Decisions coming due on 'blockbuster' Supreme Court cases

By Anne Gearan
The Associated Press

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The justices finish hearing cases for the term in late April and then begin cranking out dozens of rulings before the session ends in late June.

The court already has heard 67 cases and decided 45 of them, a pace about equal to that of recent years. There are 12 cases yet to be heard.

"The best is yet to come," said Washington lawyer Thomas Goldstein, a Supreme Court specialist. "The court will hear blockbuster case after blockbuster case."

Remaining cases The Supreme Court finishes hearing cases for the 2003-04 term this month and will issue rulings through the end of June. Among the cases still to be decided: Pledge of Allegiance: Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 02-1624, is a constitutional challenge to the words "under God" in the pledge as it is recited in public schools. The court heard arguments March 24. Energy task force: Cheney v. U.S. District Court, 03-475, is the Bush administration's appeal in a case about closed-door sessions to develop a White House energy policy. Environmental and government watchdog groups want internal records of the sessions as part of an inquiry into whether energy companies got special treatment. Terror-suspect detentions: • Rasul v. Bush, 03-334, and Al Odah v. United States, 03-343, involve foreign-born captives held at the military prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush administration maintains the prisoners may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts. • Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 03-6696, is a challenge to the open-ended military detention of a terrorism suspect born in the United States but captured overseas. President Bush claims authority to declare Yaser Esam Hamdi an enemy combatant ineligible for the usual protections of the U.S. Constitution. • Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 03-1027, is a similar case involving a U.S.-born terrorism suspect captured on American soil. The government lost its argument in lower courts that Jose Padilla may be held indefinitely without trial or charges.

The capital-murder case being argued next Monday could overturn the death sentences of about 100 inmates in several states. It is the most far-reaching of several death-row cases the court considered this term.

On April 20, the court hears two cases about the legal rights of foreign fighters held indefinitely at the U.S. military prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush administration claims the prisoners cannot challenge their detention in U.S. courts.

In an unusual move, the Supreme Court will release an audiotape of that argument immediately afterward, so it may be used in news coverage. No television cameras are allowed inside the courtroom.

The court also is planning to release same-day audiotapes of April 27 arguments about Vice President Dick Cheney's closed-door strategy sessions to develop a national energy policy, and two important April 28 cases that pit the usual assumptions about constitutional liberties of U.S. citizens against the president's power to pursue the war on terrorism.

Those latter cases involve Louisiana-born Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was picked up on an Afghan battlefield shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, and Chicago-born Jose Padilla, arrested in that city on suspicion of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb." Both men are in custody at a Navy brig in South Carolina. They have not been formally charged, and neither has had a court appearance. Only recently were they allowed to meet with attorneys.

Among cases the court already has heard this term, the most prominent is a constitutional challenge to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance as it is recited daily in public schools.

The court heard a lively hour of arguments last month, an event made more striking by the decision of the atheist father challenging the religious reference to present his own case.

Michael Newdow, who is a lawyer, claims that having a public schoolteacher lead students in an oath of loyalty to "one nation under God" violates the First Amendment's ban on state-sponsored religion.

The pledge case has drawn strong public reaction, most of it in favor of keeping the words as they are.

Lawyers and law professors who keep tabs on the Supreme Court generally predict the justices will find a way to preserve the wording, even if doing so seems inconsistent with previous rulings banning school-sponsored prayer.

If politicians are up in arms about judges declaring gay marriage legal, "just wait until the Supreme Court says the pledge is unconstitutional," said Nathaniel Persily, a constitutional-law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "The problem is that the court is going to have to do some fancy footwork."

Other significant rulings in the offing address the breadth of protections under the Americans With Disabilities Act; patients' rights to sue their managed-care health-insurance companies; lewd pictures on the Internet; and state politicians' license to draw political boundaries to partisan advantage.

Scalia apologizes to reporters over destruction of tapes
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has issued written apologies for the destruction of two reporters' audiotapes by a deputy U.S. marshal guarding him last week, and has promised to permit print journalists to record his public speeches in the future, according to a letter by the justice made public yesterday.

In an April 9 letter to Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which had protested the incident, Scalia said he had written to the two reporters, Antoinette Konz of the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American and Denise Grones of the Associated Press, "extending my apology and undertaking to revise my policy so as to permit recording for use of the print media."

Scalia called Dalglish's concern "well justified" and said he had been "as upset as you were" to learn of the deputy marshal's action, which, he said, "was not taken at my direction."

Both Scalia and the U.S. Marshals Service have come under fire from advocates of media freedom, who said the erasure of the reporters' recordings was contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment, and possibly against a federal law.

Scalia was speaking about the Constitution at Presbyterian Christian High School on April 7 when Grones and Konz were confronted by Deputy U.S. Marshal Melanie Rube and ordered to turn over their recordings, which Rube then erased.

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