Supreme Court declines to review Kansas racial gerrymandering dispute

Kaelan Deese

March 27, 01:02 PM March 27, 01:02 PM

The Supreme Court on Monday declined a request from Kansas constituents to hear their dispute over a state court decision that allowed the use of a Republican-drawn congressional map accused of being racially gerrymandered.

The Supreme Court of Kansas upheld the GOP-drawn map last year after it had been blocked in a lower court for partisan gerrymandering and diluting minority voting power. The map divided Kansas City's racially diverse Wyandotte County into two congressional districts for the first time in decades.

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The high court's decision not to take up the case means the redrawn map will remain. The vote count over the decision was not revealed, though the denial means fewer than four justices agreed to take up the petition.

Kansas asked the justices to avoid taking up the case, describing the case as a "creature of state law" and saying that the high court lacked jurisdiction over the matter. The state also said the map was lawful and did not involve intentional discrimination.

“Petitioners’ argument is premised on the theory that this case involves intentional minority vote dilution,” the state wrote. “But it is not plausible that the Kansas Legislature enacted SB 355 with a racially discriminatory purpose. Petitioners’ claims would therefore fail regardless of the answer to the question presented.”

The group of voters, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Kansas, and the Campaign Legal Center, wrote in court filings that the maps were in violation of the 14th Amendment, which bars "intentional racial discrimination in redistricting where the minority voters discriminated against are not sufficiently numerous to form a majority of eligible voters in a single-member district.”

“Under this conception of the Fourteenth Amendment, where minority voters are fewer in number or more dispersed, states have carte blanche to intentionally discriminate against them in drawing districts — even if the legislature announced that it acted specifically to disadvantage minority voters,” groups wrote in their initial petition.

The Supreme Court also declined to hear an appeal of Steven Donziger, a disbarred environmental attorney's challenge to his criminal contempt conviction. He argued his prosecution violated his rights because private attorneys appointed by a federal judge handled the case against him after the Justice Department declined to do so.

Another case the court declined was a challenge to U.S. steel import tariffs imposed in 2018 under President Donald Trump. The Biden administration has largely maintained the same policies, and at issue in the case was whether the findings of a 2018 Trump administration report that recommended steel tariffs were subject to court scrutiny under federal administrative law.

The justices granted one case, a challenge involving a Maine-based hotel owner's bid to dodge a lawsuit accusing it of being insufficiently clear on its website about whether the hotel had accessibility features for people with disabilities.

Scope of IRS powers tops Supreme Court's busy docket of arguments and opinions

Kaelan Deese

March 26, 04:00 AM March 26, 04:00 AM

The Supreme Court will issue at least one opinion this week while it weighs a packed docket of cases, including a request by the IRS to allow its agents to secretly obtain financial records without the need to notify account holders.

Wednesday will mark the day when the nine justices consider Polselli v. IRS, which is expected to have sweeping implications for Fourth Amendment right protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as it pertains to the federal tax collecting agency. This case comes just months after the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress last year injected $45 billion to ramp up the agency's tax enforcement efforts.

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Polselli seeks to settle a disagreement among lower courts over an exception in a section of law governing IRS authority. The case surrounds whether the agency's investigation of an individual allows it to peer into the accounts of third-party recordkeepers without informing those parties and without providing a chance to challenge their investigation in court.

Several outside parties, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, argue the agency cannot exercise enforcement to this extent, according to a brief, which states, "Many businesses have a far greater need for these protections because their records contain the privileged or confidential information of their customers or clients.”

The case itself originated from an IRS agent that suspected a delinquent taxpayer, Remo Polselli, allegedly concealed his assets tied to bank accounts held in his spouse's name. The agent subsequently issued summonses to Hanna K. Polselli’s bank and the banks for two law firms Remo had used for services in the past.

The IRS, with the backing of President Joe Biden's Justice Department, contends that "nothing in the Internal Revenue Code requires that the government make a formal assessment against a taxpayer before issuing a summons to locate assets that may be available to satisfy his liability."

Outside groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Cato Institute, and the Institute for Justice, issued briefs to the high court warning about delivering an outcome favorable to the IRS.

A favorable ruling for the agency would grant "effectively unfettered power to seek the complete financial records of anyone with even a tenuous connection to a delinquent taxpayer," the Institute for Justice wrote in its brief.

It's unclear which side of the argument the nine justices will land on this dispute. Still, the Supreme Court has already rendered one ruling that effectively limited the agency's authority this year.

In Bittner v. United States, the justices ruled 5-4 to limit the ability of the IRS to assess penalties for failure to file reports disclosing foreign bank accounts, resulting in overturning a $2.72 million fine the agency imposed on businessman Alexandru Bittner, a dual U.S.-Romanian citizen who said the maximum fine he should face for filing late reports pursuant to the Bank Secrecy Act should be $50,000.

