States Supreme Court Research Articles

21United States Supreme Court, Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, 602 US ___ (2024), 13 June 2024

21United States Supreme Court, Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, 602 US ___ (2024), 13 June 2024

United States Precinct Boundaries and Statewide Partisan Election Results

We describe the creation and verification of databases of all precinct boundaries used in the United States 2016, 2018, and 2020 November general elections, enhanced with election results for all partisan statewide offices. United States election officials report election results in the smallest geographic reporting known as the precinct. Scholars and practitioners find these election results valuable for numerous use cases. However, these data cannot be augmented with other geographically-bound data, such as U.S. Census data, without precinct boundaries. Here we describe the collection of precinct boundary data from state and local election officials, sometimes provided in GIS formats, images, text descriptions, and – in rare cases – verbally. We describe how we verify boundaries with other election data, such as geocoded voter registration files. Our open-source data has appeared in redistricting litigation argued before the United States Supreme Court; and has been used by state and local redistricting authorities, media organizations, advocacy groups, scholars, and a vibrant community of mapping enthusiasts.

The Impact of Judicial Selection Method on State Supreme Court Justice Ideology

Among political institutions in the United States, state courts are surprisingly susceptible to ideological extremism because of the non-uniform ways judges are selected. In this paper we examine the effect of selection methods on the ideological composition of state supreme courts. We theorize that methods involving partisan politics lead to more ideological justices and that, among that subset, Republican affiliated justices will be the most extreme. We test our expectations using a dataset of over 600 state supreme court selections between 1961–2011. Using a contemporary matching algorithm designed to maximize causal identification, we find support for our hypotheses. Our results speak to the consequences of federalism in court composition and offer an insight into how polarization manifests in the judiciary.

Title VII and Religious Accommodations in the Workplace After Groff v. Dejoy (2023)

The United States Supreme Court in Groff v. DeJoy rejected a 50-year precedent regarding the application of Title VII of the United States Civil Rights to requests by private and public employees for Title VII workplace religious accommodations. The article evaluates the impact of 73 U.S. District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals decisions decided after Groff to determine whether Groff has had an impact on how lower federal courts have evaluated requests for Title VII workplace religious accommodations. The article also evaluates the role of U.S. District Courts as gatekeepers for Title VII workplace religious accommodation lawsuits. Finally, the article discusses the impact of Groff on the most common types of workplace religious accommodation requests. The article argues that employers will have greater difficulty persuading U.S. District Court to grant motions to dismiss or motions for summary judgment to end Title religious accommodation lawsuits.

New appeals court case finds Title II does not allow for emotional distress damages

In Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller P.L.L.C, 142 S. Ct. 1562 (2022), the United States Supreme Court held that emotional distress damages are not available under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794), a statute enacted pursuant to the spending clause of the United States Constitution. The Court left open the question of whether emotional distress damages are available under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. 12135‐65).

A closer look at the demographics of same-sex marriage in the United States: Implications for research, practice, and policy.

In 2015, the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, setting in motion a sweeping social change for sexual minority people and their romantic relationships. The United States Census Bureau collects demographic data on same-sex couple households, offering an opportunity to better understand the demographic makeup of same-sex marriage today. This knowledge is essential for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who aim to understand and support same-sex couples' relationships. We used national probability data from the American Community Survey collected in 2021 (the most recent year these data are available) on married and unmarried, cohabiting same-sex and opposite-sex households. Respondents reported their own age, race, ethnicity, education, employment, income, home ownership, and whether they had children living with them in their household. Differences between married and unmarried opposite-sex couples were observed in race, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic status, consistent with prior research. Many of these demographic gaps also existed for same-sex couples, although these were often smaller. Several of these differences further varied between male and female same-sex couples. Same-sex married couples appear to be more demographically diverse than opposite-sex married couples. However, like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples from multiple minoritized groups were less likely to be married. Future research is needed to understand drivers of these differences (e.g., different attitudes about marriage or lack of access to marriage) and their impact. Policymakers and clinicians will need to bear these group differences in mind when designing policy and delivering services to support the well-being of sexual minority couples.

