Five more SCOTUS decisions coming tomorrow and Monday. [View all]

[former9thward]

The EPA emissions rule for power plants was heard in March. Scalia is the only Justice who has not authored an opinion during the March cases and if he is the author it is bad news for the EPA. This case is in my opinion the most important of the term -- more important in the long run than the ACA case. The court is considering the question of whether the EPA’s carbon emissions regulations sufficiently took into account the costs of those regulations.

There are two major cases left: One involving the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s death penalty protocol, and the gay marriage decision. A third, Johnson v. United States, involves the never-ending, arcane, drama over the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).

A fourth is the Arizona redistricting case. If this is written by Roberts or Kennedy it will strike down the independent redistricting commissions in Arizona and California.

There is virtually no doubt that Kennedy is writing the marriage equality decision, and that it will expand the rights of gay couples. There is slightly more doubt as to how far Kennedy will go. He expressed concern at oral argument that perhaps the court ought not to decide these matters. Moreover, in 2013, three of the liberal justices somewhat surprisingly voted to avoid deciding the gay marriage issue outright in a case out of California, when Kennedy was prepared to proceed to the merits.

The conservative justices were openly skeptical of the challenges to Oklahoma’s death penalty protocol. While oral argument is not a clear signal of how things will turn out, it seems that one of the conservative justices will be writing this opinion. This would leave the ACCA case for Ginsburg (at oral argument there seemed to be a nearly unanimous majority against the government).