Supreme Court leans left in term unsettled by Scalia’s death

On Tuesday, their last day before ending an extraordinary term, they accepted additional cases that will await their return.

And conservatives on the Supreme Court, animated by legal activists seeking to overturn the decades-old precedent upholding the constitutional legitimacy of fair-share fees, appeared ready to turn that tide.

As for the politics inside the court, the docket in the case suggests there was a lot of back-and-forth behind the scenes after the challengers petitioned the court for a do-over.

Antonin Scalia’s death has made many conservatives fearful of what would happen if a Democratic president were to appoint the next justice to take his place on the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Washington State regulation previous year that required licensed pharmacies to timely deliver all prescription medication.

“Today’s decision was not a decision on the merits of our case nor was it accompanied by an opinion”, he said. We’ll also consider whether the absence of a ninth justice has impacted the court’s decisions.

But Scalia’s absence has been felt in other cases this year, where Scalia’s conservative, orignialist presense on the court could have changed the outcome.

Scalia, for instance, would nearly certainly have provided a fifth vote to curtail the union practice of charging nonmembers mandatory fees.

In 2014 a 5-4 court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, a closely held for-profit corporation that objected to providing contraception under the so called contraceptive mandate of Obamacare. The court on Tuesday declined a request to rehear the case.

“I do understand that now”, the attorney allowed, prompting still more laughter.

The Senate’s refusal to act on Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland only heightens the role the presidential and congressional elections will play in determining the composition of the court. All the sources cited in association’s report are anonymous, in keeping with its policy. The Court’s decision not to wade into it should not be read as an approval by the Supreme Court of such pharmacy regulations generally.

This affirmative action case was brought by Abigail Fisher, a Texas woman who challenged the admissions policies at the University of Texas at Austin when she was not offered admission into the school.

In a 4-3 decision, the high court upheld the admissions program at the University of Texas, which takes race into consideration as one factor of admissions.

Compromises in other cases seemed to avert deadlocks. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remarked that eight was not a good number for a group that is used to being nine. Four justices, including liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, sided with Justice Clarence Thomas in deciding that “attenuating circumstances”, namely an outstanding warrant for the subject’s arrest, allowed the police to search the suspect and that the evidence – methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia – could be used in his prosecution despite the so-called exclusionary rule, which disallows evidence collected improperly.