#WhyIDidntReport: Exploring victim accounts of non-reporting

Following the controversy surrounding the 2018 appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court, hundreds of thousands of victim/survivors of sexual violence took to social media to share their reasons for not reporting their experiences to the police. A sample of these tweets was collected and thematically analysed to identify the main reasons cited for the decision to not report. Results suggest that the decision to report is complex and influenced by multiple factors both within and beyond the criminal justice system including a vulnerable victim, varied types of fear, shame and blame. These findings are discussed in light of the existing literature on rape myths and the ideal victim.

Responsible Religious Freedom: Factual Scrutiny in Free Exercise Doctrine

Abstract The state of the Free Exercise Clause in U.S. constitutional law is uncertain. With an opportunity in Fulton v. Philadelphia to clarify the vitality of the current standard from Employment Division v. Smith, the United States Supreme Court has declined to do so. The lasting impact of Smith has been to move away from directly requiring government justifications for infringing free exercise. Instead, courts now use neutrality and general applicability as heuristics for government justification. Yet, relying solely on neutrality and general applicability to proxy for government justification when infringing religious exercise distracts courts from conducting a fact-based inquiry. This article demonstrates how more scrutiny of the legislative facts in free exercise doctrine may serve as a viable alternative to Smith’s flawed approach for evaluating government justifications. The author first shows empirically how more factual scrutiny—directly requiring the government to justify its actions with evidence—can benefit government and religious claimants and then discusses the normative advantages of a fact-intensive approach to constitutional scrutiny. During a moment of sharp division over religious freedom and other competing rights, factual scrutiny can be a powerful tool for handling free exercise challenges and promoting responsible religious freedom.

Judicial self fashioning: Rhetorical performance in Supreme Court opinions

Justices on the United States Supreme Court use rhetorical strategies to maintain institutional legitimacy. In the court opinion, a strategy called the monologic voice presents a flattering depiction of the Court. The monologic voice occurs through two tones, the individualistic and collective, which respectively maintain the Justices’ legitimacy through critique and the Court’s legitimacy through unification. We train large language models to identify these rhetorical features in 15,291 modern Supreme Court opinions, issued between 1946 and 2022. While the fraction of collective and individualistic tones has been relatively consistent between 1946 and 2022, the Rehnquist Court used the collective tone at a higher rate than any other Court. In recent terms, 2021 and 2022, we find suggestions of another rhetorical shift, as all Associate Justices of the Roberts Court, excluding Chief Justice Roberts, used the individualistic tone at a historically high rate.

Mixtures of Probit Regression Models with Overlapping Clusters

Studies with binary outcomes on a heterogeneous population are quite common. Typically, the heterogeneity is modelled through varying effect coefficients within some binary regression setting combined with a clustering procedure. Most of the existing methods assign statistical units to distinct and non-overlapping clusters. However, there are scenarios where units exhibit a more complex organization and the clusters can be thought as partially overlapping. In this case, the standard approach does not work. In this paper, we define a mixture of regression models that allows overlapping clusters. This approach involves an overlap function that maps the regression coefficients, either at the unit or response level, of the parent clusters into the coefficients of the multiple allocation clusters. In order to deal with this intrinsic heterogeneity, regression analyses have to be stratified for different groups of observations or clusters. We present a computationally efficient Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) scheme for the case of a mixture of probit regressions. A simulation study shows the overall performance of the method. We conclude with two illustrative examples of modelling voting behavior, involving United States (US) Supreme Court justices over a number of topics and members of the United Kingdom (UK) parliament over divisions related to Brexit. These applications provide insights on the usefulness of the method in real applications. The method described can be extended to the case of a generic mixture of multivariate generalized linear models under overlapping clusters.

Faith in school: balancing no establishment and free exercise of religion guarantees in American education

AbstractAmerican schools are governed by a complex lattice work of federal, state, and local laws and regulations, many of them tailored specifically to primary, secondary, or higher education. But all schools are subject to the same First Amendment guarantee that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’. This constitutional guarantee of religious freedom has produced a substantial body of case law. Nearly one-third of the United States Supreme Court's cases on religious freedom – 74 out of its 247 cases reported from 1815 to 20231 – have addressed issues of religion and education. All but six of these cases were decided after 1940, the year the Court first began to apply these guarantees to state and local governments alongside ‘Congress’;2 and for each Supreme Court case, there are scores of lower federal court and sometimes state court cases that add further nuance and amplification. This article summarises, and critically analyses, this ever-evolving jurisprudence.

