Supreme Court Term in Review
(IStockPhoto)
With only a few exceptions, the Court ruled against employees to the benefit of employers, against environmentalists to the gain of polluters, and against suspects in favor of law enforcement officials. The self-proclaimed "umpire" on the Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., continued his unseemly pattern – first identified by writer Jeffrey Toobin – of calling only balls for one team and only strikes for another. Justice Clarence Thomas shed any pretense of moderation and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court's swing vote, demonstrated over and over again that he's a centrist only in relation to his conservative colleagues.
And even when so-called "liberal" causes earned a precious five votes on the Court – like when a heinous strip search of a young girl for Ibuprofen was deemed unconstitutional – the Justices managed to limit the damage to offenders, ruling that the school officials who conducted the search were immune from liability. The same pattern held true in the big test over the Voting Rights Act. The Justices narrowly saved the statute – for now anyway – but still ruled in favor of a political district that had sought to get out from under federal oversight. And speaking of "activism," the Court's conservative majority struck down decades-old precedent that had protected the rights of suspects from further interrogation once they had asked for an attorney.
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Tie Goes to Kennedy In Ricci Case
(AP)
On the 2nd U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals, the score was 7-6 in favor of the City. At the United States Supreme Court, the score was 5-4 in favor of the challengers. Yes, the Supreme Court gets the final call in matters like this. But let's not pretend that the Justices are so remarkably brighter and wiser than are their lower federal court colleagues that their votes are seeped in justice and the lower-court votes wallow in ignorance. The fact is that the case generated a series of legal issues that were remarkably close calls given the Court's past precedent (and the new one it has just adopted).
We particularly care about this case, and this result, because the likely next Supreme Court Justice, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, was one of the 22 jurists who took a crack at deciphering what happened in New Haven. Last June, the Supreme Court nominee, in a brief panel ruling, sided with the City in finding that because no firefighters were promoted when the initial test was tossed out there was no valid discrimination claim. Six of her colleagues on the 2nd Circuit, and four of the Court's most liberal Justices agreed with this view.
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Sotomayor Overturned In Firefighters Case
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The majority said that the fear of litigation by black firefighters who didn't do well on this test didn't justify tossing the test. So I guess the lesson here is that when you are going to test for promotions you had better make sure the test is race neutral.
The four dissenters found that the white firefighters had no right to be promoted anyway and had not seen black candidates promoted over them-- only the test was tossed out. This, the dissent claimed, did not warrant the court's interference in New Haven's attempt to solve what it considered a legitimate problem with the tests.
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Andrew Cohen On Supreme Court Decisions
The Supreme Court ruled today in an 8-1 vote that the strip search of a female teen by high school officials for ibuprofen was a violation of the teen's constitutional rights.
CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen says that it's "important to remember" that the court didn't illegalize school searches but rather drew a line around necessary conditions for aggressive searches.
Cohen discusses the ruling further below:
Watch CBS Videos Online
The Supreme Court will also rule on the controversial Connecticut firemen case that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled on in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
In the case, the firemen accuse the fire department of reverse discrimination against them. Cohen says the Court ruling of the case could prove "embarrassing" for Sotomayor, given that she ruled against the firemen in court.
Cohen discusses the case further below:
Watch CBS Videos Online
The Supreme Court will also rule on the controversial Connecticut firemen case that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled on in the U.S. Court of Appeals
In the case, the firemen accuse the fire department of reverse discrimination against them. Cohen says the Court ruling of the case could prove "embarrassing" for Sotomayor given that she ruled against the firemen in court.
Cohen discusses the case further below:
Watch CBS Videos Online
CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen says that it's "important to remember" that the court didn't illegalize school searches but rather drew a line around necessary conditions for aggressive searches.
Cohen discusses the ruling further below:
Watch CBS Videos Online
The Supreme Court will also rule on the controversial Connecticut firemen case that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled on in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
In the case, the firemen accuse the fire department of reverse discrimination against them. Cohen says the Court ruling of the case could prove "embarrassing" for Sotomayor, given that she ruled against the firemen in court.
Cohen discusses the case further below:
Watch CBS Videos Online
The Supreme Court will also rule on the controversial Connecticut firemen case that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled on in the U.S. Court of Appeals
In the case, the firemen accuse the fire department of reverse discrimination against them. Cohen says the Court ruling of the case could prove "embarrassing" for Sotomayor given that she ruled against the firemen in court.
Cohen discusses the case further below:
Watch CBS Videos Online
Thomas Strips Sense From Search
(CBS)
Less concerned about a forced and unnecessary intrusion into a young girl's pants and bra than he was about judicial intrusion into school safety policies, Thomas declared that the odious search was legal because administrators could have found what they were looking for. The majority ruling, he wrote, gives "judges sweeping authority to second-guess" school administrators trying to ensure the health and safety of students. His long dissent did not include a single sympathetic remark about the ordeal suffered by the victim in the case.
Fortunately, the other eight Justices on the Court live in the real world, where outrageous conduct by bureaucrats is frowned upon, and so they unsurprisingly agreed that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment in 2003 when they checked (then) 13-year-old Savanna Redding's bra and underwear for pills. "She was told to pull her bra out and to the side and shake it," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the majority, "and to pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree. No pills were found." Other students were searched in a similar fashion that day.
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Voting Rights Challenge Ends With Whimper
(AP)
On Monday, the Court voted 8-1 to punt in the most anticipated ruling of the current term. It failed or refused to determine whether a key provision of the Voting Rights Act is still constitutionally necessary to address and preclude diminishing discriminatory practices in the Old South. As a result of the ruling, the Act survives for the foreseeable future, the challenge to the Act (by a Texas district) is successful, and all sides in the complex case get to come away thinking it could have been worse and could have been better.
The most interesting component of the ruling was the dissent, by Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black Justice, who alone among his conservative colleagues was willing to scrap Section 5 of the Act as no longer necessary. "The extensive pattern of discrimination that led the Court to previously uphold Section 5… no longer exists. Covered jurisdictions are not now engaged in a systematic campaign to deny black citizens access to the ballot through intimidation and violence."
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