Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 10-277, June 20, 2011

A group of female employees sued Wal-Mart for gender discrimination, and sought to represent a group of about 1.5 million current and former women employees in a class action. The trial court acknowledged the unprecedented size of the class, but found that the employees had offered sufficient evidence to meet the stringent legal standards for certification. Justice Scalia’s opinion (J. Ginsburg filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, joined by J. Breyer, J. Sotomayor, and J. Kagan) concluded that the Plaintiffs could not demonstrate common questions of law or fact within the class. While the dissenters disagreed with the standard applied by the trial court in this case, the four progressive justices declined to find this class un-certifiable and would have remanded to consider certification under alternate theories. Employment Class Action Blog (an employer-oriented source) reviewed the opinion in detail and anticipated easier, more predictable civil rights defenses for employers into the future. Red Ant Liberation Army News (“News for the Working Class and Peasantry”) offered its take on the case. The New York Times’ Stephanie Clifford reported on the parties’ reactions to the decision, including the plaintiffs’ plan to pursue relief through smaller class action suits.

American Elec. Power Co. v. Connecticut, 10-174, June 20, 2011

A group of state and local governments sued a group of power companies under a common law nuisance theory, claiming that the power companies’ carbon emissions contributed to the public nuisance of global warming. The power companies sought a dismissal of the suit arguing that the case presents a political question that should be left to EPA, and not to the management of a federal judge. The Court (J. Ginsburg wrote the opinion; J. Alito filed a concurring opinion, joined by J. Thomas; J. Sotomayor did not participate) found that the Clean Air Act–recently determined by the Court to authorize the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases–preempts federal common law actions to limit carbon emissions. US News & World Report covered this decision in conjunction with ongoing Congressional efforts to gut the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Douglas Kysar wrote an interesting piece in Nature that examines the effect of this decision on the carbon policy wars.

Turner v. Rogers, 10-10, June 20, 2011

A South Carolina family court found an indigent parent to be in willful contempt of a child support decree, and ordered him to either pay the arrearage or go to jail. The parent asserted that impoverished parties are entitled to a court-appointed lawyer in civil contempt proceedings. Even though the parent had completed his prison term, the Court (J. Breyer wrote the opinion; J. Thomas filed a dissent, joined by J. Scalia, and by C.J. Roberts and J. Alito in part) found as an initial matter that the cause was not moot because the parent would likely face future contempt proceedings. The Court went on to find that while civil contempt proceedings do not always demand the appointment of a lawyer, certain alternative procedural safeguards must instead be used to guarantee that an unrepresented party’s due process rights are protected. The ABA Journal noted that Justice Breyer’s alternative-safeguards scheme recognizes that often both parents are unrepresented, and appointing a lawyer for just the non-paying, non-custodial parents would create “an asymmetry of representation.”  Popdecay quoted the The Constitution Project, “With this decision, the Supreme Court has effectively endorsed the expansion of the unjust use of debtors’ prisons in America.”

Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri, 09-1476, June 20, 2011

The Respondent filed a union grievance after the city fired him, and an arbitrator ordered his reinstatement. The city then issued various directives related to the Respondent’s employment, and the Respondent filed suit alleging retaliation in violation of his 1st Amendment right to petition the government. The Court (J. Kennedy wrote the opinion, J. Thomas filed a concurring opinion; J. Scalia filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part) found that the Petition Clause protects petitions addressed to a public matter, and not to a purely private concern such as a party’s employment with the government. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog observed that the reasoning in this case conforms to earlier opinions limiting the scope of the 1st Amendment’s Free Speech Clause in these types of disputes.