Supreme Court Repudiates Strip Search of 13-Year-Old, Denies Redress

"Will you strip for me?"

25 June 2009

In Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding, the U.S. Supreme Court today held, in an opinion by the imminently retiring Justice David Souter, that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures by strip searching 13 year old Savanna Redding to look for common pain relievers.  Once again proving his willingness to endorse outrageous legal conclusions, Clarence Thomas was the only Justice to dissent from this holding.  Regrettably, the majority further concluded that the law was not sufficiently clear to justify allowing Savanna to seek money damages from the school officials.  Cheers to Justice Stevens and Justice Ginsburg for appreciating the evidentness of the conclusion that “a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude.”  The Supreme Court remanded the case for the lower courts to consider whether Redding could seek damages from the school district itself, but recovering from a local governmental unit like the school district is something the Court's precedents have made increasingly difficult.

Posted by Cruz at 8:41 AM | Link | 0 comments

Categories: Fourth Amendment strip search U.S. Supreme Court

"You Make Me Sick"

Supreme Court upholds state law suits vs. drug manufacturers for failure to warn

04 March 2009

The U.S. Supreme Court today decided Wyeth v. Levine, holding 6-3 that a drug manufacture could be sued under Vermont products liability law for failure to give adequate warnings even though its drug label had been approved by the Food & Drug Administration.

Justice Stevens's majority opinion, joined by Justices Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, rejected the argument that federal law and the label approval preempted the suit brought under state law.  Justice Thomas did not join the majority opinion but agree with it judgment; he wrote separately to question judicial invalidation of state law under "implied preemption" doctrine (as distinguished from cases where federal statutes expressly specify that they are preempting state law) based on nebulous "frustration" of federal purposes.  Justice Alito, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia, dissented, arguing that Supreme Court precedent and general principles of implied preemption forbade this suit under state law. 

As a consequence of today's decision, states retain important freedom to protect their residents from harms flowing from inadequate warnings on pharmaceuticals. 

Posted by Cruz at 9:43 AM | Link | 0 comments

Categories: U.S. Supreme Court preemption products liability

Public Park Not Public Forum for Donated Monuments

Supreme Court rejects free speech challenge to park displaying donated 10 Commandments monument but rejecting Summum 7 Aphorisms monument

25 February 2009

The United States Supreme Court has unanimously decided Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum.  When Pleasant Grove refused to display in the park a monument with the Seven Aphorisms of the small religion known as Summum, which adherents offered to donate, event though the city park permanently featured eleven other donated displays including a donated Ten Commandments monument, Summum sued.  They argued that the city was unconstitutionally restricting their speech because of its content in a public forum, i.e., in the park.

But the Supreme Court has now held that the permanent monument was government speech, and so not subject to free speech challenge.  (The question of whether the city was violating the Establishment Clause by displaying the Ten Commandments monument was not in front of the Court.)  The Court was unanimous, although Justice Breyer concurred in the 8-Justice majority opinion and Justice Souter concurred only in the judgment, both writing separately to emphasize that the Court should not be too categorical in its conclusion that all permanent monuments are government speech not restricted by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

Posted by Cruz at 10:05 AM | Link | 0 comments

Categories: U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment free speech Ten Commandments public forum

Supreme Court Reaffirms Ban on Death Penalty for Child Rape

Military context matters less to constitutionality of state criminal laws

01 October 2008

Today the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition for rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana (blogged here), its decision from June 2008 holding that the death penalty for raping a child is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments.  Reserving the question whether unique considerations might allow the military to impose punishments that would be unconstitutional in the civilian context, the majority's Statement respecting the denial of rehearing reiterated the Court's emphasis on the non-military criminal rape laws of the states and the federal government as reflecting a consensus on the impermissibility of executing someone for a crime (such as raping a child) not resulting in death.

Posted by Cruz at 8:40 AM | Link | 0 comments

Categories: U.S. Supreme Court Eighth Amendment rape

Death Penalty for Raping Child Unconstitutional

"When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint."

25 June 2008

The Supreme Court of the United States has held in Kennedy v. Louisiana, by a 5-4 vote, that the state violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments by prescribing the death penalty for rape of a child under the age of 12, where the perpetrator did not kill the child and did not intend to kill the child.  Justice Kennedy (no relation to the convicted) wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Breyer, and Ginsburg.  Justice Alito dissented, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas.  Despite the recognized brutality of the crime against the child victim, Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court insisted on the Constitution's commitment to respecting the dignity of all individuals.  "As it related to crimes against individuals," he wrote, "the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim's life was not taken."  (Note though the interesting conflict between the Court's framing of its principles -- is the death penalty unconstitutional whenever "life [i]s not taken," or could it be imposed if the perpetrator intended to take life even if the crime did not result in the victim's death?  This could become a point of future litigation about the reach of the Eighth Amendment.)

Posted by Cruz at 8:17 AM | Link | 0 comments

Categories: U.S. Supreme Court Eighth Amendment rape

Arriverderci "Persons, Not Groups"

09 June 2008

The U.S. Supreme Court has held in Anup Engquist v. Oregon Department of Agriculture (June 9, 2008) that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution does not even apply to claims by government employees that the government has treated just one employee unequally and irrationally (as opposed, for example to discriminating against a larger class of employees, such as those of a particular race or sex).  The majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts (joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Breyer, and Alito) purports to adhere to past pronouncements that the Equal Protection Clause protects "persons, not groups" and confers an individual right.  The majority Justices thus carved out an exception from the general equal protection principle, recognized by the Court in Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, that government violates equal protection where it "intentionally treat[s an individual] differently from others similarly situated and ... there is no rational basis for the difference in treatment."

The Court's ruling in Engquist that equal protection does not even apply to such "class of one" claims in the government employment setting is driven by a worry about the prospect of every government employee grievance spawning potential constitutional litigation against employers.  Justice Stevens's dissent (joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg) argues forcefully that experience shows no need to create such an ad hoc exemption from equal protection principles, certainly not as broad a rule as stated in the majority opinion.  And if the majority felt so strongly about the policy basis for its holding, perhaps it would have been more prudent for them to attribute it to the federal law authorizing suits for constitutional violations, Title 42 of the United States Code, section 1983, which could be changed by a Congress that disagreed with its worried, rather than to distort its interpretation of the Constitution itself (which the majority reaffirms binds government even when government acts as an employer), which is beyond legislative correction without satisfaction of the supermajority requirements of constitutional amendment.

Posted by Cruz at 8:17 AM | Link | 0 comments

Categories: equal protection U.S. Supreme Court employment discrimination

Take That

27 May 2008

The Supreme Court of the U.S. today interpreted two federal civil rights laws to protect workers from retaliation for complaining about prohibited discrimination.  In CBOCS West, Inc. v. Humphries, the Court held that a post-Civil War era law, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides that "[a]ll persons ... shall have the same right ... to make and enforce contracts ... as is enjoyed by white citizens," allowed former Cracker Barrel assistant manager to sue not only for his own allegedly racially motivated firing but also for alleged retaliation because he had complained about racially discriminatory treatment of a co-worker.  In Gomez-Perez v. Potter, the Court held that the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act allowed a postal worker to sue for alleged retaliation against her after she filed an administrative ADEA complaint.  In both cases Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented, and Chief Justice Roberts dissented as well in Gomez-Perez.

Posted by Cruz at 12:53 PM | Link | 0 comments

Categories: U.S. Supreme Court race discrimination age discrimination