Wednesday News & Notes

1.  Alleged pimp is now convicted pimp.  Via The Miami Herald.

2.  The 11th Circuit has a new webpage.

3.  Booey Bombing is legal.

4.  Maybe I'll pass on the mustard curry sauce next time.

5.  Barry Bonds is getting en banc review.

6.  SCOTUSBlog is confused with SCOTUS on Twitter.  Pretty funny responses by the blog.  On a serious note for the blog, the NY Times says it should get a press pass for the High Court.

7.  The NY Post has this art today in 2010 (thanks RK in the comments):

The 11th Circuit issues the first post-Hobby Lobby opinion

Well, actually it's an order (by Pryor, Martin & Jordan) in Eternal Word Television v. Alabama, issued just hours after Hobby Lobby.  Although the panel "express[ed] no views on the ultimate merits of EWTN's appeal in this case," Judge Pryor issued a lengthy concurrence, in which he has an in depth discussion of what accommodation means after Hobby Lobby and why he thinks EWT will win on the merits. 

The AP covers it here:

The network is among dozens of church-based organizations across the country that have sued over the contraception requirement in the health care law. The broadcaster argues contraception, drugs that induce abortion and voluntary sterilization are not part of health care and, therefore, the government shouldn't force the network to provide them as part of its employer-sponsored health plan.

Alito wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court decision is limited to contraceptives. “Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance-coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer's religious beliefs,” he said.

He suggested that the government could pay for pregnancy prevention or could provide the same kind of accommodation available to religious-oriented, not-for-profit corporations.

When those groups say providing the coverage violates their religious beliefs, their insurer or a third-party administrator pays for the birth control. The employer doesn't have to arrange for the coverage or pay for it, and the government reimburses insurers through credits against fees owed under other provisions of the health care law.

That accommodation is the subject of separate legal challenges, and the court said Monday that profit-seeking companies could not assert religious claims in such a situation.

The network said it was pleased by the Supreme Court decision.

“The Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case was a great affirmation of the constitutional right to freedom of religious expression,” network chairman and CEO Michael P. Warsaw said in an emailed statement. “While the Hobby Lobby decision did not directly resolve EWTN's case, this afternoon's injunction from the appellate court allows us to press forward without facing the government's crushing fines.”

The network is relieved and encouraged by Monday's court actions and looks forward to making its case before the 11th Circuit, Warsaw said.

“The fact that the Supreme Court believes that the government has an obligation to use the least restrictive means of accomplishing its goals is very helpful to the EWTN case,” he said. “EWTN has raised similar arguments with regard to the government's 'accommodation' scheme for faith-based organizations.”

Judge Beth Bloom sworn in

Judge Beth Bloom was sworn in at a small ceremony this morning shortly before 9am.  Below is a picture. Congrats again to Judge Bloom, who is now officially a member of the Southern District of Florida.

Last day of the Term

We'll get Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn at 10am.  SCOTUSblog has all of the coverage.  Here's a brief summary of Quinn:

The Court has also not yet ruled on Harris v. Quinn, in which the Court is considering whether a group of home health care providers who work for the state of Illinois can be required to provide financial support to a union that represents them.  Sahil Kapur previews the decision at Talking Points Memo, describing it as “a landmark case that unions fear could deal a fatal blow to their movement.”  At PrawfsBlawg, Matt Bodie considers how the decision in Harris might play out if, as many people believe, Justice Samuel A. Alito writes for the Court.

And the issue in Hobby Lobby:

Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners. 

There's been a lot of talk about the number of 9-0 opinions this Term.  From the NY Times:

FOR years, particularly after the 2000 election, talk about the Supreme Court has centered on its bitter 5-to-4 divisions. Yet it is worth reflecting on a remarkable achievement: The court has agreed unanimously in more than 66 percent of its cases this term (and that figure holds even if Monday’s remaining two cases, on the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage and on public-sector unions, are not unanimous). The last year this happened was 1940.

The justices’ ability to cross partisan divides and find common ground in their bottom-line judgment in roughly two-thirds of their cases — including the two decisions handed down Thursday, restricting the president’s ability to issue recess appointments during brief breaks in the Senate’s work, and striking down a Massachusetts ban on protests near abortion clinics — should remind us that even in this hyperpartisan age, there is a difference between law and politics. 

Although some of the opinions have been unanimous in result, the concurrences often seem like dissents, especially with Scalia going off, like in the recess appointment case:

Today's Court agrees that the appointments were in-valid, but for the far narrower reason [*38] that they were made during a 3-day break in the Senate's session. On its way to that result, the majority sweeps away the key textual limitations on the recess-appointment power. It holds, first, that the President can make appointments without the Senate's participation even during short breaks in the middle of the Senate's session, and second, that those appointments can fill offices that became vacant long before the break in which they were filled. The majority justifies those atextual results on an adverse-possession theory of executive authority: Presidents have long claimed the powers in question, and the Senate has not disputed those claims with sufficient vigor, so the Court should not "upset the compromises and working arrangements that the elected branches of Government themselves have reached." Ante, at 9.

The Court's decision transforms the recess-appointment power from a tool carefully designed to fill a narrow and specific need into a weapon to be wielded by future Presidents against future Senates. To reach that result, the majority casts aside the plain, original meaning of the constitutional text in deference to late-arising historical practices that are ambiguous at best. The majority's insistence on deferring to the Executive's untenably broad interpretation of the power is in clear conflict with our precedent and forebodes a diminution of this Court's role in controversies involving the separation of powers and the structure of government. I concur in the judgment only. 

30 months for Russell Adler

Paula McMahon has some good coverage of the sentencing before Judge Cohn:

Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein's former law partner Russell Adler was sentenced Friday to 2 1/2 years in federal prison for illegally funneling campaign donations to Republican presidential and senate campaigns.

Adler began visibly shaking in court as U.S. District Judge James Cohn announced that he deserved a punishment on the high end of the sentencing guidelines, which recommended incarceration for two to 2 1/2 years.

Adler, 52, of Delray Beach and Fort Lauderdale, put his fingers to his eyes and sighed deeply.

Apologizing for his criminal actions, Adler said he regretted that he insisted on having his name added to the law firm's name, making it Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, or RRA.

"Being the A in RRA turned into an ironic curse that has ruined my name and haunts and humiliates me to this day," he told the judge.

Supporters, including Senior Broward Circuit Judge Richard Eade, spoke on Adler's behalf and praised his professionalism, ethics and personal generosity. But Judge Cohn said Adler's crimes were serious and warranted punishment.

When the law firm was "awash with cash" in 2008 and 2009, the judge wondered aloud what Adler – an experienced attorney and name partner – thought was happening.

"Mr. Adler was at the epicenter, he was at ground zero. Was he blind and deaf as to what was going on?" the judge asked.