“We will be able to accommodate one seat in the press section for Mr. Geidner.”
Truly, few emails have made me more happy than this one, letting me know that I have a seat in the U.S. Supreme Court’s press section “for the oral argument on Monday, April 19 at 10 a.m. and Wednesday, April 28 at 10 a.m.”
The building that houses the Supreme Court of the United States, located at One First Street, N.E., in Washington, D.C.
The cases are Christian Legal Society v. Martinez and Doe #1 v. Reed. This, to me, is about as exciting an opportunity as I could have imagined when moving back to D.C. nearly six months ago. In that time, I’ve had the opportunity to write for The Atlantic Politics Channel and Metro Weekly, which has led to a job at MW as the senior political writer. In that role, I’ve covered Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and, now, will be covering the Supreme Court.
The first argument has particular meaning for me, as this debate, about whether a student organization that refuses to abide by a school’s nondiscrimination policy — here, CLS — can be denied university funds, is one in which I was heavily engaged during my time as a law student at OSU. The question in the case comes down to whether personal religious views can be imposed on a public institution and trump generally applicable public funding decisions, a question the court has answered in the negative on repeated occasions.
The case raises a lot of interesting questions, depending on the angle from which you come at the case — CLS and its lawyers argue that this is a religious freedom and associational freedom case. I’m going to be reading the many amicus briefs submitted in the case over the coming days, so I’ll have more on the specifics of all that soon. What already is clear, though, is that it will be intriguing to watch how the justices address the case.
The second argument, I think, has a growing meaning in the evolving dialogue on LGBT equality — or at least the opposition to it. As with the CLS case, those opposed to LGBT equality are increasingly painting themselves as themselves being the group that is subject to animus. They, not the LGBT people, are the “victim” in this framing. The Washington case involves the disclosure of the names and identifying information of those people who signed the petition to overturn Washington state’s domestic partnership law that became Referendum 71.
The case asks whether the Court will hold that disclosure requirements — can the public see who signed a petition to put a referendum on the ballot? — should be curtailed because of fear that those who signed such a petition will be subject to retaliation or other intimidation. The broad issue — the intimidation question — already has arisen twice in recent months at the Court, when the Court rejected the attempt to allow a live-streaming of the Proposition 8 trial to other courtrooms and in Justice Thomas’s opinion in Citizens United.
Incidentally, that second argument will fall, to the day, six months after my first D.C. coverage, the signing of the hate crimes law a couples days after I moved back.
Of personal interest and excitement to me, these two arguments, looking at the intersection of LGBT equality and various First Amendment freedoms, fall into that same general area of the law as the first Supreme Court oral argument that I attended, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, argued 10 years ago this month, on April 26, 2000.
Yes, this Law Dork is incredibly excited and proud to be covering the Supreme Court for Metro Weekly.
