Source: http://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/opinions-orders-voting-rights-contracts-clause-class-actions/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 14:07:25+00:00

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In a 5-4 opinion, which was quickly criticized by some as “flagrantly political” and “nakedly political,” and praised by others as “a victory for election integrity, ”the Court reversed the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Husted v. A Philip Randolph Institute. The Court held that the voter list-maintenance process in Ohio does not violate the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The NVRA prohibits removing a person from the rolls due to a failure to vote, and under Ohio’s process, someone who has not voted in Ohio for two years is sent a notice to confirm their registration. If no response is filed and the person does not vote in the next four years, they are then removed from the voter rolls. The majority held that the NVRA forbids the use of not voting as the sole criterion to remove a person from the list and that Ohio’s process comports with the law because the criteria are failure to vote and failure to respond to a notice. In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas further argued that the Institute’s proposed reading of the NVRA should be rejected because it would interfere with States’ constitutional authority to set and enforce voter qualifications.
Siding with the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Justices Breyer and Sotomayor both wrote to dissent from the majority opinion. Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, closely examined the wording of the NVRA, arguing that it should be properly understood to mean that a State is prohibited from considering a registrant’s failure to vote as part of any process used to start a purge of voter rolls. Justice Sotomayor, writing only for herself, further argued that the majority was ignoring the history of States trying to disenfranchise low-income and minority voters, and that such a distorted view of the statute is “ultimately sanctioning the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against.” She described Ohio’s purging program as a burden on the rights of eligible voters, and wrote that upholding it would further disenfranchise low-income and minority voters. As the Washington Post reports, Justice Sotomayor called on these communities and their allies not to tolerate efforts to reduce their influence on the political process, and to be vigilant in dismantling the obstacles they face in exercising their right to vote. Ohio’s voter purge process has been described by some as a form of voter suppression, drawing attention from civil rights groups across the country, with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law issuing a statement in response to the decision, calling it “a monumental setback for those who care about access to democracy in our country.
On the same day, the Court decided China Agritech v. Resh, a case concerning whether the equitable tolling rule established in American Pipe & Construction Company v. Utah also applies to claims of individual plaintiffs filing successive class actions after the applicable statute of limitations has run. American Pipe established that equitable tolling applies to the claims of individual plaintiffs after a class action has been filed. Therefore, if class certification is denied, a putative class member can still bring a claim in his individual capacity even after the statute of limitations has run.
The Court also ruled in Washington v. United States, issuing a one sentence per curiam opinion. The equally divided Court (a result of Justice Kennedy nonparticipation in the decision) affirmed the judgment in upholding the injunction against the state of Washington for maintaining salmon culverts that diminished the salmon population accessible to several Northwest Indian Tribes. As discussed in Constitution Daily, redoing the culvert system under the roads in Washington will allow for the safe migration of salmon such that the tribes will be able to meet their fishing needs, but could come at a cost of billions of dollars to the state.
Finally, in an order list released on Monday, the Court called for the views of the solicitor general in three cases, Sudan v. Owens, Opati v. Sudan, and Sudan v. Opati, all pertaining to the U.S. Embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya on August 7, 1998. As discussed in CNN’s Fast Facts article, the bombings were orchestrated by al Qaeda in response to the US military presence in Saudi Arabia and claimed the lives of 224 people, injuring thousands more. The questions raised in the three cases surround the circumstances under which a U.S. court has subject-matter jurisdiction (the power to hear a specific kind of case) over a case brought against a foreign entity, pursuant to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The Solicitor General was asked to weigh in on whether the judgment against Sudan, originally $10.2 billion in damages, was properly reduced by the D.C. Circuit Court. Courthouse News has more on the legal history of the cases arising out of the bombings, which then U.S. Ambassador of Nairobi, Prudence Bushnell, has admitted were likely preventable (via Newsweek).

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