Supreme Court agrees to review California law on pork sales
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it would review a challenge to a California law that set certain conditions for pork sold in the state.
The case stems from a 2018 ballot measure where California voters approved the nation’s toughest living space standards for breeding pigs. Two agricultural associations challenging the law say almost no farms satisfy those conditions. They say the “massive costs of complying” with the law will “fall almost exclusively on out-of-state farmers” and that the costs will be passed on to consumers nationwide.
The law had a Jan. 1 effective date, but California is currently allowing the continued sale of pork processed under the old rules.
The groups challenging the law are the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation. The case is expected to be argued after the court begins its new term in October.
Court gives Biden win for now in Navy vaccine case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is giving the Navy a freer hand determining what job assignments it gives to 35 sailors who sued after refusing on religious grounds to comply with an order to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The high court in a brief order Friday sided with the Biden administration and said that while the lawsuit plays out, the Navy may consider the sailors’ vaccination status in making deployment, assignment and other operational decisions. The group that sued includes mostly Navy SEALs.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that there was a “simple overarching reason” that he agreed with the court’s decision. The Constitution makes the president, “not any federal judge,” the commander in chief of the armed forces, he wrote, noting that courts have been traditionally “reluctant to intrude upon the authority of the Executive in military and national security affairs.”
Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — noted that they disagreed with their colleagues’ decision and would have sided with the group of SEALs.
Alito wrote that his colleagues were “rubberstamping the Government’s request.” “These individuals appear to have been treated shabbily by the Navy, and the Court brushes all that aside,” Alito wrote.
A federal judge in Texas in January issued a preliminary injunction barring the Navy from acting against the sailors. The Biden administration said it was not asking the Supreme Court to block parts of the lower court order barring the sailors from being disciplined or discharged but only the requirement that their assignments be made without considering their vaccination status. That requirement posed “intolerable risks to safety and mission success,” the administration had argued.
“Navy personnel routinely operate for extended periods of time in confined spaces that are ripe breeding grounds for respiratory illnesses, where mitigation measures such as distancing are impractical or impossible. A SEAL who falls ill not only cannot complete his or her own mission, but risks infecting others as well, particularly in close quarters, including on submarines,” Biden administration lawyers wrote.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last year made vaccinations mandatory for service members. Navy guidelines allow for exemptions to the vaccine requirement on religious and other grounds, including medical reasons and if a servicemember is about to leave the Navy. The Biden administration says the Navy has received more than 4,000 requests for religious exemptions, but it said that as of the start of February only about 80 had been fully adjudicated. It said one religious exemption had been granted.
Lawyers for the group of sailors that sued had argued that the Navy had granted hundreds of non-religious exemptions. They said that in asking the high court to allow vaccine status to be considered, the Navy was seeking “license to engage in hostile tactics designed to coerce plaintiffs into disregarding their religious beliefs.”
Lower courts had denied the Biden administration’s plea to be allowed to consider vaccination status. That includes a federal judge in Texas, Reed O’Connor, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush, and a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals. Two of those judges were appointees of former President Donald Trump while the third was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan.
Justice Thomas joins arguments remotely after hospital stay
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Clarence Thomas participated in arguments at the Supreme Court via telephone rather than in person on Monday following a hospital stay of nearly a week.
Chief Justice John Roberts said at the beginning of arguments that the 73-year-old Thomas would be “participating remotely this morning” but did not elaborate.
Thomas asked several questions early in arguments in the case, which involved a federal law that applies to railroad workers, at one point making an analogy to when he drives his motor coach. Other justices have also occasionally participated in arguments remotely since the court started its term in the fall.
Thomas missed arguments at the high court on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of last week while he was hospitalized. Roberts said he would participate in the cases argued on those days using briefs the parties filed and the transcript of the arguments.
Thomas was admitted to the hospital March 18 after experiencing “flu-like symptoms” and was treated for an infection with intravenous antibiotics. Thomas did not have COVID-19, the court said. He has been vaccinated and had a booster shot, like the rest of the court. Though the court had said Thomas was expected to be released from the hospital on Monday or Tuesday, he was not discharged until Friday.
The court did not say why he remained in the hospital longer than initially thought or what kind of infection he was treated for.
Thomas, a conservative and appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, has been on the court since 1991.
Earlier this term, Justice Brett Kavanaugh participated remotely from his home after testing positive for COVID-19 and Justice Sonia Sotomayor participated remotely from her office when coronavirus case counts were particularly high. Justice Neil Gorsuch also participated remotely after getting what the court described as a “stomach bug,” but testing negative for COVID-19.
Because of the pandemic the court spent more than a year and a half hearing arguments remotely, with every justice participating by phone. While the justices and lawyers arguing the cases are back in the courtroom, it is still closed to the public.
