SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

Continued look at Texas death row case ordered

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a further review by a lower court of a lawsuit brought by a Texas death row inmate who objects to a policy that bars a chaplain from accompanying him into the death chamber.

The justices ordered Ruben Gutierrez’s case sent back to a federal trial-level court for additional proceedings. The justices in June had blocked Gutierrez’s execution after Texas changed its policy and barred all spiritual advisers from the death chamber.

Gutierrez’s attorneys argue his religious rights are being violated. The justices in June had asked a lower court to determine whether there would be “serious security problems” if Texas’ death row inmates were allowed to choose spiritual advisers to accompany them into the death chamber. The lower court said no.

On Monday, in a brief order, the high court sent the case back to the trial court. The justices said that given the lower court’s findings that there would be no serious security problems if spiritual advisers were allowed, the lower court should now consider “the merits of petitioner’s underlying claims.”

Texas had previously allowed state-employed clergy to accompany inmates into the room where they’d be executed. But the state changed its policy in 2019, barring all clergy from the death chamber. That change came after the Supreme Court halted the execution of another inmate, Patrick Murphy, who requested a Buddhist adviser be allowed in the chamber. Texas’ prison staff included only Christian and Muslim clerics, meaning Murphy’s adviser would have had to observe from a different room. By changing the policy, Texas argued all inmates were being treated the same.

“A condemned prisoner’s access to the comfort and guidance of a spiritual advisor at the time of his death is not a matter of convenience, it is a fundamental right,” Gutierrez’s attorney Shawn Nolan said in a statement after the Supreme Court acted Monday.

Gutierrez is on death row for fatally stabbing an 85-year-old woman. Prosecutors said Gutierrez was attempting to steal more than $600,000 that Escolastica Harrison had hidden in her home in Brownsville, located in Texas’ southern tip, when he killed her in 1998.


Nevada church’s COVID-19 case denied

By Scott Sonner
Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused a rural Nevada church’s request to enter a legal battle over the government’s authority to limit the size of religious gatherings amid the COVID-19 pandemic — after the church won an appeals court ruling last month that found Nevada’s restrictions unconstitutional.

Attorneys general from 19 other states had recently joined in support of the unusual request from Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley east of Reno.

They were urging the Supreme Court to rule on the merits of the Nevada case to help bring uniformity to various standards courts across the country have used to balance the interests of public safety and freedom of religion.

The church’s lawyers said in a court filing last Thursday they wanted the high court to “clarify for all that the First Amendment does not allow government officials to use COVID-19 as an excuse to treat churches and their worshippers worse than secular establishments and their patrons.”

In a 5-4 decision in June, the Supreme Court refused Calvary Chapel’s request for an emergency injunction blocking enforcement of Nevada’s attendance limit at houses of worship.

But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in favor of the church last month, finding it was unconstitutional for Nevada to treat casinos and other businesses more favorably than churches.

The church’s latest plea for relief from the Supreme Court was in the form of a petition for a review of the case on its merits. Such petitions are rare and their approval is even rarer, even though they require approval by only four justices.

The justices denied the request without explanation on Monday.

The 9th Circuit ruling sent the case back to the district court to determine how to proceed but in the meantime prevented the state from enforcing any church attendance limit more stringent than the current 25% of capacity limit on most businesses.

Judge Richard Boulware put the case on hold pending the Supreme Court’s ruling on the church’s petition. He instructed lawyers on both sides to provide an update on the status of any future filings planned within seven days of such a ruling.

Lawyers for the church said Monday they were disappointed in the high court’s refusal to review the case. But they said the appellate court has made it clear government responses to COVID-19 “cannot treat churches worse than similarly situated businesses,” at least in the 9th Circuit, which also includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho and Montana.

“We asked the Supreme Court to hear the case so there would be a national ruling confirming what the 9th Circuit held in December: government officials certainly have the authority to protect health and public safety, but the First Amendment — including the free exercise of religion — is never suspended,” said David Cortman, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom.

“Although this victory for religious liberty remains a 9th Circuit matter, we are confident that Nevada will agree to a permanent injunction on the terms that the 9th Circuit unanimously announced, and we look forward to resolving this case soon,” he said Monday in a statement emailed to AP.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford had argued the justices should let the federal court in Reno sort out the details before taking the extraordinary step of wading into the case. He wrote in court documents submitted last week the case “is a poor vehicle for addressing questions beyond those the Ninth Circuit already resolved in Calvary’s favor.”

Ashley Forest, a spokeswoman for Ford’s office, said in an email on Monday that “while the Supreme Court won’t hear the church’s COVID case regarding attendance limits, Nevada heard the 9th Circuit clearly and appreciates the guidance on how best to protect this constitutional right.”

Indoor religious gatherings in Nevada most recently had been subject to a hard cap of 50 churchgoers while attendance limits at many businesses including casinos were based on a percentage of the buildings’ fire-code capacities.

Nevada currently imposes the 25% occupancy limit on all gathering places — including casinos, restaurants, bars, amusement and theme parks, gyms and fitness facilities and movie theaters.

The church’s latest court filings argued that an attendance limit of 25% for houses of worship is prohibited under the First Amendment. It wants to be treated the same as essential businesses — like manufacturing facilities and professional offices, which currently have no capacity limits other than social distancing.


Justices rebuff Utah in roads, wilderness case

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a blow to the state of Utah in a lawsuit involving environmental groups.

The high court decided Monday to let stand an order allowing two conservation organizations to intervene in the contentious, long-running case, the Deseret News reported.

