SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 3/2/2020
This morning the Supreme Court issued
orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The court granted four petitions for review, including two consolidated cases (discussed in a
separate post) involving the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. All the cases granted today are expected to be argued next fall, with a decision to follow by June 2021.
The “deliberative process†privilege protects documents that reflect a government agency’s deliberations over possible actions from being disclosed in civil lawsuits. In U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club, the justices agreed to review a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that the privilege does not protect draft documents that the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service created as part of a formal consultation process under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act. The act requires a federal agency to work with the FWS and the NMFS if the agency concludes that an endangered or threatened species (or its habitat) is likely to be jeopardized by an action that the agency is proposing.
The justices denied review in Guedes v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a case that arose from a challenge to a 2018 rule that expanded the definition of “machine gun†to include “bump stocks†– attachments that help a semiautomatic rifle to fire faster. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the rule, prompting the plaintiffs to go to the Supreme Court, where they asked the justices to take up three questions. The first two questions dealt with the interaction between the Chevron doctrine – the idea that courts should defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law that it administers – and the rule of lenity, a principle of statutory interpretation that directs courts to apply an ambiguous criminal law in the manner most favorable to the defendant. The third question was whether, if Chevron deference applies and cannot be waived, the Supreme Court should overrule it.
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/03/more-on-todays-orders-2/#more-292208
