[ad_1]
Petitions of the week
on Might 15, 2024
at 9:15 am
The Petitions of the Week column highlights a number of cert petitions just lately filed within the Supreme Court docket. A listing of all petitions we’re watching is offered here.
Within the Nineties, a federal district court docket in Guam blocked a complete ban on abortion enacted by the territory’s legislature as a result of it conflicted with Roe v. Wade. After the justices overruled Roe two years in the past in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Guam’s legal professional normal sought to raise the maintain on the ban. However the Guam Supreme Court docket, in response to a request by the territory’s governor, dominated that the ban can’t be revived as a result of more moderen abortion legal guidelines have successfully wiped it from the books. This week, we spotlight petitions that ask the court docket to think about, amongst different issues, whether or not the Guam Supreme Court docket had the authority to wade into the dispute.
When the Supreme Court docket affirmed the constitutional proper to abortion in its 1992 resolution in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, it stunned many who doubted that the court docket was prepared to defend Roe after 20 years of preventing over abortion. Among the many skeptics was the Guam legislature, which in 1990 enacted a complete ban on abortion, wagering that the tides would quickly shift and states and territories could be allowed to control abortion on their very own. A federal court docket shortly put the ban on maintain, agreeing with the challengers that it violated Roe. When Casey in the end upheld Roe, that maintain remained in impact.
Immediately, Dobbs has wiped away Roe and Casey and overturned the constitutional proper to abortion. Douglas Moylan, the legal professional normal of Guam, went to federal court docket, in search of to raise the maintain on the 1990 ban. Now that no federal constitutional resolution stands in its means, Moylan argued, the ban must be allowed to enter impact. Lourdes Guerrero, the governor of Guam, joined a bunch of challengers opposing Moylan’s request.
In the meantime, Guerrero went to the Guam Supreme Court docket, asking that court docket to resolve whether or not the ban remained legitimate and thus able to resurrection. Moylan, in flip, opposed that request.
The federal district court docket in Guam refused to reinstate the ban in a ruling final March. Moylan appealed that call to the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the ninth Circuit, which oversees Guam and different U.S. territories within the Pacific.
Earlier than the ninth Circuit may weigh in, nonetheless, the Guam Supreme Court docket issued its ruling in October. Trying to a provision of Guam law that authorizes it to situation rulings even when no celebration earlier than it has suffered hurt — often known as declaratory judgments — if the governor or legislature consider fast decision is required of a purely authorized situation of territorial significance, the court docket reasoned that it was entitled to weigh in on Guerrero’s request to guage the 1990 ban. It then held that the ban is now not legitimate as a result of Guam’s legislature had impliedly repealed it when the legislature later enacted legal guidelines regulating abortion that, as a result of they have been designed to be in line with Roe and Casey, can’t be learn in concord with a whole ban on abortion.
In Moylan v. Guerrero, the legal professional normal asks the justices to vacate the Guam Supreme Court docket’s ruling. He argues that the regulation authorizing the territory’s excessive court docket to situation declaratory judgments violates the separation of powers as a result of it exceeds the restricted judicial authority that Congress granted to the Guam Supreme Court docket. Simply as that court docket’s ruling right here annoyed the ninth Circuit’s decision of the abortion situation, Moylan writes, a regulation allowing declaratory judgments “concurrently elevates the Supreme Court docket of Guam above the opposite branches of Guam’s authorities and undermines the operations of Guam’s federal courts.”
A listing of this week’s featured petitions is under:
City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency
23-753
Situation: Whether or not the Clean Water Act permits the Environmental Safety Company (or a certified state) to impose generic prohibitions in Nationwide Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits that topic permit-holders to enforcement for violating water high quality requirements with out figuring out particular limits to which their discharges should conform.
United States v. Miller
23-824
Situation: Whether or not a chapter trustee could keep away from a debtor’s tax fee to the US underneath 11 U.S.C. § 544(b) when no precise creditor may have obtained reduction underneath the relevant state fraudulent-transfer regulation exterior of chapter.
Delligatti v. United States
23-825
Situation: Whether or not a criminal offense that requires proof of bodily harm or loss of life, however might be dedicated by failing to take motion, has as a component the use, tried use, or threatened use of bodily power.
Moylan v. Guerrero
23-828
Situation: Whether or not the Supreme Court docket of Guam’s advisory opinion {that a} Guam abortion regulation handed in 1990 had been impliedly repealed constitutes a permissible train of the “judicial authority” that Congress has vested in that court docket underneath 48 U.S.C. § 1424(a)(1).
[ad_2]
Source link
