SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 10/4/2019
The Supreme Court was already scheduled to take on a range of high-profile and potentially controversial issues in the next few months, including federal protection for LGBT employees, the Trump administration’s decision to end the program known as DACA, and gun rights. This morning the Supreme Court’s new term, which starts next Monday, became even more momentous, with the announcement that, for the first time since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court will tackle the hot-button issue of abortion. The justices agreed today to hear a challenge to a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions in the state to have the right to admit patients at a nearby hospital. In a late-night order last February, Chief Justice John Roberts provided the fifth vote needed to block the state from enforcing the law until abortion providers could file a petition seeking review of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upholding the law.
In United States v. Sineneng-Smith, the justices agreed to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit striking down a federal law that makes it a crime to encourage or cause illegal immigration for financial gain. The lower court’s ruling came in the case of Evelyn Sineneng-Smith, who ran an immigration-consulting business in California that helped home-health-care workers who were in the United States without proper documentation to apply for permission to work here and, eventually, for legal permanent residence in the United States. Sineneng-Smith was convicted on charges that she had convinced clients to hire her to file their applications for a visa program for which she knew they were not eligible. The 9th Circuit threw out Sineneng-Smith’s conviction, ruling that the law under which she had been convicted violates the First Amendment because it applies too broadly – potentially making it a crime, for example, for a grandmother to encourage her grandson to overstay his visa or for a lawyer to recommend that a client stay in the United States while removal proceedings are pending. The government asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling, which it agreed to do today.
The justices also granted a pair of cases involving the power of the U.S. Forest Service to grant rights-of-way through national-forest lands traversed by the Appalachian Trail. Both the U.S. Forest Service and Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which planned to construct a 600-mile natural-gas pipeline from West Virginia and Pennsylvania to Virginia and North Carolina – had asked the court to review a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit holding that the trail is part of the National Park System, so that the Forest Service could not grant a right-of-way under the trail. Both the government and Atlantic Coast had cautioned that, if the lower court’s ruling is allowed to stand, it could “hamper the development of energy infrastructure in the eastern United States.â€
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/10/justices-grant-new-cases-for-upcoming-term-will-tackle-louisiana-abortion-dispute/
