Judge Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing began on Monday in front the Senate Judiciary Committee. ISCOTUS co-director Carolyn Shapiro is live tweeting much of the hearing, and you can follow her at @cshaplaw. ISCOTUSnow will also have regular posts throughout the week about the hearing. Monday’s session was devoted opening statements by the Senators and by Judge Gorsuch. Questioning will start on Tuesday.

This post addresses non-Gorsuch news. This week, the Supreme Court has oral arguments on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and Conference on Friday. Monday morning, the Court issued its Orders List from its Conference this past Friday, but it granted no new cases.

On Monday the Court heard arguments in Howell v. Howell. Under a divorce decree, John Howell was required to pay his ex-wife half of his Military Rtirement Plan income. Subsequently, the VA found that he suffered from 20% disability due to a shoulder condition related to his service. As a result, he waived a portion of his retirement income to receive disability benefits instead. The state court ordered him to indemnify his ex-wife for the reduction in her income, but John argues that the federal law governing military retirement pay preempts this action. His disability caused a 20% reduction in his income, and in order to receive disability payments he had to take a cut in his retirement pay. The Court will have to determine if John is still required to pay his ex-wife the full portion of his retirement income agreed upon after their divorce even though that retirement income has been reduced due to his military service injury.

Also on Monday the Court heard argument in Murr v. Wisconsin, a case involving property rights and the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. According to Ilya Somin of  The Washington Post, this case “addresses a crucial question about when property owners are entitled to compensation under the Takings Clause.” The issue has to do with how to evaluate the burden of a regulatory taking when the property owner owns more than one parcel of land.

On Tuesday the Court will be hearing arguments in two cases involving big business. In Microsoft v. Baker, the plaintiffs sued Microsoft due to a defect in their Xbox 360, but the district court determined that a class action lawsuit could not take place because the defect affected only 0.4% of the video game consoles. The plaintiffs then dismissed their individual claims with prejudice and appealed the denial of class certification. The Ninth Circuit reversed. According to Law 360, Microsoft is arguing that the Court allowed the plaintiffs to do an “end-run around procedures” by allowing them to appeal a dismissal that they requested. On the other side, Professor Sergio Campos of the University of Miami School of Law noted that “class actions are often necessary because no class member has a stake sufficient enough to bring an individual lawsuit. Earlier this Term, Carolyn Shapiro discussed SCOTUS’s class action jurisprudence (and this case in particular) after Justice Scalia’s death, here.

Additionally on Tuesday the Court will hear arguments involving patents and the printer toner cartridge refill industry in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. Lexmark has a program that allows customers a discount on printer cartridges if they return them to Lexmark when they are empty. Impression Products, Inc. acquired some of the cartridges abroad after a third party converted them to be re-used in violation of Lexmark’s return program. Impression Products resold them in the United States. Impression is arguing that they did not infringe upon the patent because Lexmark granted the authority to resell them when it initially sold them. The Court of Appeals found in favor of Lexmark by holding that their initial sale did not “confer authority” to Impression to resell them.  According to Adam Liptak of  The New York Times, this case will determine how much control patent-holders have over their products once they are sold. The Obama administration to had urged the Supreme Court to hear this case, arguing that the Court has held for 150 years that once a patented product is sold patent laws do not “constrain the subsequent use or resale of that article.”

On Wednesday the Court will hear County of Los Angeles v. Mendez, in which the plaintiffs, a homeless couple, allege that the police violated their Fourth Amendment rights when they entered the shed where the couple was staying without a warrant or announcing their presence.  Plaintiffs were shot by the police because they had a firearm in the shed, and whether or not they were moving the gun or pointing it at the officers is contested. The Ninth Circuit held that the police violated the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights. But as SCOTUSblog explains, the case involves complex issues of qualified immunity, causation, and provocation, in the context of complex and disputed facts, and the briefing at times seems to confuse the issues. The decision of this case will determine if Los Angeles County will have to pay the plaintiffs four million dollars in damages for their injuries.

Finally, on Wednesday the Court will hear arguments in Water Splash, Inc. v. Menon.  Water Splash sued a former employee, a Canadian citizen residing in Quebec, in Texas state court. The respondent was served by mail and did not respond, leading the trial court to grant a default judgment. The Texas Court of Appeals reversed the judgment, citing The Hague Service Convention treaty. The Supreme Court will have to determine if the treaty authorizes service of process by mail. Law 360 analyzes the history of the case, here.

Finally according to U.S. News, President Trump has vowed to appeal his revised travel ban to the Supreme Court if necessary after the ban has been challenged in both Hawaii and Maryland. In Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson stated “the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion,” and issued a TRO, but the Trump administration argues that the ban is needed for national security.  A district court judge in Maryland has also concluded that the order is likely unconstitutional as it was “intended to be a ban on Muslims,” and imposed a preliminary injunction on certain portions of the order. The government has filed notice of appeal from the Maryland case, and will be appealing to the Fourth Circuit.

