Barrett denies Indiana University students' challenge against vaccine requirement

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

https://twitter.com/ShannonBream/status/1425929237832294403

[NewYorkExpress]

https://twitter.com/ShannonBream/status/1425929237832294403

I get the feeling Barrett knew full well that the votes weren't there to take up the case.

Alito and maybe Kavanaugh would vote to take it up, but that's probably it.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The notorious ACB!

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Legal experts: how is a single justice allowed to block cases?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Conservative or not, it's tough to imagine anyone with the education level needed to become a judge who would be an anti-vaxxer.

Legal experts: how is a single justice allowed to block cases?

Each Appeals Court Circuit has an overseeing Supreme Court Justice who emergency injunction appeals go through if there's an urgency of the issue, (I believe they rotate them every term but justices are usually given their home circuit which would apply in this case as Indiana is ACB's home state.) That justice can either grant certiorari and refer the case to be immediately heard by the full court, or deny it. This only applies if the case is appealed as urgent because timeliness is an issue (in this case I'd wager it's because they wanted the case heard before the semester starts in the fall.)

Worth noting that all justices on the court have shown skepticism to such emergency injunction requests against Covid measures, even Clarence Thomas denied one challenging the Biden Admin's mask mandate on public transportation.

[Skill and Chance]

Consistently pro-life.  Definitely saw this coming.  She joined a decision turning away a challenge to Indiana's social distancing rules in early 2020 when she was still a circuit judge.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Conservative or not, it's tough to imagine anyone with the education level needed to become a judge who would be an anti-vaxxer.

I know several people literally in med school who are anti-vaxx. Not to mention this was a thing -- I don't know if it's accurate, but it's one data point observed in an enormous study (n=5m) by a reputable institution (Carnegie Mellon/U of Pittsburgh)

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

doubtful that she actually acted *alone* in the sense of not conferring with the other justices on this, just that she did so in her singular capacity.

[brucejoel99]

That's to be expected in a case for which the direct precedent has already been set by the Court (i.e., Zucht v. King).

Legal experts: how is a single justice allowed to block cases?

Each Appeals Court Circuit has an overseeing Supreme Court Justice who emergency injunction appeals go through if there's an urgency of the issue, (I believe they rotate them every term but justices are usually given their home circuit which would apply in this case as Indiana is ACB's home state.) That justice can either grant certiorari and refer the case to be immediately heard by the full court, or deny it. This only applies if the case is appealed as urgent because timeliness is an issue (in this case I'd wager it's because they wanted the case heard before the semester starts in the fall.)

Worth noting that all justices on the court have shown skepticism to such emergency injunction requests against Covid measures, even Clarence Thomas denied one challenging the Biden Admin's mask mandate on public transportation.

And given settled law, it happens to like 99% of emergency requests. It's really the rule rather than the exception.

[politicallefty]

Each Appeals Court Circuit has an overseeing Supreme Court Justice who emergency injunction appeals go through if there's an urgency of the issue, (I believe they rotate them every term but justices are usually given their home circuit which would apply in this case as Indiana is ACB's home state.) That justice can either grant certiorari and refer the case to be immediately heard by the full court, or deny it. This only applies if the case is appealed as urgent because timeliness is an issue (in this case I'd wager it's because they wanted the case heard before the semester starts in the fall.)

I don't think it rotates, but it does generally change when a new Justice takes their commission. Six of the Justices are Circuit Justices for the court from which they came (Roberts-DC, Breyer-1st, Sotomayor-2nd, Alito-3rd, Barrett-7th, Gorsuch-10th). I'm not sure, but I imagine the Chief Justice automatically gets the DC Circuit, Fourth (which covers the DC metro area outside DC itself), and Federal. However, Ginsburg had the 2nd (which included her native Brooklyn) before she passed. Gorsuch originally had Eighth, but got his native Tenth when Sotomayor moved from the 10th to her native 2nd. Justice Kennedy had his native Ninth when he was on the Court. Justice Thomas has the Eleventh, which includes his native Georgia. The current oddballs are Kagan (Ninth) and Kavanaugh (Sixth and Eighth). I'm not sure how they determine who gets a second circuit (although the Ninth probably counts as at least two in practice).

