Author: DONALD SCARINCI

On the last day of the session, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. By a vote of 5-4, the justices ruled that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) so-called “contraception mandate” violates Religiou...

In Riley v. California, the majority held that police officers must obtain a warrant The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued its most important privacy decision in four decades. In Riley v. California, the majority held that police officers must obta...

Threats of causing actual harm to someone has never been considered protected speech under the First Amendment.  The U.S. Supreme Court will now review online threats made on Facebook and Twitter, in  Elonis v. United States. The case involves a se...

The U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped the most complex issues in Bond v. United States in yet another case of constitutional avoidance. Rather than address the limits of the federal government’s power to implement international treaties, the Court rul...

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to come to the aid of New York Times reporter James Risen. He is facing jail time after refusing to comply with a subpoena seeking the identity of a source used for his book, “State of War.” The government main...

A divided Supreme Court has withdrawn some of the discretion it gave to the states to determine when an individual convicted of murder is too intellectually incapacitated to be executed. The five to four majority held that states cannot use a fixed I...

The Supreme Court recently decided the case of Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. (MGM), involving the question of how to decide if a copyright case is brought in a timely manner. The Copyright Act sets forth a three-year statute of limitations, y...

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld an EPA regulation that will delegate the duty to stop or at least reduce polluted air from blowing from one state into another. The 6-2 decision in Environmental Protection Agency v. EME Homer City Generation was a clear...

The long-awaited ruling in Town of Greece v. Galloway has finally arrived after seven years of litigation and six months after oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. A 5 – 4 divided Court upheld the offering of prayer to open government meet...

Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie - Is a Warrant Required to Search Cellphone The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in two cases, Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, both of which involve challenges to...