On Monday, the high court will hear United States v. Hansen, a First Amendment case surrounding a scam that falsely promoted adult adoptions as a pathway to U.S. citizenship. They will also hear Amgen v. Sanofi, a question about which factors a patent applicant must show to prove that the invention would enable a “skilled artisan” to make and use it.

Tuesday is an opinions issuance day in which the justices will release one or more decisions from a case argued this term. They will also hear Lora v. United States, a case determining whether federal criminal sentencing laws should force a New York man convicted of a drug trafficking-related murder to be sentenced consecutively rather than concurrently. Another case that day is Smith v. United States, deciding whether an acquittal or a new trial is the proper remedy when an appeals court finds a defendant was convicted in the wrong court.

Finally, the case on Wednesday ahead of Polselli is Samia v. United States, a Sixth Amendment question on whether prosecutors violated that right when they admitted a confession from one of the namesake's co-defendants that was redacted to conceal the defendant's name.

'Deeply held beliefs': Colorado designer before Supreme Court says she cannot condone LGBT weddings

Kaelan Deese

November 26, 06:00 AM November 26, 06:04 AM

Custom website and graphic designer Lorie Smith doesn't want to be forced to create websites for same-sex weddings due to her Christian faith, an issue the Supreme Court will debate next month in a free speech case challenging Colorado's anti-discrimination law.

"I love working with people from all different walks of life. And I have clients who identify as LGBT," Smith told the Washington Examiner, saying her case isn't about outright refusing service to members of the LGBT community. "I just cannot create for every message."

Smith claims Colorado’s anti-discrimination law violates her right to free speech over same-sex marriages, which she contends are contrary to her sincerely held religious beliefs. While Smith has not had the chance to expand her services to include wedding webpages with her business, 303 Creative, due to the state law, she said she’s had aspirations to do so since she was young.

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"I want to create for weddings, but I can't because Colorado is censoring and compelling my speech and forcing me to create custom messages and expressions ... celebrating messages that violate my deeply held beliefs," Smith said.

The small business owner has been fighting to delve into the work for weddings for nearly six years but has been preempted by the state's Anti-Discrimination Act, the same law that was used against Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips in numerous lawsuits similar to Smith's case after he refused to create custom wedding cakes that celebrate same-sex unions.

However, some groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, believe Smith's choice to enter the public market should disallow her from refusing specific requests, even if the content defies her sincere Christian beliefs.

David Cole, the national legal director of the ACLU, attended a debate last month hosted by the legal group representing Smith, the Alliance Defending Freedom. Cole contended that Colorado's law only requires businesses to serve everyone and does not infringe on free speech, arguing Smith would be within her right to include a statement on her websites saying she disagrees with LGBT marriage, but she cannot refuse service to customers based on sexual orientation.

"You can’t say, 'I’m serving the public, but I’m not going to serve gay people,'" Cole said. "You can’t say, 'I’m going to provide a service to opposite-sex couples, but I won’t provide that same service to same-sex couples,’ because now you’re not open to the public."

The ADF's CEO and president, Kristen K. Waggoner, also partook in the debate and was questioned by Cole. The ACLU panelist contended that a ruling favoring Smith could allow a baker who is "racist" to refuse service of a birthday cake to a black family, noting that the "First Amendment protects racist beliefs as well."

But Waggoner rebuked Cole's argument in an interview with the Washington Examiner, contending that Smith is asking the high court for content-based exemptions and isn't refusing service based on a client's sexual orientation.

"Lori isn't selling hamburgers or cups of coffee. She's creating. She's a storyteller," Waggoner said.

The attorney said the ACLU is "disingenuously claiming" that a ruling favoring Smith would "take us back to truly despicable and ugly times in our nation's history, [when] people were denied access to essential goods and services based on who they were."

Asked what would become of Colorado's law if the Supreme Court granted Smith's request, Waggoner said "our hope" is that a win for Smith would uphold the First Amendment while allowing the law to remain in place.

"The problem isn't the law itself. It's how Colorado was applying the law to Lori and to other artists by trying to compel their expression, and that's simply not the way these public accommodation laws are meant to be enforced," Waggoner said, adding that a victory for Smith would also protect the rights of any LGBT artists from being compelled to create messages they might disagree with.

Smith attempted to overturn a lower court ruling when her counsel filed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in 2017. A panel voted 2-1 that Colorado law states she must "work with all people regardless of ... sexual orientation."

In 2018, the Supreme Court gave a partial victory to cake baker Phillips, saying the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had acted with anti-religious bias against him. However, the court did not rule on the broader issue of whether a business can invoke religious objections to refuse service to LGBT clients.

Arguments over the case will be heard by the high court on Monday, Dec. 5. A decision in the case likely won't be posted for months and will likely come before June 2023.