With the way the Court currently operates, if a Justice denies a petition without even referring it to the full Court, it really doesn't pass the smell test. Justice Alito did that very same thing when Pennsylvania Republicans were trying to stop the new Congressional map from the PA Supreme Court (and he's probably the biggest partisan hack on the Court). Nowadays, the Justices generally consider what their colleagues might think. That's why in the case about NY's eviction moratorium, Justice Sotomayor referred the matter to the full Court and then proceeded to join Justice Breyer's dissent. In the past, some Justices would go rogue and do whatever they pleased. I think Justice Douglas was notorious for that. Even then, there's nothing stopping the full Court from taking the case up anyway. There's much more comity among the Justices now.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I mean, say that the case was a more 'hot button' issue (don't think I need to say what it is). So hypothetically, Thomas could bring a challenge to Georgia's abortion law before the court. But if the plaintiffs are in New York (not that abortion would ever be restricted there), Sotomayor could block the law without conferring with the other justices.

What happens if the case is in California? With Kennedy gone, I don't think any of the justices have jurisdiction over the courts containing California and neighboring states.

[Sestak]

I mean, say that the case was a more 'hot button' issue (don't think I need to say what it is). So hypothetically, Thomas could bring a challenge to Georgia's abortion law before the court. But if the plaintiffs are in New York (not that abortion would ever be restricted there), Sotomayor could block the law without conferring with the other justices.

What happens if the case is in California? With Kennedy gone, I don't think any of the justices have jurisdiction over the courts containing California and neighboring states.

Current circuit assignments

First Circuit - Breyer
Second Circuit - Sotomayor
Third Circuit - Alito
Fourth/DC/Federal Circuits - Roberts (as polliticallefty surmised, this is a permanent assignment to the Chief's seat)
Fifth Circuit - Alito
Sixth Circuit - Kavanaugh
Seventh Circuit - Barrett
Eighth Circuit - Kavanaugh
Ninth Circuit - Kagan
Tenth Circuit - Gorsuch
Eleventh Circuit - Thomas

In any case, I believe most cases appealed to the court from an appeals court are usually going to be referred to the full court to decide what to do; I don't think we ever get these single-justice denials outside of cases where emergency stays or the like are being requested.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

The odd thing is, so far the Trump judges have show less "activist" tendencies than two Bush judges, Thomas and Alito.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I mean, say that the case was a more 'hot button' issue (don't think I need to say what it is). So hypothetically, Thomas could bring a challenge to Georgia's abortion law before the court. But if the plaintiffs are in New York (not that abortion would ever be restricted there), Sotomayor could block the law without conferring with the other justices.

What happens if the case is in California? With Kennedy gone, I don't think any of the justices have jurisdiction over the courts containing California and neighboring states.

That wouldn't happen because the single justice appeal only happens if the plaintiffs indicate the case is urgent and timeliness matters. If not it makes sense to appeal to the full court because that's much more likely to get the case heard. Also if the justice approves the case it gets heard immediately, not just placed on the court's docket.

The best known example of such a case that was heard by the full court is Bush v. Gore.

[I’m not Stu]

Had it gone to a vote it would have been 6-3. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have dissented.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Had it gone to a vote it would have been 6-3. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have dissented.

I highly doubt there would've been any dissents. Vaccinr mandates are very strongly supported by existing precedent and have never been controversial even amongst conservative judges.

[NewYorkExpress]

Had it gone to a vote it would have been 6-3. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have dissented.

I highly doubt there would've been any dissents. Vaccinr mandates are very strongly supported by existing precedent and have never been controversial even amongst conservative judges.

More likely Alito would have dissented, because he seems the most likely to blindly follow conservative dogma.

[politicallefty]

I mean, say that the case was a more 'hot button' issue (don't think I need to say what it is). So hypothetically, Thomas could bring a challenge to Georgia's abortion law before the court. But if the plaintiffs are in New York (not that abortion would ever be restricted there), Sotomayor could block the law without conferring with the other justices.

What happens if the case is in California? With Kennedy gone, I don't think any of the justices have jurisdiction over the courts containing California and neighboring states.

As noted above, Kagan is the Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit (which includes California).

As I mentioned in my post above, the Court really doesn't work like that nowadays. However, a better example might be if Justice Sotomayor decided on her own to block an execution because she felt the death penalty was unconstitutional. She wouldn't do that on her own, but I'm just laying out an example. (In reality, she would instead refer the issue to the full Court, as she has done in the past.) If she did do that and a majority of the Court felt she was wrong, they have the power to bring it up themselves and overrule the individual Justice. I was trying to find an analogous case and I found Schlesinger v. Holtzman. The whole Circuit Justice setup is really about spreading out the workload for a country this size (like the cert pool). The final arbiter is always the full Court.