Despotic dominion and union organizing: Law, property, and the historical geography of class struggle in California agribusiness

This paper examines the role of law, particularly law related to private property, in the historical geography of class struggle. At the center of the analysis is the ‘access rule’, written by the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board in 1975 and struck down by the United States Supreme Court in 2021. Responding to the specific geography of California agribusiness labor relations and the long history of violent repression of workers' organizing rights, the rule allowed union organizers onto growers' property under highly constrained conditions to speak with workers about the merits of unionization. The paper traces the ‘pre-history’ of the rule – the decades of law officers and growers' efforts to deny organizers access to California's rural working class – the working of the rule during its more than forty-five years of existence, and its demise at the hands of the current, conservative supreme court. In doing so, it shows how law not only shapes class composition in particular landscapes but is an essential tool, strategically deployed, by all sides in class struggles.

Ethics of abortion in transplantation.

The controversial medical procedure of abortion is the subject of this article. It argues that for transplant patients, including recipients, abortion is ethical. In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned the long-standing decision of Roe v. Wade. This decision has led to a socio-legal environment where obtaining an abortion is impossible for some patients. However, the moral position relating to patients who have undergone transplants or are on a waiting list has been largely overlooked. End-stage renal, liver, and heart disease presents a hazardous situation for pregnancy, posing risks to both the fetus and the pregnant person. The abortion procedure is medically safer and allows a patient to proceed with a transplant. Limiting access to abortion or preventing it altogether will have a significant negative impact on transplant patients. The ethical analysis of abortion can be likened to compelling a relative or loved one of a transplant recipient to donate an organ to their family member or loved one. This article emphasizes the importance of maintaining the legal availability of abortion for transplant patients. Allowing abortions in transplant patients upholds ethical parity, as seen in the analogous situation of live organ donation.

“We are a part of the problem they protest”: judges, representation and racial justice statements

ABSTRACT In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, some state supreme courts decided to issue public comments to address disparities in racial justice, while others did not. We explain the decision to issue these voluntary statements as a strategic choice by state supreme court justices motivated by their retention audience and state demography. We demonstrate that state supreme courts appear responsive to their state audience when deciding to issue statements, specifically based on the number of racial justice protests by state residents and the liberalism of their state. Furthermore, state judicial retention systems and race identity in the public and on the state supreme court appear to influence word choice and sentiment in the racial justice statements issued. This extends understanding of motivations behind judges’ decisions and behavior in extra-judicial settings beyond the courtroom.

The Imperative to Promote Diversity Post-Students for Fair Admissions Analyzing the Effects of Student-Body Diversity on Attrition, GPA, and Bar Passage in Law Students and Graduates

ABSTRACT In June 2023, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts declared the consideration of race in university admissions unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Now, as the era of race-conscious admissions draws to a close, this study examines whether the educational benefits that flow from racial and ethnic student-body diversity acknowledged in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) persist in a law school context. Using data from the American Bar Association (ABA), the U.S. Census Bureau, and institutional partnerships with 21 law schools, we model student racial/ethnic diversity on law school campuses as a predictor of law-school-level attrition (n = 183), law-student-level GPA (n = 5,129), and law-student-level first-time bar passage (n = 4,808) among underrepresented law students of color. Campus diversity is operationalized as a Blau’s Diversity index. Our findings demonstrate modest benefits associated with racial and ethnic student-body diversity for student retention and first-time bar passage among underrepresented law students of color.

The Power of Wondering What Could Be School

Early in the 2023–2024 school year, Mr. Medeiros and a handful of his Kaua’i High School Future Teachers of Hawai’i club members took a two-day huaka’i (trip) to Oahu. This service-learning trip was part of the learning progression for the club, which is focused on student advocacy and social justice. With the help of Josh Reppun, retired Hawai’i State Supreme Court Justice Mike Wilson, the people at What School Could Be, and other amazing educators, the students began their huaka’i by gathering together to think and talk about the purpose of education/school. Ostensibly, they were traveling to Oahu to learn from others, but, really, the adults were there to learn how to keep pushing the boundaries of the idea of “school.”