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance says the case is about who controls federal public lands in Utah. They say the state is claiming “stream bottoms and cow paths” as highways, in an effort to make the land ineligible for Congressional wilderness designation. That designation protects the land and also limits how it can be used.

Multiple counties and states across the West have filed right-of-way claims on thousands of these roads so-called RS2477 roads. They say the byways are an integral and vital part of ranching, mining and residents’ access that needs to remain in place.

Claims to the roads have been entangled in litigation for years. The latest case had Utah and Kane County arguing conservation groups should not be part of the case.

The groups disagreed, saying the argument cut to the core of their mission to protect public lands.


Court won’t hear rabbi’s appeal of $22M case

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a Connecticut rabbi’s appeal of a $21.7 million jury verdict in a lawsuit that accused him of sexually abusing a teenage boy.

The court provided no comments in its decision to let stand a federal appeals court ruling last year that upheld the verdict against Rabbi Daniel Greer, 80, and the Yeshiva of New Haven school he founded.

Greer was sentenced to 12 years in prison in December 2019 on state criminal charges related to the abuse. Messages seeking comment were left Monday for his lawyer.

The 2017 verdict came in a federal court lawsuit filed by a New Jersey man, Eliyahu Mirlis, now 33, who said Greer repeatedly sexually abused him in 2002 and 2003 when he was a teenager attending the school. Greer denies he abused Mirlis and is appealing his criminal convictions.

Greer argued in his appeal of the verdict that the trial judge made mistakes in instructing the jury about how to consider, during deliberations, Greer’s invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when declining to answer questions during the trial.

The federal jury awarded Mirlis $15 million in compensatory damages and a judge tacked on another $5 million in punitive damages plus $1.7 million in interest.

The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they’ve been sexually assaulted, but Mirlis wanted to come forward, his lawyer said.

Mirlis said Greer sexually assaulted him on school property, in the bedroom of Greer’s New Haven home and at motels in Branford and in Philadelphia and Paoli, Pennsylvania, among other places.


Justices won’t take up Sheldon Silver’s case

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up the case of former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who is serving a 6 1/2-year prison sentence after being convicted in a corruption case.

The high court’s decision not to hear Silver’s appeal is another sharp blow to the Manhattan Democrat, who was once one of the three most powerful state officials.

Silver was ousted as speaker in 2015 and was convicted later that year. His original conviction was overturned on appeal, but he was convicted again in 2018. Part of that conviction was then tossed out on another appeal, leading to yet another sentencing in July.

Silver, 76, began serving his sentence in August.

In the part of the case that survived the appeal process, Silver was convicted in a scheme that involved favors and business traded between two real estate developers and a law firm. Silver supported legislation that benefited the developers. The developers then referred certain tax business to a law firm that paid Silver fees.

Two justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, said they would have heard Silver’s case.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump was considering clemency for Silver, but ultimately no pardon or sentence reduction was granted.

Silver has been serving time at the federal prison in Otisville, about 80 miles from New York City.

Before his conviction, Silver was a giant in New York politics.

First elected to the Assembly in 1977, he became speaker in 1994, holding that position for more than two decades. For nearly half that time, during the administration of Republican Gov. George Pataki, he was the most powerful Democrat in the state.

Silver’s lawyers had asked the court to consider allowing him to serve his sentence at home because of the risk of contracting COVID-19 and dying in prison. But District Judge Valerie Caproni said issuing a sentence without prison time was inappropriate because Silver was guilty of “corruption, pure and simple.”


Court ends Trump emoluments lawsuits

By Mark Sherman
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday brought an end to lawsuits over whether Donald Trump illegally profited off his presidency, saying the cases are moot now that Trump is no longer in office.

The high court’s action was the first in an expected steady stream of orders and rulings on pending lawsuits involving Trump now that his presidency has ended. Some orders may result in dismissals of cases since Trump is no longer president. In other cases, proceedings that had been delayed because Trump was in the White House could resume and their pace even quicken.

The justices threw out Trump’s challenge to lower court rulings that had allowed lawsuits to go forward alleging that he violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting payments from foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel and patronize other businesses owned by the former president and his family.

The high court also ordered the lower court rulings thrown out as well and directed appeals courts in New York and Richmond, Virginia, to dismiss the suits as moot now that Trump is no longer in office.

The outcome leaves no appellate court opinions on the books in an area of the law that has been rarely explored in U.S. history.

The cases involved suits filed by Maryland and the District of Columbia, and high-end restaurants and hotels in New York and Washington, D.C., that “found themselves in the unenviable position of having to compete with businesses owned by the President of the United States.”

The suits sought financial records showing how much state and foreign governments have paid the Trump Organization to stay and eat at Trump-owned properties.

The cases never reached the point where any records had to be turned over. But Karl Racine and Brian Frosh, the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland, respectively, said in a joint statement that a ruling by a federal judge in Maryland that went against Trump “will serve as precedent that will help stop anyone else from using the presidency or other federal office for personal financial gain the way that President Trump has over the past four years.”

Other cases involving Trump remain before the Supreme Court, or in lower courts.

Trump is trying to block the Manhattan district attorney ‘s enforcement of a subpoena for his tax returns, part of a criminal investigation into the president and his businesses. Lower courts are weighing congressional subpoenas for Trump’s financial records. And the justices also have before them Trump’s appeal of a decision forbidding him from blocking critics on his Twitter account. Like the emoluments cases, Trump’s appeal would seem to be moot now that he is out of office and also had his Twitter account suspended.

Republican senators and some legal scholars have said that Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate cannot proceed now that he is once again a private citizen. But many scholars have said that Trump’s return to private life poses no impediment to an impeachment trial.