The Supreme Court has no oral arguments scheduled this week. The only official activity on its calendar is its Conference scheduled for Friday, March 17. SCOTUSblog maintains a running list of petitions they are watching. Some of those petitions have been relisted, in some cases multiple times, meaning that they have been on the list for discussion at Conference repeatedly. Often, such a relist is a sign that the Court is seriously considering granting certiorari and/or that a justice is writing an opinion dissenting from the denial of certiorari. (Sometimes such an opinion never sees the light of day because the drafter is able to persuade enough justices to get the four votes needed for a cert grant.) Among the more interesting cases the Court is considering this week is Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In this case, the cake shop owner claims that being compelled by Colorado’s anti-discrimination law to make a cake for a same-sex wedding violates his religious belief and is unconstitutional compelled speech. The case has been relisted repeatedly, and at least one justice requested that the full record be sent to the Court. The New Yorker analyzed the case here.

One petition on the list for Friday has been getting some attention from the leftwing the blogosphere. It is a petition for a writ of mandamus seeks to nullify the results of the 2016 presidential election. Petitioners argue that purported Russian hacking into the presidential election constituted a foreign invasion sufficient to invoke Article IV, §4 of the Constitution which requires the federal government to protect states from foreign invasion. The chances of this petition being granted, however, are essentially nil, as this post explains.

Last week, Justice Ginsburg appeared at the Washington National Opera. As The Washington Post reported, it was “an iteration of what has become an established routine, now called ‘Justice at the Opera,’ that involves her giving some remarks, and making some jokes, while acting as a kind of emcee for opera arias and scenes relating, more or less, to legal matters. (On Thursday, the opening number, the scene from “Falstaff” in which two women get the same love letter from the same man, was offered as an example of mail fraud.)”

On Tuesday, the City Club of Cleveland will feature a panel titled “Advice and Dissent: Gorsuch and the Future of an Independent Supreme Court.” The event is open to the public and will discuss President Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch following the Senate’s contentious decision to refuse hearings for President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.

On Wednesday, Justice Alito will be a featured speaker at an Advocati Cristi event at St. Paul Inside the Walls: The Catholic Center for Evangelization at Bayley-Ellard in Madison, New  Jersey. The event is open to the public. SCOTUS Map lists this speaking event and others here.

Be sure to check in with http://blogs.kentlaw.iit.edu/iscotus/ in the middle of the week to see the latest news on Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch.

On Monday morning, the Court issued orders and announced two opinions from the bench. The most notable order was its decision in Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. to remand to the lower courts in light of the Trump Administration’s decision to rescind guidance related to transgender students’ bathroom access. This order does not end the litigation, however. Instead, it will be up to the lower courts to now evaluate the statutory and constitutional arguments in the absence of administrative guidance. Both sides had asked the Court to hear the case despite the change in the federal government’s position, as SCOTUSblog described.

In Beckles v. United States, the Court, in an opinion by Justice Thomas, held that void-for-vagueness challenges do not apply to the advisory sentencing guidelines. Justice Sotomayor and Ginsburg concurred in the judgment, and Justice Kagan did not participate. And in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the Court held 5-3, in an opinion by Justice Kennedy and joined by the four liberal justices, that Colorado’s rule against the admissibility of evidence related to jury deliberations could not stand where a juror stated that he was relying on racial stereotypes or discriminatory views. There were also several opinions issued with the Orders List. Notably, in a unanimous, per curiam opinion, the Court remanded Rippo v. Baker because it said that the lower court used the wrong standard in determining whether there was an unconstitutional risk of bias on the part of a judge in a capital murder trial. (The judge was under investigation and ultimately was indicted for bribery.)

Although the Court will not hear oral arguments this week, two of the justices will maintain high profiles at two separate events, both to be held on Friday. Chief Justice John Roberts will appear at an event in New York commemorating Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Henry Friendly, The New York Law Journal reports. Friendly served on the 2nd Circuit from 1959 to 1986, and he was chief judge from 1971 to 1973. Roberts clerked for Friendly from 1979 to 1980. Judge Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and President Obama’s pick to replace Justice Scalia, also clerked for Friendly and will be at the event as well.

Also on Friday, Justice Sotomayor will speak at Stanford University. She will converse with M. Elizabeth Magill, Dean of Stanford Law School, and she will answer questions posed by students. The law school’s Office of the President is hosting the event with senior class presidents of 2017.

Those interested in reliving relatively recent Supreme Court history can catch the finale of the ABC miniseries When We Rise. The series, which is available on Hulu, includes a finale that, as The Advocate explains, focuses on “how activists fought for and won marriage equality in the United States, beginning with the passage of Proposition 8, which sparked a new generation of advocates, and the legal fight leading up to the Supreme Court,” and includes Debra Winger playing Justice Elena Kagan. The legal fight over California’s Proposition 8 (which outlawed same-sex marriage after the California Supreme Court recognized it as required under the state constitution) was the 2013 case of Hollingsworth v. Perry. (The Court did not reach the merits in Hollingsworth, which left standing a lower court determination striking down Proposition 8 on very narrow grounds.) Hollingsworth was decided at the same time as United States v. Windsor, in which the Court struck down the portion of the federal law that prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. Two years later, the Supreme Court declared marriage equality the law of the land in Obergefell v. Hodges.

To stay up to date on news about Judge Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, check out ISCOTUSnow during the week for “The Gorsuch Report: the Latest News on the Nomination Process.”