• Today was the penultimate opinion issuance date on the Court calendar. As the term winds to a close, the Court has issued a number of highly anticipated opinions this week, perhaps the most anticipated came today.

  As foreshown by last month’s leaked opinion, for the first time, the Supreme Court has taken away a basic right, a right that has existed for nearly 50 years. Today’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturns Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey and claims that the right to abortion is not “implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including . . . the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” because the right to abortion is not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” (quoting Washington v. Glucksberg.) The dissent of Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan characterizes the right protected by Roe and Casey as “a woman’s right to decide for herself whether to bear a child.” The dissent defends the rationale of Roe and Casey and questions today’s decision, stating: “It eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy.” The dissent closes: “With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent.” See the decision and dissent and a sampling of the many reports, which cover the decision and dissent and discuss the consequences of the decision: NPR, The Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times.

  Earlier this week, the Court struck a New York law that required a gun-owner to show proper-cause to obtain an unrestricted license to carry a concealed firearm. The Court held that the law violated the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The decision protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home and announced a standard for courts to judge restrictions on gun rights: “The government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” See the decision and reports from New York Times, The Washington Times, The Los Angeles Times, and NPR.

  Also this week:

  • The Court rejected a Maine ban on tuition programs for religious schools, holding that the state cannot exclude religious schools from a state tuition program. See the decision and reports from The New York Times and USA Today.
  • The Court limited Miranda rights, holding that suspects who are not warned about the right to remain silent cannot sue police officers for damages. See the decision and reports from CNN and Bloomberg Law.

Appellate Court Opinions and News

• The Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that stuck as unconstitutional a North Carolina charter school rule that required girls to wear skirts. The court ruled that the rule, based on the view that girls are "fragile vessels" deserving of "gentle" treatment, is unconstitutional and that it violated students' equal protection rights as a policy based on gender stereotypes about the "proper place" for girls in society. See the ruling and reports from Reuters and The New York Times.