Latest Case: Barber v. USDC, San Francisco (Civil Procedure)

They Are Still Teachers

LESLIE C. GRIFFIN

UNLV Boyd School of Law professor Leslie C. Griffin comments on the oral argument the U.S. Supreme Court heard on Monday in the combined cases of Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and St. James School v. Biel, which bring before the Court the question of the ministerial exception. Griffin explains that the ministerial exception is an affirmative defense that keeps the facts of a case from ever going to a judge or a jury and argues that a broad construction of the exception—as advocated by the religious employers in those cases—would be devastating to the careers of thousands of Americans teaching our children and caring for our sick in religious organizations across the country.

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When the Paranoid President Meets the Supreme Court

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on Tuesday’s oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Vance, which raises the question of whether the President should be able to shield his tax and financial records from a congressional subpoena. Sarat urges that the Court see through the grandiosity and paranoia of the President’s legal claims, arguing that the future of a government of limited powers and the rule of law hangs in the balance.

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Linking COVID-19 Relief for State Governments to Abandonment of “Sanctuary” Policies? The Uncharted Territory of Conditional Spending

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR, JASON MAZZONE

Illinois Law dean Vikram David Amar and professor Jason Mazzone assess President Trump’s suggestion that federal aid to state and local governments might be conditioned on their willingness to abandon their “sanctuary” policies and assist the federal government in immigration enforcement. Although Amar and Mazzone expect those federal spending conditions not to be realized, they use the President’s comment to list and describe some unanswered fundamental constitutional questions in the conditional spending arena.

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Barber v. USDC, San Francisco

Docket: 20-71276

Opinion Date: May 12, 2020

Judge: Per Curiam

Areas of Law: Civil Procedure, Criminal Law

The Ninth Circuit denied a petition for writ of mandamus filed under the Crime Victims' Rights Act. The panel held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining the amount of restitution to which petitioner is entitled. Furthermore, the panel held that the district court's finding that the prior civil settlement reduced the amount of petitioner's loss was supported by the evidence and was neither an abuse of discretion nor legally erroneous.