Today in Supreme Court History: June 15, 1804

6/15/1804: The 12th Amendment is ratified.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. --- (decided June 15, 2020): Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits firing an employee for being gay or transgender (county didn’t know one plaintiff was gay until he joined gay softball league; other plaintiff happened to mention to his co-employee at a skydiving school that he was gay; third plaintiff was hired as male and “transitioned” due to gender dysphoria); Title VII also applies to transgender because fired “for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex” (Gorsuch, writing for a 6 - 3 Court, admits that the word “sex” as used in 1964 was not meant to cover these situations)

Rosenberg v. United States, 345 U.S. 989 (decided June 15, 1953): denied stay of execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; executed four days later for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets (case against Ethel was admittedly not strong but used unsuccessfully as “lever” to get Julius to talk; Julius could have cleared Ethel if he admitted his own guilt, which he could have done up to the last moment)

Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108 (decided June 15, 1964): evidence based on search warrant which was vague (based on hearsay, did not identify informant or particulars as to why heroin possession was suspected) should have been excluded

Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (decided June 15, 1969): vacated conviction based on false testimony by state witness (that he was not being paid for his testimony) which prosecutor did nothing to correct

Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (decided June 15, 1964): Alabama can’t base its legislature on “federal model” (one senator per county); Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection clause requires both houses to be apportioned by population; in dissent Harlan points out Congress saw no problem with this setup in Alabama and other “reconstructed” states (“It is incredible that Congress would have exacted ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment as the price of readmission, would have studied the State Constitutions for compliance with the Amendment, and would then have disregarded violations of it”)

​Golan v. Saada, 596 U.S. --- (decided June 15, 2022): under Hague Convention, court can deny violent father’s request to return child to home country without considering “ameliorative measures” (e.g., order of protection, therapy)

​Viking River Cruises v. Moriana, 596 U.S. --- (decided June 15, 2022): minimum wage/overtime state court suit allowed by California law despite arbitration provision in employment contract preempted by Federal Arbitration Act (FAA wouldn’t preempt suit under California’s “private attorney general” statute but plaintiff lacked standing)

Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (decided June 15, 1953): throwing out suit by homeowners against seller who sold house to black family (in violation of racially restrictive covenant) because order enforcing covenant would be state action violating Equal Protection (this reasoning would turn any private dispute that wound up in court into “state action”)

Burns v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 252 (decided June 15, 1959): struck down state court requirement that indigent criminal defendant pay a fee to make motion for leave to appeal (the appealable “final judgment” here was the letter of the clerk rejecting the motion because no fee attached)

Mulloy v. United States, 398 U.S. 410 (decided June 15, 1970): threw out conviction for draft evasion because draftee’s documentation as to conscientious objector status was not formally considered

[Commenter_XY]

I always wondered just how innocent Ethel Rosenburg actually was; there are conflicting accounts.

[Frank Drackman]

How innocent? not at all.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A half-dozen worthy decision are ignored to spotlight ratification of a minor amendment?

Examination of those noteworthy decisions suggests conservatives wouldn't like most of them.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The word "most" is doing a lot of work here, because it allows you to be vague in your accusation.

[Magister]

Bostock seems the most significant of them, and that's certainly disliked by conservatives.

Looking over the other descriptions: throwing out convictions and evidence in Aguilar and Napue and Mulloy; throwing out filing fees for indigent criminals in Burns; denying men's rights in ​Golan just because of being violent; denying racist apportionment and covenants in Reynolds and Burrows - I think you could get a good two minute hate out of an average MAGA with any of those.

What does it leave? Ethel and Julius Rosenberg denied a stay of execution for stealing atomic secrets might be popular with conservatives, except it might remind them that Trump is currently the most prominent defendant indicted for endangering US nuclear secrets.

Viking River Cruises would probably be popular with conservatives, though: enforcing contracts and poking California in the eye at the same time.

Most seems fair, although I'm not sure which were meant by "half-dozen worthy decisions".

[Dilan Esper]

It's clear that court action is state action. (See also the state action holding in NY Times v. Sullivan.)

And that doesn't turn every state court case into a constitutional issue because the substantive constitutional law doesn't reach most state court cases.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes. But it requires all private conduct to be non discriminatory.

[Dilan Esper]

No it doesn't, because most of it doesn't get enforced in court by a race-conscious legal rule.

"We will enforce trespassing statutes neutrally even if one reason for trespassing is racial" is totally different from "we will enforce a contract that specifically and explicitly provides that a neighborhood is all white".

And the reason we know this distinction works is it has now been 70 years since Shelley v. Kraemer and we never got the parade of horribles.

[Syd Henderson]

Well, the 12th amendment led to presidents like Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Chester A. Arthur and a lot of mediocre VPs. On the other hand, we got Aaron Burr without it.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

It’s the closest the Constitution comes to recognizing the party system, and as with slavery, it did so without naming that which it was accommodating.

[Dan Schiavetta]

You simply can’t have the loser being next in line if the winner dies. The risk of assassination, even if the loser does everything to stop it, is too great.

[Dilan Esper]

Honestly, we still have that issue with the speaker of the house being so high in the line of succession.

[CJColucci]

As I near retirement age, I vacillate between spending my golden years becoming an expert on the 12th amendment or the 3rd amendment.

[Magister]

The 18th amendment would also seem to offer unparalleled potential for never coming up.

[Frank Drackman]

12th amendment's pretty straight forward, it's the 20th where things get weird, and all it was supposed to be doing was moving the swearing in date from March to January,

From Section 3
"...and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified...."
Except Congress never has passed a law covering this Sitch-you-Asian, hey, why prepare for a Constitutional Crisis when you can put it off???

Frank

[David Nieporent]

You've never heard of the Presidential Succession Act?