Dem
47
GOP
53
This week, the Supreme Court declined to hear two cases involving gun laws and one involving racial discrimination. Guess which of those subjects got all the attention?
To start, the justices refused a case appealing the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to uphold a Maryland ban on semiautomatic weapons, like the Terminator. However, despite the media frenzy, this issue will be back before the Court. In case there was any doubt, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh said as much in a statement about the decision to deny review in Snope v. Brown, indicating that the Fourth Circuit's ruling is "questionable" and that the "Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two" after other appellate courts have weighed in. (That said, Kavanaugh must have voted to deny the petition because it only takes four justices to agree to hear a case.) He observed that because "millions of Americans own AR-15s and that a significant majority of the States allow possession of those rifles," the petitioners "have a strong argument that AR-15s are in 'common use' by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment." So, basically, the more popular the weapon is, the more likely it's protected by the Second Amendment? OK, kids, better start buying those RPG's now so you can convince the Supreme Court that it's your constitutional right to blow up an entire city block.
It's interesting that one's rights under other constitutional amendments are not based on that criteria. No matter how popular pornography is, apparently, the government can still ban it without infringing on First Amendment rights. But we all know this Court is much more interested in saving your soul than your life. Incidentally, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch indicated they would have granted the petition, which is how we can infer that Kavanaugh (plus Chief Justice John Roberts and the four other justices) must have voted to deny the appeal.
Additionally, the Court declined to hear a challenge to a Rhode Island ban on large-capacity magazines. The First Circuit Court of Appeal had upheld the law, finding that it does not place a "meaningful burden" on the public's Second Amendment rights. Self-defense does not require "the rapid and uninterrupted discharge of many shots, much less more than ten." Once again, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch would have taken up the case.
The Court also refused to hear a racial discrimination case out of Texas. In Nicholson v. W.L. York, Inc., the Fifth Circuit held that Chanel Nicholson brought her case too late because some of the instances of race discrimination happened outside the statute of limitations. The facts are largely not in dispute. Nicholson, who is Black, is an adult entertainer and it was well known that the clubs where she worked limited the number of Black dancers who could perform or even be present on the premises. If there were too many, she would be denied entry into the club. On many occasions when she was scheduled to work, she would be refused entry because of her race.
There is a 4-year statute of limitations for these types of discrimination claims, and Nicholson worked at these clubs off and on from 2014 to 2021 and experienced frequent race discrimination throughout that period. She filed suit in August 2021, so only those acts that fell within that 4-year window are actionable. But the Fifth Circuit applied a different rule—one that is more akin to hostile work environment claims, not direct discrimination. According to the Court, the discrimination she experienced when she first started "continued" through her employment and so her claim began to accrue in 2014. It held that because some of the events occurred outside the statute of limitations, none of the other events inside the statute were actionable either. Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned a powerful dissent that such a clear misapplication of the law and the obvious harm the Fifth Circuit ruling would do to clear-cut cases of discrimination should not go unaddressed. She was joined in dissent by Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. But hey, Kavanaugh is really worked up that you may not be able to buy an AR-15. That's clearly the more important issue. (L)