News & Notes

1. Is "chalking" your car a violation of the 4th Amendment? Yup, according to the 6th Circuit in this case. Orin Kerr discusses here:

From a practical perspective, this is a really important decision. It concludes that a routine practice that wasn't thought to be illegal (if it was thought of at all) is actually unconstitutional. I'm not sure if the decision is correct. And as I'll explain below, there are several plausible but debatable moves in the opinion. But this decision is now binding in the Sixth Circuit and may also be followed elsewhere: Traffic enforcement officers around the country should be paying attention to this.

2. What's going to happen with the census question in SCOTUS. Most are predicting a conservative 5-4 ruling. Mark Joseph Stern explains why the conservatives are being hypocritical:

To uphold the citizenship question, the court’s conservatives will have to feign respect for the Voting Rights Act, international law, and agency deference—three of their greatest enemies in any other context. In the process, they’ll have to pretend that Ross’ absurd pretexts, his many lies and obfuscations, are believable, even reasonable. And they appear willing to do exactly that to let Ross and Trump have their way. Such a decision would be an embarrassment to the judiciary, evidence that a majority of the justices place the goals of the Republican Party above the truth. A partisan ruling in this case would diminish the court’s legitimacy and fuel support for the addition of more justices. If SCOTUS abandons any pretense of neutrality and throws its weight behind the Trump administration, court packing may come to look like the only sensible option to save democracy from its wayward guardians.

3.  Meantime in our District, the word is the newly-minted Judge Roy Altman has a stable of cases now and has brought the parties in for status conferences.  He will be having a busy summer.  The big question -- will he get to send cases to the two new judges who will be coming shortly.