Certiorari Tag

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Posted 13 May 2015 in Commentary
As our country prepares for the upcoming brown out and black out season, the Supreme Court has accepted a case involving our nation’s electricity grid. Local governments who participate in demand response programs have a direct stake in the outcome of this case. The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether FERC may regulate “demand response” payments offered to electric utility customers to reduce their electricity use during periods of high demand. State and local governments may save money through participating in demand response programs. But the Electric Power Supply Association argued, and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, that FERC’s Order 745 encroaches on states’ regulatory authority.

Posted 01 Jul 2014 in Case Notes
This morning, the Supreme Court granted cert in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a case in which the Ninth Circuit upheld the Town of Gilbert's sign ordinance against a First-Amendment challenge.SupremeCourt2 The case could directly impact local governments nationwide, particularly those that have adopted sign ordinances with exemptions. The Court could use this case to clarify when a local ordinance is "content-based" or "content-neutral," a key inquiry under the First-Amendment analysis. A number of law professors filed an amicus brief authored by Professor Eugene Volokh arguing that the Ninth Circuit erred by treating the Town's ordinance as content-neutral. In their view, the ordinance is content-based because it expressly distinguishes the following classes of signs:

Posted 05 May 2014 in Case Notes
In addition to addressing local-government prayer this morning,CellTower the Supreme Court also decided to hear and answer another question impacting local governments: when a city denies a request to place a cell tower, how formally must it act? The Court granted cert in T-Mobile South, LLC v. City of Roswell, No. 13-975, which specifically asks what a local government must do to satisfy the Communications Act's "in writing" requirement at 47 U.S.C. 332(c)(7)(B)(iii):
Any decision by a State or local government or instrumentality thereof to deny a request to place, construct, or modify personal wireless service facilities shall be in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record
As the Eleventh Circuit explained in its decision, some circuit courts have ruled

Posted 24 Mar 2014 in Uncategorized

This morning, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Frederick County v. Santos, No. 13-706, a case involving whether local officials may arrest persons for immigration violations that we discussed here. See additional coverage from The Frederick News-Post here. (Photo courtesy of Flickr by Mark Fischer, creative-commons license, no changes made)....

Posted 12 Mar 2014 in Case Notes
That is the question presented in SCOTUSblog's Petition of the Day.Supreme Court3 The Fourth Circuit ruled in Santos v. Frederick County Bd. of Comm'rs, 725 F.3d 451 (4th Cir. 2013), that
absent express direction or authorization by federal statute or federal officials, state and local law enforcement officers may not detain or arrest an individual solely based on known or suspected civil violations of federal immigration law.
Frederick County's cert petition argues that this creates a circuit split that the Court should resolve:

Posted 03 Mar 2014 in Case Notes

Last year, this blog discussed three recent courts of appeals decisions involving local-housing regulations aimed at a person's immigration status. This morning, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in two of the cases,  Farmers Branch v. Villas at Parkside and Hazleton v. Lozano. Both decisions had preempted local ordinances. Image courtesy of Flickr by prathap ramamurthy (creative-commons license, no changes made)....

Posted 22 Nov 2013 in IMLA Briefs

A recent cert petition raises an important question about how the federal Constitution limits State and local taxing authority. In Maryland State Comptroller of the Treasury v. Wynne, the Maryland Court of Appeals held that the dormant Commerce Clause requires every state and subdivision to give its residents a full tax credit for all income taxes that they pay in another state or subdivision. The U.S. Supreme Court has never applied the dormant Commerce Clause to reach that result, and it appears to conflict with...