Brief of over 300 reproductive health researchers as Amici Curiae in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

On January 30, 2024, over 300 researchers filed an amicus brief in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a United States (US) Supreme Court case that could have severely impacted access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs commonly used in medication abortion. The researchers summarize the legal challenges to the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) original approval of mifepristone in 2000 and its 2016 and 2021 decisions modifying mifepristone's Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) Program and label, the responses from the FDA and drug manufacturer to the challenges, and the potential implications of the Court's decision on access to mifepristone in the US. The researchers detail how the FDA relied on a robust scientific record analyzing tens of thousands of patient experiences that conclusively demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of the changes to the mifepristone REMS Program and label and urge the Supreme Court to rely on the clear scientific record and preserve access to mifepristone without reimposing restrictions. What follows is a reprint of this brief.

Toward inclusive justice: Applying the Diverse Voices design method to improve the Washington State Access to Justice Technology Principles

Just court systems are enabled by inclusive justice practices. Toward creating conditions for more inclusive justice–specifically engaging with and enabling experiential experts–we applied the Diverse Voices method to improve the Access to Justice Technology Principles (ATJ-TPrinc) which guide court administration in Washington State, USA. We situate our work in literature on inclusive justice, public interest technology in the courts, value sensitive design, and experiential experts. Then we present our research context, the Washington State ATJ-TPrinc, and our method, the Diverse Voices. We provide details on our methods, including our project genesis and implementation of the Diverse Voices process. We conducted experiential expert panels with four stakeholder groups: legal professionals, currently/formerly incarcerated people, immigrant communities, and rural communities. We then report key concerns and insights that surfaced during the panels as well as the review process and adoption of the revised Principles by the Washington State Supreme Court. We document changes to the ATJ-Princ informed by feedback from the expert panelists, including two new principles – P11 Human Touch and P12 Language Access. The discussion focuses on evidence for success, skillful implementation of the Diverse Voices method, the need for complementary regulation, and benefits to inclusive justice efforts and public interest technology projects. Our contributions entail: (1) a case study demonstrating the use of the Diverse Voices method to improve a tech policy document for the Washington State court system; (2) for public interest technology, a model for public engagement around tech policy that foregrounds participation of experiential experts, as well as the conditions necessary to ensure concerns raised are both heard and acted upon; (3) facilitation techniques and skills for enabling diverse stakeholder groups to express their concerns around responsible computing systems; and (4) revised and expanded access to justice technology principles to support more inclusive justice.

“When does human life begin?” teaching human embryology in the context of the American abortion debate

The Dobbs decision of the United States Supreme Court and the actions of several state legislatures have made it risky, if not outright dangerous, to teach factual material concerning human embryology. At some state universities, for instance, if a professor's lecture is felt to teach or discuss abortion (as it might when teaching about tubal pregnancies, hydatidiform moles, or eneuploidy), that instructor risks imprisonment for up to 14 years (Gyori, 2023). Some states' new censorship rules have thus caused professors to drop modules on abortion from numerous science and humanities courses. In most states, instructors can still teach about human embryonic development and not risk putting their careers or livelihoods in jeopardy. However, even in many of these institutions, students can bring a professor to a disciplinary hearing by claiming that the instructor failed to provide ample trigger warnings on such issues. This essay attempts to provide some strategies wherein human embryology and the ethical issues surrounding it might be taught and students may be given resources to counter unscientific falsehoods about fertilization and human development. This essay provides evidence for teaching the following propositions.Mis-information about human biology and medicine is rampant on the internet, and there are skills that can be taught to students that will help them determine which sites should trusted. This is a skill that needs to be taught as part of science courses.

Online Platforms and Legal Responsibility: A Contemporary Perspective in View of the Recent U.S. Developments

This paper critically examines the relevance of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the context of recent United States Supreme Court rulings, specifically Twitter v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that determining the extent of CDA230’s immunity lies with legislators, not the judiciary. This study explores the potential liability of algorithms in supporting terrorism and the implications for European regulations under the Digital Services Act. Findings indicate that while CDA230 has fostered internet growth, it also challenges content regulation. The United States approach contrasts with the European Union’s more explicit service provider responsibilities, suggesting a need for legislative updates to balance free expression with the control of harmful content.