Time for a perennial favorite: a top-ten countdown! Today the subject is the current term of the Supreme Court of the United States. Now that the Court has adjourned, it's time to look back on an eventful year, made even more so by the death of Justice Scalia and the effects of the persistent vacancy created by Scalia's death.
#10: Birchfield v. North Dakota. Here the Court held that the Fourth Amendment permits warrantless breath tests incident to arrests for drunk driving but not warrantless blood tests.
#9: Zubik v. Burwell: The Court remanded several cases involving religious nonprofit organizations' objections to the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive-coverage mandate, in light of a possible compromise solution involving automatic contraceptive coverage without employer request.
#8: Evenwel v. Abbott: In this Texas case, the Court unanimously held that states may apportion legislative districts according to total population rather than voter-eligible population.
#7: Montgomery v. Louisiana: Here the Court held that its decision in Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012) (juvenile homicide-offender may not be sentenced to life without parole absent consideration of juvenile's special circumstances) is retroactive.
#6: Hurst v. Florida: Under Florida's death-penalty scheme, the jury makes a recommendation to the trial judge about whether the death penalty should be imposed, and the trial judge must give the recommendation "great weight" but retains the ultimate decisionmaking authority. The Court held that this system is unconstitutional, because the jury must find, in binding fashion, each fact necessary to impose the death sentence.
#5: Luis v. United States: In this case, the Court held that a federal statute permitting the pretrial freezing of certain criminal defendants' assets is unconstitutional as applied to "untainted" property needed to retain criminal defense counsel.
#4: Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association: Here the Ninth Circuit's decision upholding a California scheme whereby public employees must affirmatively object to subsidizing speech by a mandatory "agency shop" union was affirmed by an equally-divided court.
#3: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin: In this case, which was before the Court for the second time, the Supreme Court decided that the University of Texas at Austin's use of racial preference in undergraduate admissions decisions was permissible under the Equal Protection Clause.
#2: United States v. Texas: The Court, being equally divided, affirmed the Fifth Circuit's decision invalidating the Obama Administration's "Deferred Action for Parents of Americans" program, whereby a large group of alien parents of U.S.-citizen children were given deferred-action status permitting continuing presence and work authorization in the United States.
#1: Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt: In these consolidated cases, the Court invalidated Texas's 2013 law imposing restrictions on the availability of abortions, holding that the law imposed an undue burden that was unjustified by its purported health and safety benefits.
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